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19th Annual Critics' Residency Program: Just Looking

For Immediate Release: April 13, 2005

For more information contact:
Julie Ann Cavnor 410-962-8565 / jcavnor@mdartplace.org

Franklin Sirmans:
19th Annual Critic in Residence

with participating writers:
Jenny O'Grady and Jiyun Park

and participating artists:

Rebecca Blakley, Dianne Bugash, Marc Fanberg, Eric Garner, Christopher Gladora, Juliette Goodwin, Michele Kong, Sonya A. Lawyer, Lauren Simonutti and Jo Smail

“Baltimore occupies an interesting place in the geography and imagination of America. Just north of the District of Columbia and south of Philadelphia, it remains a bit of a crossroads in the historical boundaries between the American South and North. Yet, it is smaller than these cities and lacks the art infrastructure of either, with few commercial galleries. Though, like other small cities, Baltimore has one thing in no short supply—affordable housing and studio space—clearly essential ingredients for a burgeoning art scene. It is perhaps because of that fertile real estate market that we encountered artists originally from several other places who, at least for the moment, now (fondly) call Baltimore and its surrounding area, “home.”   
Franklin Sirmans, Maryland Art Place’s 19th Annual Critic in Residence

Baltimore, MD – During recent months, a group of writers and artists have focused on finishing dynamic new works that will be exhibited and written about in a soon-to-be-released catalogue, as part of MAP’s exhibition, Critics’ Picks: Just Looking. Since September 2004, Franklin Sirmans, a prominent New York art critic and the 19th Annual Critic in Residence at Maryland Art Place, has been working behind the scenes to mentor and further the careers of two Maryland-area writers and ten area artists. Last summer, Sirmans selected writers Jenny O’Grady and Jiyun Park to write critical essays on diverse new works byartists that he selected from a large field of applicants. These ten Maryland artists represent all stages of dynamic careers, from emerging artists (Rebecca Blakley, Marc Fanberg, Christopher Gladora, Juliette Goodwin and Sonya A. Lawyer,) to recently recognized names (Eric Garner, Michele Kong and Lauren Simonutti) to those with well established careers (Dianne Bugash and Jo Smail.) The exhibition provides an opportunity to see a selection of work by each artist, as well as to explore critical issues that remain essential to all artists.

Each year, the program culminates with an exhibition of selected artists, on view this year from April 19-May 21. An essential element of this program is the Public Forum, which includes Critics’ Residency participants, that will take place on April 30, starting at 2pm, followed by a reception until 6:00pm. This event is free and encourages the public to join program participants in a discussion about issues relevant to contemporary art. In addition, the exhibition was documented by the publication of an exhibition catalogue intended to make the exhibition more accessible to local and national audiences.

It is common knowledge that with arts budgets shrinking around the nation, there seem to be fewer opportunities for artists and writers. Maryland Art Place’s Critics’ Residency Program is in its nineteenth year, and once again proves that well-designed and strong initiatives can outlast the rigors of tough economic times while highlighting the strengths of the region’s art community. In Sirmans’ words,” …like other small cities, Baltimore has one thing in no short supply—affordable housing and studio space—clearly essential ingredients for a burgeoning art scene. It is perhaps because of that fertile real estate market that we encountered artists originally from several other places who, at least for the moment, now (fondly) call Baltimore and its surrounding area, “home”. What we did find in the work of these ten artists was a wide range of ideas and materials, marking their own diverse trajectories to Baltimore. From highly personal explorations to global social and political issues, the artists demonstrate their concerns in a way that is hypertextual and evident of the speed with which ideas are dispersed in the world. In short, there is no such thing as ‘Maryland Art.’”

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS:

19th Annual Critic in Residence, Franklin Sirmans is an independent curator, freelance writer, editor, and lecturer based in New York City. A former US Editor of Flash Art and Editor-in-Chief of Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several journals and newspapers on art and culture, including The New York Times, Newsweek International, Essence Magazine, Grand Street, Art in America, ArtNews and Time Out New York, where he was a regular contributor between 2004-2000. He worked as Publications Assistant at Dia Center for the Arts in New York, NY, for three years; in Italy with the magazine Flash Art for two years; taught at SVA for two years and most recently acted as Editor-in-Chief for Art AsiaPacific in New York (2004-2003). During 2005-2004, Sirmans has been the 19th Annual Critic in Residence at Maryland Art Place and also teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art, both in Baltimore, MD.

Sirmans is co-curator of the forthcoming exhibitions Basquiat, at the Brooklyn Museum in March, 2005, and Make It Now:  New Sculpture in New York, a survey of sculpture in New York at Sculpture Center in Manhattan in May, 2005. In addition, Sirmans has edited numerous catalogues on contemporary art including Transforming the Crown:  African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, (University of Chicago Press), Jean-Michel Basquiat (Tony Shafrazi Gallery), Freestyle and Black Belt at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and has contributed to Gary Simmons at the MCA, Chicago, and most recently Double Consciousness:  Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX), in addition to several monographs on artists including Edgar Arceneaux, Monika Bravo, Iona Brown, Mia Enell, Manuel Esnoz, Charles Gaines, Kojo Griffin, Dario Robleto and Kehinde Wiley.

Co-curator of One Planet Under A Groove:  Contemporary Art and Hip Hop, which originated at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and was presented in Atlanta, GA, Minneapolis, MN, and Munich, Germany (2003-2001), Sirmans was also co-curator of the 2004 exhibition Ralph Bunche:  Diplomat for Peace and Justice at the Queens Museum of Art in Queens, NY. He has also curated several other exhibitions including Americas Remixed in Milan, Italy; Mass Appeal in Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Sackville, Canada; A Moments Notice in Houston; and New Wave, The Color of Sound, Summer Jam, Retroactive I and Rumors of War in New York. In the fall of 2004, Sirmans curated Color Theory in Turin (Vitamin Arte) and was co-curator of Notorious Impropriety (Samson Projects) in Boston, MA.

Sirmans has lectured at numerous institutions and universities including: Sony Music Entertainment; the Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Walker Art Center; Harvard University; Yale; Columbia and New York Universities; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; California Institute of the Arts; Cal State, Los Angeles; the University of Southern California; Tyler School of the Arts; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; Penn State University; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; Ringling School of the Arts, Sarasota, FL; Mt. Allison University, Sackville, Canada; The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Core/Glassell School, Houston; Accademia di Brera, Milan, Italy; the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; the Busan Biennial and SBS Hall in Seoul, Korea.

He has been profiled in The Fader Magazine, New York Arts, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Corriere della Sera, Italy. He has also contributed commentary on television and radio for CNN, BET, NY1, NPR, the CBC in Canada, and Radio Popolare in Italy.

Born in New York City (Queens) in 1969, Sirmans was raised in Harlem, Albany, and New Rochelle, all in NY. Sirmans attended Manhattan Country School, Albany Academy, and New Rochelle High School before receiving a BA in Art History and English in 1991 from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Rebecca Blakely grew up in Southern California and attended the University of California in Los Angeles, CA, where she received a BA in Art and English Literature. Her background in literary studies informed the language and themes of her work, as well as provided a way to discuss the narrative nature of her paintings. After graduating in 2003 from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, Blakely moved to Baltimore. Since then, she has been painting and waiting tables, while trying to figure out how to increase the time she spends painting. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD (2004) and the UCLA Wight Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2003). Her work continually evolves, though what incessantly interests Blakely is the human figure, including how we as people negotiate the world within the body’s limits, how the human figure relates to its environment, and how a viewer relates to the evocation of the figure in paint.

Dianne Bugash is a native Washingtonian born into a family of artists, and she creates paintings that focus on symbolism, color, and storytelling. Her artistic endeavors have led to experimentation in drawing, papermaking, and photo collage. In 1969, she graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and subsequently received a scholarship at The American University, also in Washington, DC. An active member of many art communities, Bugash was a Docent for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden for five years, and also worked in outreach programs in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public School system. In both instances, she served as an arts advocate and lecturer to various community and outreach groups. In 1998, Bugash was awarded a residency at Rockville Arts Place in Gaithersburg, MD, and presently is on the faculty of the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, the Maryland College of Art and Design in Baltimore, MD, and the RAP and Black Rock Center for the Arts in Germantown, MD. She has exhibited widely throughout Maryland and Washington, DC, as well as nationally, and is represented by the Light Street Gallery in Baltimore, MD. Her work appears in both private and corporate collections.

Marc Fanberg was raised in Vernon, NJ, and at eighteen, headed to Baltimore, MD, with the intention to ‘swap the simple country life’ for work in photography. Fanberg enjoys biographies and was particularly inspired by one about Andy Warhol, in which someone said, "the only way to create something new is to research what has been done before, gain what the original artist learned, and don't repeat it." Fanberg subsequently researched many artists, and became intrigued by sections of Bosch's Garden Of Earthly Delights. He wondered what would happen if Bosch’s painting were simplified and recomposed. Coincidentally, while reading about Warhol and Caravaggio, Fanberg collaged the first black and white renderings lifted from Bosch, Caravaggio and Warhol, juxtaposing images of renowned pop icons in his own version of the original Caravaggio. This process, research, deconstruction, and reconstruction continued throughout Fanberg’s assembly of the ten-part series Culture Icons. Fanberg's work has been published in Link:  a Critical Journal of the Arts and the Now Book of Photography. He contributes photography to Radar, the Baltimore arts and culture publication, and currently is featured Think Tank Magazine artist for The Royal Magazine: The New Pop Culture. In 2003, Fanberg co-founded Splotch, a quarterly online art and culture publication, and also received a BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in that same year.

Eric Garner was born in Van Nuys, CA, in 1967, and grew up in Southern California and McLean, VA. In 1990, he received a MS in Civil Engineering from Stanford University in Stanford, CA, where he received a BAS in Studio Art and Civil Engineering in 1989. Garner served active duty in the United States Air Force until 1993, and then, until 2001 managed commercial building projects in Seattle, WA, San Jose, CA, and Miami, FL. He then became a full-time working artist, and most recently received a MFA in 2004 from the University of Maryland, in College Park, MD. His work using recycled wood began in 2003. Garner has exhibited his work at Don O’Melveny Gallery in West Hollywood, CA, the Kingston Gallery in Boston, MA, Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in New York, NY, and many other venues. He currently lives in Bethesda, MD, with his wife Karin and their two boys.

Christopher Gladora was born in 1981 in Jacksonville, FL and raised in one of its suburban communities. He moved to Baltimore, MD in 2000 to study art at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he received his BFA in 2004. Complimenting his studies in art, he studied urban policy between 2004-2001 at the Johns Hopkins University, also in Baltimore, MD. After graduation, Christopher spent time in the Netherlands studying Dutch urban design and post-World War II architecture in the cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. His exhibitions have included several venues in Baltimore, including a 2005 solo exhibition Ex Libris at School 33; inclusion in the Gallery 4 Independent Pavilion as part of Artscape 2004; and in the 2nd Annual Art on the Trail Exhibition, in the Gwynns Falls region. Gladora currently lives and works in Baltimore.

Michele Kong is an emerging artist whose installations engage viewers to experience the possibility of the moment, freeing one’s imagination to observe, react, and evaluate space with a fresh and emotionally startling response. In 2002, Kong completed a MFA in Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, in addition to BA and BFA degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO in 1998. Kong relocated from Washington, DC, in 2004, during a transition from working as an arts administrator to teaching as an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park and the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. In 2003, Kong taught part time at the Community College of Baltimore County in Essex, MD. She has exhibited her work in many venues, including:  the Transformer Gallery in Washington, DC; the CCBC Art Gallery in Catonsville, MD; The Rhode Island School of Art and Design Museum and the Woods-Gerry Gallery, both in Providence, RI; Emmanuel Gallery in Denver, CO; the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile; and the SASI Gallery in Florence, Italy. Kong recently completed residencies at the Bemis Center for the Arts in Omaha, NE, and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.

Juliette Goodwin was born in Washington, DC, in 1967. She grew up in Kensington, MD, and in high school attended the MCPS Visual Art Center. Goodwin received her BFA in Painting/Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1989. An artist's assistant in New York during her time at college, and a floral designer in Chicago, New York, DC, and Baltimore over ten years, her painting and palette bear witness to these influences. Invisible worlds of dust mites, exposed teeth and roots, dead bugs and flowers, and the consciousness of little things are all hallmarks of her work.

Sonya Alyse Lawyer was born in Toledo, OH, and grew up in Columbia, MD. She received a MFA in 2003 from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL and a BS in 1996 from Howard University in Washington, DC. Lawyer has exhibited frequently nationwide, including at The Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC, the Chelsea Waterside Park in New York, NY, the Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA, as well as in Cortona, Italy. During the summer of 2004, she participated in the Sydney Kahn Summer Institute at The Kitchen, and in 2002 attended The Photography Institute’s National Graduate Seminar, a summer program hosted by Columbia University, both located in New York, NY.  Lawyer currently represents the Society for Photographic Education as a board member of the Mid-Atlantic region and chaired their 2004 SPE Regional Conference. She teaches at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD, and is represented by the Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC, which presented her solo exhibition in March, 2005. Lawyer’s work is about the color of life.

Lauren E. Simonutti graduated from art school in Philadelphia in 1990 with a BFA in Photography. She then moved to New York City where her fine arts degree enabled her to obtain numerous positions in the food service, cocktail and bartending industries throughout the early nineties. The mid to late nineties introduced Simonutti intimately to the world of medicine including intensive care, orthopedics, physical therapy, wheelchairs (primarily single arm propelled), adjustable dial leg braces, bone growth stimulation (a phrase she finds amusing), titanium steel insertion rods and repeated reconstructive surgery, as the result of her introduction through and rapid expulsion from the windshield of the car that ran her over as she was walking home on the Lower East Side. The years which followed were comprised of a form of buoyant self imposed exile that absconded with memory, dignity, propriety and a not insignificant amount of opportunity. Recently returned from the dead she is in the process of piecing things together. Throughout it all, events, injuries, individuals, dreams, nightmares, life, still life and visions of afterlife have been faithfully recorded, processed, printed and when necessary toned, painted or otherwise altered.

A thousand words each, in theory, but no clear pattern has emerged. Currently engaged in a rather vicious battle with her fractured mind and her own despised beloved addiction that strives to convince her to sacrifice all, Lauren finds herself relatively intact and tenuously sober; having purchased and trying to hold onto a delicate wreck of a house in Baltimore which has become her primary model and largest work in progress thus far.

Jo Smail was born in Durban, South Africa, and educated at the University of Natal in Durban, SA, and the Johannesburg College of Art, SA. In 1985, Smail left South Africa for Baltimore, accompanied by her scientist husband, before any hint of the democratic changes to come. In 1996, the Clipper Mill fire destroyed all of Smail’s work. This had a profound effect on her paintings. Unexpectedly, in 2000, Smail had a stroke. Again, her work changed. Smail’s work has been exhibited widely, including:  the Heriard-Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA (2004); Goya Girl Contemporary Art, Baltimore, MD (2004, 2002); Trawick Prize Finalists, Creative Partners Gallery, Bethesda, MD (2004); Rockville Art Place, Rockville, MD (2004); the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE (1998); 55 Mercer St., New York, NY (1990); Ombondi Gallery, New York, NY (1990, 1989); the National Gallery of Art, Cape Town, SA (1984); and the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, SA (1984, 1981). Smail is represented in many private collections, and public collections include the National Gallery of South Africa, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Chase Manhattan Bank, and the Mobil Corporation. Smail has received numerous awards, including:  three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council (2004, 1995, 1991); a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship (2003); and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1996). Smail has taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art since 1988 and is currently represented by Goya Girl Contemporary Art Gallery in Baltimore, MD.

PARTICIPATING WRITERS

Jenny O’Grady grew up in a farmhouse on the banks of the Choptank River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and moved to attend college in Baltimore, where she has lived ever since. After receiving her BA in English from Goucher College, O’Grady worked for community newspapers for four years, winning recognition from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and the MDDC Press Association in the following categories:  feature, spot news, medical feature and sports feature. Over the years, O’Grady’s writing also has appeared in The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Magazine, Mid-Atlantic Country Magazine, the Maryland Gazette, and the Baltimore Citypaper. By day, O’Grady works at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as the Alumni and Development Communications Coordinator, having previously worked as a writer and graphic designer for Baltimore International College. At night, O’Grady is a MFA candidate in Creative Writing and Publication Design at the University of Baltimore, MD. In her spare time, she enjoys making tiny books, planning her graphic novel, and spending time with her husband T.J.

Jiyun Park was born in Seoul, South Korea. She studied History of Art at the University of Michigan and received her Bachelors in Science from The Cooper Union, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Currently living in Baltimore, MD, her works in progress include a film/book on the labyrinth, outlined at a Bridges Conference in Granada, Spain, the first chapter of which was presented at a symposium on aesthetics in Dresden, Germany. She worked for architect Moshe Safdie in Boston and at ARAKAWA and Madeline Gins studio in New York. Park has taught design studio and has been a local film critic. For more than eleven years, she has been an art and architecture critic. Searching between building and theory, her work investigates architects and artists who are re-forming the question of how to generate form.

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Maryland Art Place (MAP) is a non-profit center for contemporary art established in 1981 to: develop and maintain a dynamic environment for regional artists to exhibit their work, nurture and promote new ideas and new forms, and facilitate rewarding exchanges between artists and the public through educational leadership.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm. There is never an admission charge. For more details, please contact MAP’s Executive Director,Julie Ann Cavnor at 410.962.8565 or jcavnor@mdartplace.org.