Other Projects

Cheerleading for Baltimore  
  Since I moved away almost five years ago, Baltimore has tugged at my heart.  I can go months without thinking of the city, but when something brings it to mind, I find myself longing for this lost love.  As a short time adopted resident of Baltimore, I was proud to tell people I called Charm city home and to champion the place, disputing claims that Baltimore is merely a crime-ridden, dirty, second rate city. 

     I find myself wondering about and wanting the ability to articulate Baltimore’s appeal.  Certainly, there is a segment of Baltimore’s population who are wholly discontented with the place.  They see it as a poor substitute for New York, too gritty, too provincial, or too small to be considered cosmopolitan.  Baltimore has a lot of faults to be sure: segregation, a poor public school system and poor conditions for bike transportation, to name a few.  I am not advocating for complacency in these unfortunate qualities, but offering a reminder that we all want for others to see past our faults.  We revel in the chance to recognize beauty in that which is not “beautiful” by societal standards.  So, why not offer Baltimore that benefit for she has great beauty despite her faults.

    As a watercolor painter I find the images of Baltimore completely captivating.  In contrasting Charm City with it nearest counterpart Washington D.C., I often used the words gritty and industrial.  Those words unfairly flatten the depth of the city’s character.  The visibility and aesthetic pleasure of the Baltimore’s history, in the urban landscape, make for extraordinary compositions.  I have quite contentedly painted the Domino Sugar Factory and the Mr. Boh signs and wondered at the nostalgia I felt for these neon advertisements.  They are simultaneously iconic reminders of Baltimore’s historic and contemporary industry, beautiful, wholly associated with the place, and part of Baltimore’s identity in the present, which feels personal.

    Beyond the grand scenes I associate with Baltimore there are many hidden corners that speak of the city’s admirable qualities.  The houses on Buena Vista for several blocks north of 36th street are an example of the absolutely impossible to replicable essence of Baltimore.  The houses have the charm of quaint cottages in a small town on the East Coast.  I can imagine them nestled in trees just steps from a path down to the beach.  The lure of these places doesn’t come from Crate and Barrel teak lounge chairs on the generous front porches.  These houses still appear to be working hard for the working class.  I marvel at the nobility of these houses and the wonderful 2-story brick rowhouses of 37th west of Buena Vista.  They march along the street in service of people who have a Baltimore lineage of several generations and a long memory of the neighborhood.  The city’s vernacular housing with its somewhat squat proportions and formstone facades is somewhat humble, whimsy tempered by grit. 

 

    People describe Baltimore as a big city, with a small town feel.  When I moved to Baltimore, this sounded appealing, but I couldn’t conceptualize what this meant.  For me this was manifest in places like the downtown farmer’s market.  While some cities have a farmer’s market for in every neighborhood offering great variety in plein air produce shopping, I have rarely enjoyed a market as much as I did the downtown farmer’s market under the JFX viaduct.  The market draws people from geographically disparate parts of the city, increasing the likelihood that you will run into someone unexpected on a Sunday morning.  Like many markets, it has an extraordinary energy and offers opportunities to develop a more personal relationship with those who produce our food.   The market also seems quite uniquely “Baltimore.”  On Sunday mornings, what is not a traditionally beautiful place—a large swath of asphalt tucked under a highway is transformed.  The choice of this location is at once practical, cleaver, and in a way completely charming.  

    Baltimore is a city that offers unbelievably quaint enclaves in places  like Mt. Washington, cultural attractions combined with gay pride in Mt. Vernon, diversity in neighborhoods like Pigtown, colorful, dense housing stock in Charles Village, lush university campuses, an extraordinary collection of the works of Matisse, and many neighborhoods which offer the  opportunity to for transformation to healthy, community-orientated places, investment in the collective good.  In this, I see the unexpected beauty of a place that doesn’t always live up to the glamour of flashier cities, but doesn’t disappoint those who seek the hidden potential of the place.  

      Nelson Algren, said that loving Chicago, my present home, was "Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."  I would say of Baltimore that it is like falling in love unexpectedly, you may well find a more perfect lover.  But never have you been so charmed.

Do you know the charms of Baltimore?

Wedding Invitation

Mount Vernon, Baltimore

This is the second wedding invitation, in my new Wednesday series.  Each week I will feature a new invitation in my expanding collection, which can be viewed at my Etsy shop.   

Today I am featuring two versions of an invitation, which is in the design process for a dear friend who will wed this spring.  Her fiance proposed to her at the Washington Monument in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood.  They wanted an invitation, which would reflect that part of their story.  After developing a few initial concepts they liked this design, which features the Washington Monument, Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, and the Lafayette Monument.   

 

After executing the initial watercolor painting without sky, I realized that one could achieve very different results with the addition of washes for the sky.  The warm evening sky adding to the whimsy of the design,  the version without sky more minimal and modern.  

It was a delight to design and execute this invitation as I lived in Mount Vernon during my two years in Baltimore and I'm very fond of the neighborhood.  These images hold a certain nostalgia for me and I'm sure for me and I'm sure for many residents of Charm City.


Have you visited Mount Vernon?  Which invitation do you prefer?

Wedding Invitation

Cherry Blossoms

This is the second wedding invitation, to be shared in my new Wednesday series.  Each week I will feature a new invitation in my expanding collection, which can be viewed at my Etsy shop. 

I took this photograph of a cherry tree blossoming along Washington Place, in Baltimore, as I walked to work on a spring day in 2006.  There is always something magical about the budding and blossoming of spring trees, but I always found cherry blossoms to have a certain charm that makes than more special than the average tree specimen.  It was that enchantment that inspired me to design this wedding invitation featuring Cherry Blossoms. 

The delicate nature of the cherry blossom echoes the delicate fabrics of wedding garments, table linens, tiered cakes.  The hopefulness of new blossoms in spring seems poetically aligned with the celebration of a new union.     

Have you seen the cherry blossoms blooming in Washington D.C. or Japan? 

The Raven

This year the Ravenswod Artwalk is featuring The Raven Project. Artists can submit one piece of art that represents the Raven, which will be displayed during the ArtWalk.

As a former resident of Baltimore, I feel a certain loyalty to Edgar Allen Poe.  When asked about his origins, Poe was fond of saying that he was a Virginian gentleman, but it was in Baltimore that Poe sought refuge when he had feuded with his foster father. It was in Baltimore that Poe found his future wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm, and in Baltimore that he began  his career.  His remains remain in Baltimore’s Westminster Burying Ground at Fayette and Greene Streets.

I always associate the Raven with Poe and so shall submit this image of the poet to the Raven Project.

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Portrait at the American Visionary Arts Museum

This portrait is a commissioned piece for a couple recently married at the American Visionary Arts Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore. During my time living in Baltimore, I was quite taken with the AVAM, as a museum of folk art, it offers a delightful collection of work by untrained artists contained within a wonderfully playful architectural package. It was a delight to make the painting with the wonderfully interesting mosaic of the exterior wall of the AVAM as the background. As I painted the composition of tiles, glass, and broken plates, the symbolic nature of mosaics was swimming about in my head--the beautiful and mysterious way that our lives are composed of different experiences, the people that come in and out of our lives. I was also struck by the challenge and the pleasure of capturing a moment in two lives. I am entirely engaged by photographs. It is fascinating to, with the slowness of painting, attempt to illustrate a single moment.

19. Baltimore Street

For two years I lived in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. I feel incredible nostalgia for the neighborhood's beautiful square, elegant homes, pride week high heel race, and one of my very favorite restaurants, Iggies!

Really once I start talking about Mt. Vernon, it's hard for me to stop. It's rare that you find a neighborhood with so many of the city's cultural centers: the Walters Art Museum, the Peabody Conservatory, the main branch of the Baltimore public library system, the oldest Catholic Cathedral in the U.S., and Centerstage. As if that wasn't enough the neighborhood has an incredibly beautiful central square, the center piece of which is Baltimore's Washington Monument. This square hosts a number of great events like the yearly flower mart, the monument lighting at Christmas, and my favorite, the Baltimore Book Festival. In addition to all of that there is a great variety of bars and restaurants in the neighborhood including the Helmand a great Afghani restaurant, Brewer's Art, which offers amazing garlic rosemary fries, and as Baltimore's gay neighborhood a variety of gay bars and clubs including gay bingo at the Hippo.

There is much more I could say about Mt. Vernon, but one of my favorite things about my former home was just walking around. This painting is of a street scene in Mt. Vernon--beautiful architecture, the trees blooming, and the sun shining. I spent many a contented afternoon strolling the streets of my corner of Baltimore and I reveled in those memories as I made this painting.

10. Mr. Boh, Baltimore

This final image in my "sign paintings" series is my favorite. It captures warm light and the familiar image of the Mr. Boh sign, in Baltimore. For those who have never had the pleasure living in Baltimore, Mr. Boh is the mascot of National Bohemian beer. As the Natty Boh website proclaims, "from the land of pleasant living comes National Bohemian, a treasured Baltimore beer since 1885. The Mr. Boh sign still resides in the Brewer's Hill neighborhood of Baltimore. I made this painting on a recent Saturday afternoon and enjoyed experimenting with an evening sky.

7. Domino Sugar Factory, Baltimore

This image is very familiar to residents of Baltimore. The Domino Sugar sign is easily seen across the harbor and is pleasantly familiar. The factory is still operational and as a former Baltimore resident I recollect the vaguely sweet smell of the Locust Point neighborhood, where the factory is located. My friend Elizabeth and I frequently kayaked past the factory and the very large barges which transported sugar to and from the factory. In making this painting, I felt very nostalgic about my time in Baltimore: the people I knew there, the industrial history, the charms of "charm city." This painting inspired me to do a series of paintings of the iconographic signs of places which are familiar to me.  Postcards of this painting are available for $2, visit my Etsy Shop to purchase.