Violet Hour: Lasting Legacies, Baltimore Museum of Art

lauren adams
Visitors at the Baltimore Museum of Art ‘All Due Respect’

BMA Violet Hour: Lasting Legacies

What makes a lasting legacy? Join the artists from the current exhibition All Due Respect—Lauren Frances Adams, Mequitta Ahuja, LaToya M. Hobbs, and Cindy Cheng—as they reflect on their work and how materials and artist resources have influenced their careers. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, art historian, curator, and Professor Emerita and Founding Director of the Center of Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Watch live on Facebook and YouTube.
https://artbma.org/event/bma-violet-hour-lasting-legacies/

Panelists:

Lauren Frances Adams

Lauren Frances Adams is a painter who lives and works in Baltimore. She grew up in Snow Hill, North Carolina on a pig farm. Her work engages political and social histories through iconic images and domestic ornament. Her work has been exhibited across the United States at museums, university galleries, and artist-run spaces. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has held residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Award, and a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. Americans for the Arts recognized projects she co-produced in 2011 and 2017 as “outstanding public art.” Lauren was a founding member of Ortega y Gasset Projects, a project space in New York. Lauren teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Mequitta Ahuja

“Whip-smart and languorous” is how the July 24, 2017 issue of The New Yorker described a large-scale painting by Mequitta Ahuja then on view at the Asia Society Museum in New York. Ahuja is the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Mequitta has focused her career efforts on museum exhibitions and acquisitions. The year 2022 began with one of Mequitta’s large-scale self-portraits being acquired by Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her work has been exhibited at The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, MCA Chicago, The Phillips Collection in D.C. and The Brooklyn Museum, among others. Mequitta’s work has appeared in Modern Painters and The New York Times. In 2010, Mequitta was featured in ArtNews as “An Artist to Watch.” On June 1st, 2007, Holland Cotter of The New York Times, sighting Mequitta’s New York debut exhibition stated, “Referring to the artist’s African-American and East Indian background, the pictures turn marginality into a regal condition.”

LaToya M. Hobbs​

LaToya M. Hobbs is an artist, wife, and mother of two currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. She received her BA in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and MFA in Printmaking from Purdue University. LaToya’s work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora. She creates a fluid and symbiotic relationship between her printmaking and painting practice, producing works that are marked by texture, color, and bold patterns. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is housed in private and public collections, such as the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, the National Art Gallery of Namibia, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other accomplishments include a 2019 Artist Travel Grant from the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore and the 2020 Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize.

Cindy Cheng

Cindy Cheng has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, the Anderson Ranch Artist Residency, and will participate in the Joan Mitchell Center Residency in 2022. She is a recipient of a 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, and in 2017 she won the Sondheim Artscape Award. She was a finalist for the Trawick Prize in 2016, 2017, and 2021. She has participated in solo and group shows at the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD), School 33 Art Center (Baltimore, MD), Fjord Gallery (Philadelphia, PA, in collaboration with Cheeny Celebrado-Royer), Ditch Projects (Eugene, OR), St Charles Projects (Baltimore, MD), and at ‘Sindikit Project (in collaboration with Cheeny-Celebrado Royer) (Baltimore, MD). Cindy received her BA from Mount Holyoke College, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from MICA in 2008, and earned an MFA from MICA’s Mount Royal School of Art in 2011. Cindy is currently teaching at MICA in the Drawing Department. She enjoys puzzles and badminton.

Moderator:

Dr. Leslie King-Hammond
Leslie King-Hammond is an art historian, curator, artist, and cultural and community innovator. She is Professor Emerita, former Graduate Dean and founding Director of the Center of Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. King-Hammond sits on the board of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, Collections and Acquisitions Committee of the Walters Art Museum, and the Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation, an initiative committed to developing and supporting arts hubs and incubator labs in Baltimore City. King-Hammond’s artistry has been exhibited at the New York Historical Society, Benjamin Banneker-Douglass Museum, Museum of Biblical Art, The Smithsonian-Arts and Industries Building, Galerie Myrtis, Apex Gallery, Montserrat College of Art Gallery, MICA-Meyerhoff Gallery, and the James E. Lewis Museum. Her mixed media-bricolage installations and fiber works explore the anonymity of women’s handwork and the intersection of African Diasporic spiritual beliefs.

Imagining the Future: Public Art Confronts the Past

Imagining the Future: Public Art Confronts the Past

April 12, 2021

Video recording on YouTube

Join us for a conversation about the creation of memories in public space and the power of art in the public sphere. We will be speaking with two artists – Lauren Frances Adams and Jason Patterson – whose work critically engages and analyzes items and symbols created in the nineteenth century. Using their art as a focal point, we will discuss the power of art to encourage the public to think differently about the meanings conveyed, then and now, in site-specific settings.

Introduction & closing remarks by Malinda Maynor Lowery, Professor of History, UNC-CH, and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South (CSAS)

Moderated by Jacqueline Lawton, Associate Professor, Dramatic Art, UNC-CH

Panelists:
Lauren Frances Adams, Artist
Lauren’s wallpaper art, “In Faithful Remembrance of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, and to the Truth-Loving People of North Carolina”, is displayed in Love House, home of CSAS. This house was built in the 1800s and maintained by Cornelia Spencer, a white woman whose decor reflected her Southern ideologies. Lauren’s art puts Spencer’s own words back in a space that is now used in a completely different way.

Jason Patterson, Artist
Recreating and reimagining historical documents, Jason focuses on portraiture and frame-building, modeling the frame after the time period the art represents. His work is a catalyst for things that should happen, addressing “…often unknown histories of white supremacy and racial inequality that have existed in this area for centuries and that continue to influence the social conditions.”

Michelle Lanier, AfroCarolina Folklorist and Womanist Cartographer
Michelle Lanier is an AfroCarolina Folklorist public humanities professional, filmmaker and keeper of memory. This seasoned public humanities professional is the first African American director of the state’s 25 historic sites. Michelle unpacks the complex ways cultural and historic spaces tell stories, which stories they tell, and why.

Rights and Wrongs: Citizenship, Belonging, and the Vote — The Peale at Carroll Mansion

Rights and Wrongs: 

Citizenship, Belonging, and the Vote

Exhibition website https://www.rightsandwrongs.info/

Virtual artist talk on November 19, 2020 — link to YouTube recording

Dates of Exhibition: October 17 – December 6, 2020

Location: The Peale at Carroll Mansion, 800 E. Lombard Street, Baltimore, MD

Saturdays and Sundays, 12-4pm, FREE

 

About the Exhibit: 

Rights and Wrongs is an art exhibition that contends with the centennial of the 19th Amendment and the 2020 elections  in light of the fact that equitable voter participation is hardly a settled matter in America threats to citizenship, belonging, and democratic participation continue to be at stake. 

 

Local Baltimore artists Erin Fostel, Antonio McAfee, and McKinley Wallace III have created new artworks, related to the themes of racial, social, and economic injustice, and the various struggles for the vote. Some of their works respond to physical sites and visual records of contested public memory in Baltimore City.  

 

These local artists’ works are on display at the Carroll Mansion, a historic site of enslavement with many layers of occupation over the generations, alongside the work of artists from outside the region who also consider the personal and political dimensions of citizenship and belonging.  The artists in the group exhibition include Stacey Kirby, Julia Kwon, Precious Lovell, JoAnne McFarland, Gina Gwen Palacios, Jason Patterson, and Sarah Paulsen

 

These artists approach historic and current events in their work through a variety of methods available to the contemporary artist: abstraction, representation, collage, found objects, textiles, moving image, and interactive works. While the scope of their production methods is varied, their works share thematic and material concerns. These include historic images and texts resuscitated from archives to breathe new meaning into public memory. The artists are also documenting the complex narratives of inclusion and exclusion in historic activist efforts to establish voting rights for women and people of color in the 19th and 20th centuries.  These works reflect distinct declarations of self and collective, bearing out the adage that the personal is political.

 

The works in Rights and Wrongs bring the viewers’ attention to the complexities and contradictions of the history of voting rights and civil right struggles as well as the ways that these struggles continue both in Baltimore across the United States. 

 

Special Events:

  • Virtual Exhibition Talk with Baltimore artists McKinley Wallace III, Erin Fostel, and Antonio McAfee // Thursday, November 19, 2020, 6:30-8:00pm // FREE

 

The exhibition will be on display from October 17 through December 6, 2020, at the historic Carroll Mansion in Baltimore. More information about the venue can be found on the website

 

About the Peale: The Peale is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, non-profit corporation established to restore the historic Peale Museum building as a center to celebrate the unique history of Baltimore, its people, and places. By creating a more inclusive cultural record of the city, the Peale aims to help people everywhere see Baltimore in a new light. The Peale currently also hosts exhibitions at the historic Carroll Mansion, located 1/2 mile from the Peale Building on Lombard Street. For more about the Peale, visit the website.

 

This project is organized by Baltimore artist and educator Lauren Frances Adams and has been financially supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council and the Awesome Foundation.

Lauren Frances Adams: Crazy Quilt


Crazy Quilt

Above: Crazy Quilt installation at the Ackland Art Museum, 31′ x 12′ custom wallpaper print

ART& Lauren Frances Adams
21 September 2018 – 10 March 2019

ACKLAND ART MUSEUM
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

https://ackland.org/exhibition/art-lauren-frances-adams/

This wallpaper design appropriates from the historic American textile technique called crazy quilting. Quilting is a visual and conceptual framework for incorporating images of a variety of objects from the Ackland’s collection, UNC’s historical memorabilia found in the Wilson Library’s special collections, symbols of the state of North Carolina and references to state history, and my own personal keepsakes. These myriad sources converge into a crazy quilt — a metaphor for the overlapping and sometimes seemingly disjunctive influences moving back and forth between the public and private sphere in our contemporary society. A particular emphasis is placed around images from the Ackland’s collection that feature women, remixing the collection to highlight the roles of women in society, politics, labor, and in art history. Historic commemorative ribbons (memorializing the death of Lincoln or a 19th c. veterans’ gathering) are reworked into a new framing device for elevating women’s history in North Carolina and at UNC.

Marx@200, Space Gallery, Pittsburgh PA


Marx@200 Art Exhibition

April 6 through June 3 at SPACE gallery in downtown Pittsburgh

http://www.spacepittsburgh.org/portfolio-view/marx200/

Karl Marx is one of the most influential and controversial thinkers in history. To explore Marx’s continued influence at the time of his bicentennial, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trustand Carnegie Mellon University’s Humanities Center will present Marx@200 from April 6 through June 3 at SPACE gallery in downtown Pittsburgh.

Curated by CMU’s Kathy M. Newman and Susanne Slavick, Marx@200 will feature more than 25 works by artists from around the world. The artworks represent a diverse range of perspectives on Marx and his critique of inequality and capitalism, as well as his influence on political movements and regimes.

“As artists respond to both historical and current conditions, Marx’s legacy has shaped how and what they create,” said Newman, associate professor of English, who has also organized a series of lectures that examine Marx. “He is also becoming a popular culture icon in the digital age, with his image being used in countless memes and on products. We want to give people a chance to examine these phenomena and to reflect on the themes these artists have appropriated for their own work, from the rising tide of globalization to wealth inequality, to job loss and automation.”

Highlights from the exhibition include:

  • Ukranian-born Nataliya Slinko’s gigantic version of Marx’s beard made of steel wool
  • An animated Marx wielding a hammer in battle with Charles Darwin by Michael Mallis
  • Kiluanji Kia Henda’s photographic triptych of a fishing vessel named “Karl Marx, Luanda”
  • Kathryn Clark’s “Foreclosure Quilt,” a stitched urban map of foreclosed homes, block by block
  • An embroidered barcode by Rayna Fahey that says, “Don’t just buy it/Make Revolution”

“Artists working within a variety of economic and political systems have contributed to this show, responding to Marx’s complicated legacy with appreciation or apprehension—and sometimes both. They invite us to consider his critique of capitalism and what it feels like to live in today’s globalized economy,” said Slavick, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art.

SPACE is located at 812 Liberty Ave. Gallery hours are Wednesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.; and Sundays 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

In addition to regular gallery hours, there will be an opening reception on Friday, April 6 from 6-8 p.m. The exhibition will be open during the Cultural District Gallery Crawl on Friday, April 27 from 5:30-10 p.m., and a Marx bicentennial program and reception will be held on Saturday, May 5 from 7-9 p.m.

Artists With Links to the Exhibition

For more information, visit http://www.spacepittsburgh.org/.

‘Germinal’ at MICA, January 20 – March 13, 2018

lauren frances adams

FACULTY SHOW AT MICA HIGHLIGHTS RACE, GENDER POLITICS IN BALTIMORE & BEYOND

The solo exhibition by B.F.A. Painting faculty Lauren Frances Adams is a site-specific installation that explores Confederate spaces, race and gender and political activism.

The Maryland College Institute of Art (MICA) presents “Germinal,” a solo exhibition consisting of a site-specific installation by B.F.A. Painting faculty Lauren Frances Adams. The exhibition explores themes converging around feminist activists from American history, domestic ornament in service of political messages, and the recent removal of Baltimore’s Confederate monuments.

“Germinal” opens Saturday, Jan. 20, and runs through Tuesday, March 13, at MICA’s Pinkard Gallery, Bunting Center, 1401 W Mt. Royal Ave. A reception will take place Thursday, Feb. 15, 5 – 7 p.m.

Reflecting on contemporary and historical political movements for the advancement of civil rights in America, Adams’ installation and research-based paintings examine the ways in which white women both helped and hindered progress, as well as the pioneering black feminists who fought for racial justice. Specifically, Adams, whose work often focuses on the history of labor and class, looks at the ways in which activists in American history, particularly women of color from the 18th century through the present day, have been overlooked in favor of white causes. Adams also questions the legacy of white activists such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy who advanced Lost Cause myths and neo-Confederate ideology in public monument building and school curriculums, and grounds the idea of white culpability in racial injustice to the present day.

“Germinal” also showcases the recent public battle over removing Confederate monuments, including Baltimore’s Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument or Spirit of the Confederacy, which was located adjacent to MICA’s campus on Mt. Royal Ave. and dismantled by Mayor Pugh in August.

“Given the recent movement to remove Confederate monuments across the country and in Baltimore, I wanted to create work that responds to the dichotomy between these efforts and the palpable civil and political unrest that has taken hold of the national body politic,” said Adams.

The installation of “Germinal” will transform the gallery space by applying custom wallpaper designs and patterns to the normally white wall space, and will feature collections of painted found objects, such as stacks of locally reclaimed brick from Baltimore featuring patterns and designs reflecting resistance to white supremacy, and oyster shells sourced from Maryland’s Choptank River—where Harriet Tubman lived—with portraits of activists painted on the inside of the shells.

The objects will be incrementally added to the installation throughout the exhibition, accumulating (or “germinating”) over time as though growing out of the initial object. The title is also a play on the word “seminal,” acting as the feminine counter to the male dominated concept of historicity and plays up the role of women in enacting—or hindering—social change. “The works on display encourage a consideration of the ways in which public visual culture has contributed to the reinforcement of Confederate spaces and values, while also highlighting the long history of women who resisted (racialized and gendered) oppression and the continuation of these struggles today,” Adams said.

“Germinal” is supported through a Marcella Brenner Grant for Faculty Development and Research, which annually funds projects that contribute to MICA faculty members’ professional, artistic or scholarly research and development. “Germinal” will be accompanied by an exhibition catalog featuring an essay by MICA Humanistic Studies faculty Christine Manganaro.

Lauren Frances Adams’ work engages political and social histories through iconic images and domestic ornament. At the core of her work are critical explorations of labor and class in visual culture. She draws heavily upon the historical decorative arts, such as wallpaper patterns, quilts and paintings, to find contradictions within the contexts they originated. Alongside painting and mixed-media installations, domestic materials take shape in her research on the construction of political identity. Adams earned her B.F.A. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and her M.F.A. at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been exhibited at Nymans House National Trust, Sussex, England; The Walters Museum, Baltimore, Maryland; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. Recent projects include Smack Mellon in Brooklyn and Plug Projects in Kansas City. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and has held residencies at the Cite in Paris and the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. She is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation M.F.A. Award, a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and the 2016 Trawick Prize. Adams is a founding member of Ortega y Gasset Projects, a project space in New York City.

Centennial of the Everyday at Gadsby’s Tavern Museum in Alexandria, Virginia

A Series of Site-Specific Contemporary Art Installations at Historic Gadsby’s Tavern Museum Shine Light on Overshadowed Stories from Alexandria’s Past

Baltimore artists Stewart Watson and Lauren Frances Adams are part of Time & Place, a public art series commissioned by the Alexandria Office of the Arts

Centennial of the Everyday: May 15 – September 3

Gadsby’s Tavern: 134 North Royal Street, Alexandria, Virginia

#TimeandPlaceALX

May 2, 2017 – Alexandria, Va. – The City of Alexandria’s Office of the Arts partners with Baltimore-based artists Stewart Watson and Lauren Frances Adams for a series of site-specific, all-media installations inspired by the history of Gadsby’s Tavern Museum. Centennial of the Everyday features artistic interventions tucked in among the historic exhibits. It will be on view May 15 – September 3, 2017, at the Museum, located at 134 North Royal Street.

The works reflects the artists’ in-depth research—documented via social media—on the history of women, enslaved people, and anonymous citizens whose stories are overshadowed by other more famous historic figures from the region, such as George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

In Centennial of the Everyday, historic ephemera takes on new contexts. With furniture, stoneware, and textiles as a starting point, Watson and Adams reflect domestic material culture of the past with modern techniques.

For example, in the room of the Female Stranger—an unidentified woman who died in Gadsby’s City Tavern in 1816—the pair created digitally design muslin bedding with a traditional cameo motif that seems to fall away as the pattern continues.

In the Museum’s Ballroom, the artists acknowledge the original Gadsby’s Ballroom, acquired 100 years ago, 1917, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The woodwork now serves as a backdrop for the Met’s collection of Federalist furnishings in the American Wing.

Watson and Adams seek to turn the archival into the interactive. They identified personal stories of place and family history by interviewing people like the descendants of John Gadsby, as well as Nancy Syphax, an enslaved woman owned by Gadsby in the 19th century. Also included was a Gadsby’s Tavern Restaurant employee who has worked at the restaurant for two decades. In all, they collaborated with seven subjects, focusing on women and people of color. With these narratives, the pair created a fantastical sculptural installation for the Ballroom.

Using period chairs and altered furniture, these sculptures examine the extraordinary within the conventional. The duo’s artistic interventions are positioned throughout Gadsby’s Tavern Museum. Each highlight points from the Museum’s history and public-record archives and parallel the lived stories of present-day Alexandrians and the region’s rich diversity. Architectural fixtures, portraiture of anonymous women, pattern books, and newspaper articles take on new meaning when framed with themes of anonymity, loss, connectivity, and the fragility of memory.

“We hope our project encourages visitors to see history and identity in a new light,” said Watson. “These sculptures and site-specific works evoke the fragility and personal nature of memory.”

“We are thrilled to present our site-responsive work at Gadsby’s Tavern Museum,” said Adams. “Our work foregrounds the underappreciated narratives of many peoples from Alexandria’s rich history.”

This project is part of the Office of the Arts’ Time & Place series, which explores the intersection of contemporary art with Alexandria’s rich and multifaceted history. Using research-based practices and working in a variety of media, Stewart Watson and Lauren Frances Adams—along with Washington-based performance artist Sheldon Scott—have created thought-provoking temporary works that are inspired by the storied past of Gadsby’s Tavern.

Time and Place shines new light on familiar stories and uses the arts to draws connections between past and present,” said Diane Ruggiero, director of the Alexandria Office of the Arts and Events.

Time & Place is a public-art program in partnership with the Office of Historic Alexandria. The goal is to foster exploration and dialogue about our region’s history and its continued reverberations within our community today. Follow #TimeandPlaceALX to join the conversation online. For more information, visit alexandriava.gov/94687.

The City of Alexandria is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. To request a reasonable accommodation or materials in an alternative format, contact Diane Ruggiero at 703.746.5590 (Virginia Relay 711) or diane.ruggiero@alexandriava.gov.

About the Artists
Based in Baltimore, Stewart Watson is the executive director, curator, and co-founder of AREA 405 and co-owner, founder, and president of Oliver Street Studios. She also teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Watson has received four individual artist grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, two individual artist grants from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and was awarded with the 2010 Sadat Art for Peace Prize. Her work has been featured in BmoreArt, Baltimore magazine, Outpost Journal, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and ArtFCity. Watson received her master’s of fine art from the University of Maryland, where she was an Anne Truitt Scholar and a Daniel Nicholson Olkhe Award recipient. She earned her bachelor’s of fine art in sculpture from the Pennsylvania State University. She lives at Oliver Street Studios with her husband, son, their dogs, and cat.

Lauren Frances Adams has exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art; Nymans House National Trust in England; The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Conner Contemporary in Washington, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and has held residencies at the Cite in Paris, Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, and the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. She is the recipient of a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and the 2016 Trawick Prize. Her work has been reviewed in Frieze, The Baltimore Sun, and Hyperallergic. Adams is a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

About Gadsby’s Tavern Museum

Gadsby’s Tavern Museum consists of two buildings, a ca. 1785 tavern and the 1792 City Hotel. The buildings are named for Englishman John Gadsby who operated them from 1796 to 1808. Gadsby’s establishment was a center of political, business, and social life in early Alexandria. The tavern was the setting for dancing assemblies, theatrical and musical performances, and meetings of local organizations. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and the Marquis de Lafayette enjoyed the hospitality provided by the tavern keepers. The Museum offers guided and self-guided tours for individuals and groups. Learn more at alexandriava.gov/GadsbysTavern. Follow @gadsbystavernmuseum on Instagram and @JohnGadsby on Twitter.

About the Office of the Arts

The Office of the Arts promotes the value of arts and culture in Alexandria by nurturing, investing in and celebrating the creative contributions of artists and arts organizations. Through engaging the community, encouraging participation, and facilitating access to the arts, the Office of the Arts works with local artists and arts organizations to build a vibrant community for all of the City’s residents, workers and visitors. The Office of the Arts is a division of the City of Alexandria’s Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities. Learn more at alexandriava.gov/arts or follow @alexartsoffice on Instagram.

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Contact: Alyssa Ross, City of Alexandria, 703.746.4572, alyssa.ross@alexandriava.gov

Group Exhibitions in Kentucky, North Carolina, New York, and more

This spring my work is featured in four group exhibitions.

‘The Nothing That Is: A Drawing Show in Five Parts‘ @ The Carnegie in Kentucky, March 10 – April 15

Kentucky Derby Party and Auction @ Smack Mellon in New York, May 6

‘Artists in Residence 30th Anniversary Residency Retrospective’, Artspace, Raleigh, NC, May 19 – June 24

Unloaded, traveling group show curated by Susanne Slavick, making stops at the Bolivar Art Gallery at the University of Lexington, Kentucky, and then traveling on to Portland, Maine at the ICA Maine, and Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, and other venues to be announced later in the year.

Time & Place: GADSBYS

Above, Gadsby’s Tavern in Alexandria overlaid with the original Gadsby’s ballroom interior, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

TIME & PLACE: GADSBYS

Time & Place is an initiative of the Alexandria Office of the Arts’ public art program to invite artists with research-based practices to create thought-provoking, temporary artwork at sites managed by the Office of Historic Alexandria. Through compelling art projects in a variety of media, Time & Place will foster exploration and dialogue about Alexandria’s rich history.

The first Time & Place exhibition will take place at Gadsby’s Tavern Museum. DC-based artist Sheldon Scott and the Baltimore-based artist team of Lauren Frances Adams and Stewart Watson began their research in August, 2016, meeting with historians, archaeologists, and community members. Their research will continue through the end of 2016, with opportunities for the public to engage with their research processes.

Sheldon Scott is developing both an immersive performance art installation in the spring of 2017, and temporary art exhibition. Using the history of the harvesting of ice from the Potomac River and the storage and use of ice at Gadsby’s as a starting point, both works will examine the historic relationship of the Potomac River and the people of Alexandria, and the contemporary utility of the river as a resource.

Through their research, Stewart Watson and Lauren Frances Adams plan to develop a series of artworks to be installed at Gadsby’s in the summer of 2017. Their research focuses on women, enslaved peoples, and anonymous citizens whose stories are rarely told in light of the typical fêting of historically famous individuals. They intend to develop artworks will utilize familiar domestic materials such as wood, ceramics, and textiles in period-specific iterations to bring a contemporary understanding to these themes.

Bmore Art Journal #3 : LEGACY

Issue 3 of the BmoreArt Journal of Art + Ideas explores the issue of LEGACY for artists in the Baltimore region. What is our cultural birthright and who are our artistic forbearers? How can we, as creative and equity-minded citizens, learn from the successes and failures of our ancestors in Baltimore?

Issue 3 features cultural leaders like Joyce J. Scott and John Waters, compares generations of makers, and analyzes the history of our cultural landscape. The magazine features writing by Cara Ober, Bret McCabe, Marianne Amoss, Jermaine Bell, Martina Dodd, Kerr Houston, Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Michael B. Tager, Fred Scharmen, and Julie Scharper. Photography for Issue 3 included Chris Attenborough, Kelvin Bullock, Theresa Keil, Rachel Rock Palermo, Justin Tsucalas, and Stephen Spartana. The magazine also featured artwork by Khadija Nia Adell, Lauren Frances Adams, and Linda Day Clark.

You can get a copy via mail here, or in local museum shops and bookstores in Baltimore.