Friday marks the official return of Artscape to Baltimore. After a few fits and starts, including scheduling conflicts and covid delays, the nation’s largest free arts festival will resume this weekend. It has been over three years since the last iteration of the festival.
In the middle of its new location, The Station North Arts District, lies the B23 exhibition. This gallery is the centerpiece of the reimagined event highlighting unknown to legendary Baltimore area artists. The exhibition features hand selected Baltimore area artists at various stages of their careers.
“It's about the best of Baltimore, for 2023,” proclaims senior curator of BOPA Kirk Shannon-Butts for WYPR. “It wasn't a call for a specific theme, you have to be the best.”
B23 only accepted about a quarter of their applicants to be featured. Even with no requirements for style, there is a clear throughline of bright yellow within many of the pieces. Shannon-Butts thinks this represents a bright future, like the sun, for Baltimore artist recognition. The gallery, he hopes, will further what he is calling “The Baltimore Movement.”
“The Baltimore Movement is a movement of artists who are using their personal narratives, and putting them in form, whether it's quilts, textiles, paintings, sculpture, (or) video,” Shannon-Butts explains.
Many of these mediums are represented at B23, resulting in a medley of different perspectives. A 30-second video homage to Trayvon Martin entitled Jumping Jack by Ann Stoddard grabs you as you enter the space. As you hook a left and move towards the back, there’s 2100 Ukrainian magazine pieces weaved together as an homage to an artist’s grandmother by Julianna Dail.
The B series was established by Shannon-Butts in 2019 at The Baltimore City Hall Gallery. His beginning mission was to make spaces that helped keep rising artists and their art in Baltimore. He credits a trip to New York and a discovery while meeting with collectors as his impetus. “All of them had art from artists in Baltimore,” Shannon-Butts explains. “But none of them had ever been to Baltimore.”
B23’s featured artist for this Artscape iteration is a world renowned painter who stayed in Baltimore for the majority of his professional career. Eugene Coles famously created the surrealist cover art for Gil Scott-Heron’s 1973 album “Winter In America.” Poet and musician Scott-Heron is known as the “Godfather of Rap.” So featuring Coles’ work on the year of the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop feels particularly poignant.
Coles’ section of the gallery holds this original piece as well as pieces in his main style of abstraction. He has over the years derived inspiration for many of his imaginative paintings from Baltimore’s aura. “(In) Baltimore the environment is semi-luscious,” Coles says. “It's easier to (paint with) light and bright colors.”
Coles is also inspired by nature and animals. One piece in the gallery is inspired by a bird he claims followed him and his wife through three moves over 14 years in the Baltimore area. “I'm living in the city painting on the porch and a little bird comes,” Coles remembers. “I think because I was painting birds, he was enamored in some way. He still comes to the window and wakes us up at five o'clock in the morning.”
There is a striking connection between Coles’ work and another B23 artist Jennifer McBrien’s thread stitchings with bird heads on human bodies. There is strength in bridging the past with the future; a common theme at this year’s Artscape.
B23 is just one of the many gallery spaces awaiting festival attendees through the weekend. Artscape also features performances from Anderson .Paak, Muni Long, Nile Rogers and a plethora of local musical talent. The official festival hours are:
Friday, September 22: 5 p.m.–10 p.m.
Saturday, September 23: 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
Sunday, September 24: 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
