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.

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.

Read more here: https://www.mica.edu/Baltimore_Rising.html

Baltimore Rising is an exhibition bringing together a broad survey of works by 15 artists — with significant ties to Baltimore — who address the social, economic, political and racial issues that propelled the city to the national spotlight in 2015.

Artists: Derrick Adams, Lauren Adams, Devin Allen, Sonya Clark, J.M. Giordano, Logan Hicks, Jeffrey Kent, Nate Larson, Nether, Olivia Robinson, Paul Rucker, Joyce J. Scott, Tony Shore, Shinique Smith and Susan Waters-Eller.

Opening Reception
Friday, November 4, 5 – 8 p.m.
Lazarus Center

Community Forum
After the Baltimore Uprising: Still Waiting for Change
Wednesday, November 9, 7 – 9 p.m.
Lazarus Center Auditorium

Are we any better off today than we were in April 2015? What has changed? What still needs to change? Baltimore Bloc coordinator Ralikh Hayes, #WestWednesday organizer Tawanda Jones, Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, author D. Watkins and JHU professor Lester Spence (moderator) will talk about where we are now, selective policing and the DOJ report.

Artists Panel
Can Artists Ignite a Revolution?
Wednesday, November 16, 7 – 9 p.m.
Lazarus Center Auditorium

What is the role of the arts in revolution? Photographer J.M. Giordano, visual artist and musician Paul Rucker, multi-disciplinary artist and educator Joyce J. Scott, MICA painting chair Tony Shore and UMD professor Sheri Parks (moderator) will talk about how the arts can serve as a tool to examine society and to amplify the voices that most need to be heard.

Project Statement by Lauren Frances Adams:

This wallpaper installation depicts protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Taking a Knee portrays the many athletes and musicians who have kneeled during the playing of the National Anthem at the beginning of sports events during the past two months. The blue striped wallpaper, which has a silver moiré pattern, is interwoven with silver painted figures of those who have chosen to protest inequality and injustice in America. The variety of figures depicted spans from professional athletes such as Colin Kaepernick, who initiated the protest in August, to college and high school footballers, soccer players, marching band performers, and team coaches. Taking a Knee celebrates the stance taken both on and off the field by this new generation of protesters.

Say I Am: Lauren Frances Adams, Caroline Wells Chandler, Pixy Liao, and Yvonne Osei
September 16 – Ocotber 29, 2016
Opening reception, September 16, 6-9pm

PLUG Projects presents Say I Am, an exhibition featuring the work of Lauren Frances Adams, Caroline Wells Chandler, Pixy Liao, and Yvonne Osei. These artists address agency and challenge assumptions within a historically patriarchal heteronormative structure. Providing a contrast to the dominant landscape, deviations from expected gendered, cultural, or racial narratives are presented. Whether speaking from one’s experience or for an individual’s right to self determinism, each artist lends a transgressive hand to support new ways of thinking.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lauren Frances Adams earned her BFA at UNC-Chapel Hill, and completed her MFA in 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University. She lives and works in Baltimore. She has exhibited at Nymans House National Trust (Sussex, England), The Walters Museum (MD), The Mattress Factory (PA), and Smack Mellon (NY). 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 MFA Award, and a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. Her work has been reviewed in Frieze Magazine, The Baltimore Sun, Artslant, and Hyperallergic. Lauren is a founding member of Ortega y Gasset Projects, a project space in New York.http://www.lfadams.com

Caroline Wells Chandler’s brightly colored hand-crocheted works explore notions of queerness and sexuality as well as the art historical canon. His characters are radically queer, and his representations of gender declare queerness as the normative state. Chandler completed his foundation studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and received his BFA cum laude from Southern Methodist University in 2007. He has shown at numerous institutions including: Roberto Paradise (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Lord Ludd (PA), Art League Houston (TX), Zurcher Studio (NY), Field Projects (NY), Vox Populi (PA), Sanctuary (PA), N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art (MI), Open Gallery (TN), and the Stieglitz Museum (‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands) among others. Chandler is a 2011 MFA recipient in painting at the Yale School of Art where he was awarded the Ralph Mayer Prize for proficiency in materials and techniques. He lives and works in New York. http://carolinewellschandler.com

Pixy Liao was born and raised in Shanghai, China and currently resides in Brooklyn. She is a recipient of NYFA Fellowship in photography, En Foco’s New Works Fellowship and LensCulture Exposure Awards, etc,. She has done artist residencies at Pioneer Works, Light Work, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Center for Photography at Woodstock, and Camera Club of New York. Liao’s photographs have been exhibited internationally, including He Xiangning Art Museum (China), Asia Society (Houston), Flower Gallery (NY), First Draft Gallery (Sydney), VT Artsalon (Taiwan), Kips Gallery (Korea), The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space (Lebanon), Format (UK), Noorderlicht (Netherland), etc. Liao holds a MFA in photography from University of Memphis.http://pixyliao.com

Yvonne Osei is a German-born Ghanaian artist living in the United States who is hyperaware of her hybridity. She describes herself as an outsider artist making insider art, referencing her West African roots while acknowledging her close to six years living in St. Louis, Missouri. https://vimeo.com/yvonneosei

www.plugprojects.com

About the Project:

Anatomy of Style in New France: Louis XV/Code Noir

Printed vinyl and three individual paintings (gouache and acrylic on paper, 2014)

2016

Project Statement:

New France was the name of the territory stretching from New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi River (including parts of Kansas and Missouri) to Canada during the French colonial period (16th-18th centuries). Louis XV was the king of France during this later period, and in 1724 at the age of 13, he signed into effect the second version of the Code Noir. This ‘black code’ consolidated the French legal framework concerning slavery in North America, restricting the rights of enslaved and free blacks and outlining the religious entitlements of all French subjects. The painted texts in the wallpaper are from this regulatory decree. The pixelated objects depicted in the wallpaper are from the Nelson-Atkins Museum collection of Louis XV style furniture, objects created in a style once popular in France and roughly concurrent with this later era of French trade and settlement in Illinois Country / Upper Louisiana. Collapsing ornament and oppression, the Code Noir textual extracts combined with archival evidence of the monarchy’s finest furnishings offer an acute contrast concerning an important period in the history of Missouri.

Positioned on the background image and hanging as if slightly askew in a genuine and grand domestic space are three paintings from my ongoing series, Decorum. Decorum is an incomplete but growing index of the histories of enslaved people from antiquity to the present. Decorative and textual sources trace the complex structures that surround labor and power inequalities. My sources are frequently found in museum collections, where the museum acts as both witness and author. Archival remnants of slave narratives, ornament, and my own personal inquiries constitute an open-ended process of asking how the decorative arts participate, either actively or silently, in promoting or reflecting dominant ideologies of social hierarchy, political authority, and cultural fantasy.

Balagandan Moon, gouache on paper, 24″ x 30″, 2016

Brutality Garden is a solo exhibition by Lauren Frances Adams of recent works on paper from the Netherlands and Brazil. The works on display originate from residencies the artist made in Rotterdam and Salvador in 2015 and 2016. Investigating Dutch and Portuguese empire, as evinced in the collections of major museums (like the Mauritshuis in Den Haag and Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, as well as Museu Carlos Costa Pinto in Salvador), these paintings sample from a variety of European golden age painting in the age of colonial exploration. Images from domestic life and nature, such as tile, fruits, and birds, contrasts with the fancy fashion of enslaved Brasiliens and the porcelain of the upper classes. Subjects explored include the desirable pineapple as a colonial vector fruit, azulejos (blue tile) as a theater for dramatic political allegory, and dinnerware ornamentation of the Portuguese bourgeoisie in light of brutal provincial social hierarchies. Many of the artworks reference the cultural tension between historical colonial ambition and contemporary post-colonial reality.

The exhibition is on view from September 6 – October 6, 2016 in the Delaplaine Fine Arts Center at Mount St. Mary’s University.

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards is a visual art prize produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District that honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia. The annual juried competition awards $14,000 in prize monies to selected artists and features the work of the finalists in a group exhibition.

2016 Trawick Prize Finalists
Lauren Frances Adams, Baltimore, MD
Cindy Cheng, Baltimore, MD
Leah Cooper, Baltimore, MD
Sarah Irvin, Springfield, VA
Dean Kessmann, Washington, D.C.
Ben Marcin, Baltimore, MD
Tony Shore, Baltimore, MD
William Wylie, Charlottesville, VA

The 2016 competition will be juried by Stéphane Aquin (Chief Curator Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden),
Hasan Elahi (Associate Professor, Department of Art University of Maryland) and Rebecca Schoenthal
(Curator of Exhibitions The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia).

Selected finalists will have their work on display August 31 – September 24, 2016.

http://www.bethesda.org/bethesda/trawick-prize

Appropriating Revolution
A contemporary art exhibition at the Old Stone House & Washington Park

Exhibition Opening: Wednesday, August 17, 6-9 p.m

Exhibition dates: August 17-October 8, 2016

http://theoldstonehouse.org/event/appropriating-revolution/

Hours: Fridays 3-7 p.m.; or by appointment. Call 718-768-3195 or email info@theoldstonehouse.org.

Katherine Gressel, Curator

Exhibiting Artists: Lauren Frances Adams, Jim Costanzo [Aaron Burr Society], Gen Howe, Robert Gould, Alicia Grullon, Nsenga Knight

With outdoor public art installations by: Gen Howe, Anthony Heinz May

Revolutions have historically been both catalyzed and commemorated by iconic images, texts and actions–often manifested by artists and artisans. OSH itself serves as a powerful symbol of revolution, as a reconstructed Dutch colonial farmhouse on the land where the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn took place. In conjunction with the opening of OSH’s new permanent interactive exhibition, Old Stone House: Witness to War, Appropriating Revolution brings together contemporary artists inspired by the unique history of the House and of other past revolutions in their efforts to address the most important issues of today.

In a contemporary political climate where the term “revolution” (defined as “the overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system”) risks association with either polarizing rhetoric or cynical complacency, is there an especially appropriate role for artists to play by bringing the tactics and triumphs of the past to the forefront of our conversations?

Other Free Public Events:

Tuesday, September 20, 7-9pm: “Why I Shot Hamilton” Performance and whiskey distillation demo /tasting with Jim Costanzo [Aaron Burr Society]

Sunday, October 2, 1-3pm: Performance/workshop: “Pick It!” protest sign making with Alicia Grullon

(ABOVE, F. Schumacher and Co. custom 20th c. wallcovering for the House and Senate Chambers in Washington, D.C., also in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt)

I am thrilled to announce that I have been awarded a 2016 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award.

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 to assist individual working artists of merit with financial need through the generosity of Lee Krasner (1908-1984), a leading abstract expressionist painter and widow of Jackson Pollock.

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s dual criteria for grants are recognizable artistic merit and demonstrable financial need, whether professional, personal or both. The Foundation’s mission is to aid, internationally, those individuals who have worked as professional artists over a significant period of time.

Pollock-Krasner grants have enabled artists to create new work, purchase needed materials and pay for studio rent, as well as their personal and medical expenses. Past recipients of Pollock-Krasner grants acknowledge their critical impact in allowing concentrated time for studio work, and in preparing for exhibitions and other professional opportunities such as accepting a residency.