Baltimore’s arts council, event center and film office. A nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.
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School 33 Art Center
2022 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Semifinalist Exhibit
2022 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Semifinalist Exhibit
2022 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Semifinalist Exhibit
2022 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Semifinalist Exhibit
The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) announces that School 33 Art Center remains temporarily closed to the public,
About Us
For 40 years, School 33 Art Center has been the bridge between contemporary artists and the viewing public. Through our exhibitions, studios for artists, classes for adults and children and special events and workshops, we work to insure a vibrant future for contemporary art and artists in Baltimore. Our goal is to remain an engaging and relevant community art center, by showcasing and sustaining emerging and established artists, and training budding artists from Baltimore and beyond, well into the future.
School 33 Art Center was established in 1979 as a neighborhood art center for contemporary art in the South Baltimore area of Baltimore City. Formally known as P.S. 33, the architecturally engaging brick and brownstone building built in 1890, was utilized as an elementary school until 1975 when a new facility was built for neighborhood children a few blocks away. The South Baltimore Community Committee requested that Mayor Donald Schaefer revitalize the vacant and vandalized building. Based on the success of Long Island City’s P.S. 1 in New York and the strong national presence of alternative space programs in the late seventies, Mayor Schaefer proposed a similar program for Baltimore, thus creating School 33 Art Center.
As this building represented a significant component of Baltimore’s architectural heritage, its renovation exemplified the City’s belief in the revitalization of unused urban resources. The renovations were made possible with federal funds from the United States Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration and through the City’s Public Works Improvement Program.
After extensive two-year restoration to allow for the creation of adequate gallery, studio and classroom space, School 33 opened its doors in July 1979, becoming Baltimore’s original alternative space for contemporary art. Its program offerings included one gallery exhibition space, studio facilities for professional artists, and classrooms for ceramics and printmaking workshops.
In addition its studio program and services for artists, School 33 has expanded its exhibition, educational and special events programming. Highlights over the past 21 years include eighteen annual exhibitions in three gallery spaces; an extensive outreach program to South Baltimore neighborhood city schools; and the creation of the annual Open Studio Tour. These augmented programs were developed as a direct response to needs expressed by the public and art community.
Staff
| Jackie Downs Director of the Arts Council Contact Jackie | |
Contact Us
School 33 Art Center
1427 Light Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230
Phone: 443-263-4350
Fax: 410-837-6947
DIRECTIONS
School 33 Art Center is located at 1427 Light Street in South Baltimore, 8 blocks south of the Inner Harbor. >From Baltimore's Inner Harbor, take Light Street south past the harbor and into Federal Hill (bear to the right at the intersection of Key Highway). School 33 is located on the left-hand side, four blocks south of the Cross Street Market. The center is serviced by CityLink Silver Line, for map, click HERE and the Charm City Circulator.
PARKING
Street parking is available on Light Street and on nearby side streets. Please be aware of street signage when you park to avoid tickets.
Exhibit Archive
Exhibits Archive
MARYLAND SCHOLASTIC EXHIBITION 2020
Maryland Scholastic Exhibition 2020 Opening Reception: March 6th, 4-8pm Please join School 33 Art Center in celebrating the award recipients for the 2020 Maryland State Scholastic Art competition. Over 700 young artists received recognition this year for their artwork. This show includes artists working in a variety of disciplines, including fashion, video, animation and painting. Award recipients received a Gold Key, Silver Key, or Honorable Mention for their individual works, or for their whole portfolio. The top five submissions in the region for Visual Art were named American Visions nominees.
SCHOOL 33 ART CENTER'S 40TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION
Using the entire building’s gallery spaces, the anniversary exhibition features more than 40 regional visual artists who have shown in the galleries over the years. School 33 Art Center’s 40th Anniversary Exhibition includes works from a wide variety of media and visual disciplines.
ABOUT THE ARTIST(S)
Curated by Melissa Webb and Megan Koeppel, School 33 Art Center’s 40th Anniversary Exhibition artists are: Sobia Ahmad / Kyle Bauer / Dennis Beach / Tommy Bobo / John Bohl / James Bouche’ / David Brown / Carolyn Case / Cindy Cheng / Wesley Clark / Richard Cleaver / Emily Culver / Paul Daniel / Linda DePalma / Michelle Dickson / Elliot Doughtie / Peter Dubeau / Dan Dudrow / Liz Ensz / Neil Feather / Erin Fostel / Roxanna Alger Geffen / C Harvey / Lillian Bayley Hoover / Ryan Hoover / Kei Ito and Andrew Paul Keiper / Megan Lewis / Scott Pennington / Giulia Piera Livi / Beverly Ress / Jann Rosen-Queralt / Rachel Schmidt / Ernest Shaw / Jo Smail / Alessandra Torres / Colette Veasey-Cullors / Howie Lee Weiss / James Williams II / Marcia Wolfson-Ray / Jessie Unterhalter and Katie Truhn.
SCHOOL 33 ART CENTER'S 2019 STUDIO RESIDENT BIENNIAL
School 33 Art Center's 2019 Studio Resident Biennial
School 33 Art Center’s bi-annual exhibition highlights the art of artist-in-residence Mary Baum, Lynn Cazabon, Cheeny Celebrado-Royer, Rachel Guardiola, Taha Heydari, Luke Ikard, Tiffany Jones, Lauren R. Lyde, Sylvie Van Helden and Stephanie Williams. Since 1979, the Studio Artist Program has provided exceptional workspace to more than 150 artists working diverse areas of contemporary visual art.
In 2008, School 33 established the Studio Mentor Program, which facilitates in-studio critiques and professional development for resident artists. Prominent practicing artists and arts professionals from the Mid-Atlantic region provide support and constructive feedback, helping artists to fulfill their creative goals. Every two years, a chosen mentor also serves as curator for the “Studio Resident Biennial.”
The 2019 curator and mentor George Ciscle has mounted groundbreaking exhibitions, created community arts programs, and taught courses in fine arts and humanities for close to 50 years. He was the founder and director of The Contemporary, and from 1997 to 2017 served as curator-in-residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). There, Ciscle founded and directed the Exhibition Development Seminar, Curatorial Studies Concentration, and MFA in Curatorial Practice.
CRISIS OF CONNECTION
Crisis of Connection
Artists Markele Cullins, Alexander D’Agostino, Darius Johnson, Ian Lewandowski, Alexis Reehill, Matthew Savitsky, Xavier Schipani and Kurt Simonson explore the visibility and acceptance of queer, non-binary and trans men in connection with the traditional notions of male identity. The paradigm reinforces a crisis of interpersonal emotional connection among male-identifying people, hampering society as a whole. Curated by Alexander Jarman, the exhibition expands the geographies of gender by creating and highlighting images of male-identifying people that allows viewers to see men as tender, vulnerable and nuanced.
Development Seminar, Curatorial Studies Concentration, and MFA in Curatorial Practice.
ONGUE PUDDLES
Tongue Puddles
With “Tongue Puddles,” Danni O'Brien populates the Project Space with an ensemble of hard and soft objects suggestive of jewelry, flora, playground equipment, and road signs to form a frolicsome and unabashedly feminine installation. Her studio practice revolves around latch hook rug making, a kitschy and nostalgic craft technique with which she builds fuzzy, fibrous “paintings” of abstracted motifs from her adolescent girlhood. O’Brien employs this process to grapple with notions of femininity, domesticity and craft, also exploring the material’s redolent and tactile qualities. She constructs and incorporates twisting, bulbous forms from found objects, wood and cardboard coated in paper pulp, arranging the resulting series of cheeky, off-kilter objects into an immersive landscape that encourages touch and play.
MODERN LANGUAGE
Modern Language
Modern Language is a solo exhibition of works by Amy Helminiak, a native Baltimore artist, featuringemoji-inspired collages that explore communication in the age of texting and social media.Printed on metal, and incorporating symbols collected via google images - such as BernieSanders heads, haircuts and pink elephants - the featured works focus on the artist’s experiencesand surroundings. Political observations, humor, personal histories are transmitted collectively,while at the same time embodying a sense of ambiguity that exists within the conversationsof todays culture.Amy Helminiak received an MA in Photography and Design from Elisava School of Design,Barcelona and an BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work has been included innational and international exhibitions including The TIM Future Center of Venice, Italy; The PrintCenter of Philadelphia, PA; Grand Rapids Museum of Art, MI; Cosmos Gallery, Arles, France;Can Framis, Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona, Spain.
THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
By artists Kelley Bell, Albert Birney, Sara Dittrich, Noa Heyne, Marnie Ellen Hertzler & Beth Hoeckel, Chelsea M. Rowe, Aidan Spann, Justin Stafford, Jennie Thwing
SOFT OBSTACLE
soft obstacle
Ben Piwowar’s studio practice combines drawing, painting, and sculptural strategies, deployingan abstract visual vocabulary to evoke states of vulnerability and flux. With soft obstacle, hepopulates the Project Space with works on paper and a series of cast abstract forms. Thedialogue between objects and drawings sets the stage for a new, improvised installation that willundergo subtle mutations over the course of the exhibition.To develop soft obstacle, the artist draws on a trove of salvaged material - studio ephemera,cast-offs from construction sites, and things found while walking around the city. He repurposesthese fragments through paint application, light carpentry, and strategic placement - taking careto preserve, and often underscore, their quirks and subtle irregularities. Piwowar explores theways that modest interventions can activate and realign a viewer’s experience of a space.Here, the gallery becomes a provisional ecosystem where displaced organisms learn to standalone, then together, through a made-up logic.
YOUR SILENCE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.
Curated by Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, “Your silence will not protect you.” presents five black womyn artists from across the country: Akea Brionne Brown, Alex Callender, Vickie Pierre, LaNia Sproles and Gracie Xavier in a group show about black womyn’s experiences in America—past, present and future. The title references Audre Lorde’s seminal essay on activism, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.”
Image caption: Alex Callender, “Beyond the Borders of New Space and Lost Time”
NATURE AS A METAPHOR FOR ECONOMIC, EMOTIONAL AND EXISTENTIAL HORROR
Nature As A Metaphor For Economic, Emotional And Existential Horror
“Nature As A Metaphor For Economic, Emotional And Existential Horror” by Stephanie Barber utilizes words as sculptural elements to contemplate the morphological state of language and nature. This third iteration of the project includes still photographs, hand lettered texts, vending machine sentences, viewfinder essays and a single channel video.
Barber has created a diverse body of work in a variety of media. The poignancy of life, considered through small imagined biographies, playful and rigorous poetic essays, song-poems, screenplays or haiku-esque distillations of everyday moments is her most traveled terrain. Barber’s films have received solo exhibitions at MoMA, New York City; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco; National Film Academy, Prague; Lowenbraukunst, Zurich; Anthology Film Archives, New York City, among others. Her books These Here Separated… and Night Moves were published by Publishing Genius Press, and her collection of short stories All The People was published by Ink Press Productions
Image Caption: Images of works from “Nature As A Metaphor For Economic, Emotional And Existential Horror
LABOR OF SUGGESTION
Image caption: Emily Culver, “Labor of Suggestion” (detail)
ALLLLLL NATURAL
TRAVELING HOME
Image captions: (Left) Rachel Lundak, “We Picked It Out Together”
(Right) Jon Lundak, “On the Tarmac, Again”
WANDERING PROPERTIES
THE THING IS CLOSE
“The Thing is Close” exhibits the pairing of prolific Baltimore-based artists Cindy Cheng and Jackie Milad. Cheng creates complex sculptural constructions and installations that draw reference from the carefully choreographed rooms of her parents’ house in Hong Kong. Her work invokes a highly formal language to ponder the importance of objects and their ‘beneficial’ placements in the Chinese home. Gesturing toward physical spaces she has inhabited, as well as objects and things she has lived around and through, these works serve as incubators that reflect on the physical and abstract self, as well as Cheng’s own personal history and memory. Jackie Milad’s works on paper present the complexities of identity-making for people of mixed-race and ethnic backgrounds. Her work constructs a new visual language—a mash-up of actual and invented symbols associated with her Egyptian and Honduran immigrant background and family history. Combining drawing processes collaged with the cut pieces of older finished works, Milad tears away at preciousness of history to reveal another story—one that is not fixed, and yet uniquely her own.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
A solo exhibition of works by Bill Schmidt
Baltimore-based artist Bill Schmidt’s paintings are the result of his willingness to embrace and encourage the accidental—the surprising moments that occur when one strives to get paint to behave. According to Schmidt, painting can be a battle that pits the will of the painter against the will of the paint. Employing a particularly recalcitrant and unpredictable medium, traditional, water-soluble gouache, his process is one of active damage control, embracing the serendipity of favorable but unanticipated results.
REVEALUXION
“Revealuxion,” a multi-media installation by Kieun Kim, utilizes mechanisms and forms inspired by butterfly chrysalides and stringed marionette hands. With this work, Kim envisions herself through the reflection of a chrysalis—a metaphor which embodies the suffering and vulnerability, as well as the patience and self-determination required for periods of intense personal growth. For the artist, the process of making and presenting “Revealuxion” to viewers is an exercise in unapologetically embracing and revealing the genuine self, forgoing the inclination to put forth inauthentic versions of ourselves to the people we encounter. The patience inherent with this work is reflected in the details, which feature kaleidoscopic projections, laser-cut acrylic, articulated wooden hands, and hundreds of yards of carefully stretched, illuminated cotton string. Kim received a Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology at Parsons School of Design in 2015, and currently resides in Lutherville, Maryland.
OMNIBUS FILING 2.0: EMPATHY MIRROR
AARON MCINTOSH: INVASIVE QUEER KUDZU: BALTIMORE
Aaron McIntosh: Invasive Queer Kudzu: Baltimore Aaron McIntosh
Invasive Queer Kudzu: Baltimore
Main Gallery
On view from May 11 - June 23, 2018
Free opening reception on Friday, May 18, 6-9pm.
At the intersection of quilt-making, storytelling, archiving, and social practice, the Invasive Queer Kudzu project generates leafy, quilted fabric vines adorned with stories that celebrate and make visible Southern queer culture from the past to the present day. Working with LGBTQ+ contributors and archives such as the Gay and Lesbian Center of Baltimore (GLCCB), the project uses kudzu—a fast-growing, climbing, coiling, and trailing perennial—as a slippery metaphor. It invades dominant Southern narratives, reclaiming the ‘monstrous’ vine as a symbol for Southern queer tenacity in the face of homophobic institutions that otherwise obscure our rich histories.
This participatory exhibition features several monuments of the South, both historic and imagined, in the process of being invaded and reclaimed by Invasive Queer Kudzu stories. The gay nightclub serves as retrospective site of revelry, camaraderie, and tragedy in the works Invasive: Pulse Memorial and Invasive: Club Hippo. In the latter work, a scale replica of Baltimore’s erstwhile Club Hippo celebrates one of the country’s oldest continuously-operating gay dance clubs, which is now a CVS in Mount Vernon—a predominantly gay neighborhood which in recent years has faced the closure of many queer gathering spaces.
A series of Saturday Queer Quilting Bees open to the LGBTQ+ community and allies will encourage participants to contribute to the creation of story leaves to be added to the growing installation during the run of the exhibition.
TAHA HEYDARI: DUAL-USE: BALTIMORE TO SAMARRA
Taha Heydari: Dual-Use: Baltimore to Samarra Taha Heydari
Dual-Use: Baltimore to Samarra
Members Gallery
On view May 11 - June 23, 2018
Free opening reception on Friday, May 18, 6-9pm.
Between 1984 and 1988, 36 shipments of Thiodiglycol (TDG)—a total of 528 tons— left Alcolac International, an industrial chemical plant in Baltimore, en route to the port of Antwerp. The consignment was then transshipped to the port of Aqaba in Jordan and trucked across the desert to Baghdad, where it was transferred to the Muthanna State Establishment—Iraq’s chemical warfare production complex near Samarra.
While Thiodiglycol is utilized as a solvent in a variety of applications ranging from textile dye to the ink in ballpoint pens, it is also used in the production of the chemical weapon sulfur mustard, commonly known as mustard gas. Exposure to mustard agents causes permanent alkylation of DNA strands, preventing cellular division ultimately leading to programmed cell death.
At 11am on March 16th, 1988, an estimate of twenty aircraft attacked Halabja, a Kurdish city across the Iran-Iraq border. The chemicals dropped by the planes included mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX. The estimated number of civilians killed during the five- hour attack ranges from 3,200-5,000, with an additional 7,000-10,000 injured—up to 75% of the victims were women and children.
Taha Heydari is an Iranian artist born in Tehran in 1986. Dual-Use: Baltimore to Samarra is his first solo exhibition in Baltimore, Maryland.
ADAM HOLOFCENER: PRACTICE/PERFORMANCE
Adam Holofcener: Practice/Performance Adam Holofcener
Practice/Performance
Project Space
On view May 11 - June 23, 2018
Free opening reception on Friday, May 18, 6-9pm.
Adam Holofcener’s installation, Practice/Performance, uses a range of different media to engage participants in what it may mean for an individual to tether oneself legally, metaphysically, or otherwise to another human being in a caregiving posture. Utilizing previously internet-broadcast home video recordings, handcrafted scores featuring graphic notation, an interactive soundscape, and an accompanying tape cassette album release, Practice/Performance manifests a space soaked in amniotic fluid and inquiry. What truths, from the banal to revelatory, do we seek to communicate with those we look after? By what means do we tell them? How do we cope with the exercise? Don’t worry; this is the most natural stuff in the world.
THE DOMESTIC
The Domestic
A solo exhibition of works by Zoë Charlton.
Black domesticity takes on layered meanings in The Domestic, Zoë Charlton’s first solo exhibition in Baltimore. Charlton presents a series of works on paper inspired by reoccurring imagery in her drawings: suburban houses, African masks, and southern landscapes. Domesticity, or a deep familiarity with and attachment to where one lives, holds different social value depending on the body’s relationship with a place and how one belongs in it. From the privacy of a household to the publicness of national history, the domestic is interior, gendered, comforting, invisible, controlled, and integral to keeping the status quo.
Zoë Charlton creates drawings that explore the ironies of contemporary social and cultural stereotypes. She received her MFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been included in national and international exhibitions including the Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Studio Museum of Harlem NYC, NY; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX; the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland and Haas & Fischer Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland. She is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner grant and Rubys grant. Charlton resides in Baltimore, MD, and is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at American University in Washington, DC.
Image credit: Zoe Charlton- Homebodies Serie
BIG SEXY
BIG SEXY
An exhibition of paintings by Lydia Pettit
BIG SEXY, an exhibition of paintings by Lydia Pettit, is an exploration of what it means to live after experiencing abuse, and how to come to terms with and respect the body you’re given. After years of unhealthy and traumatic relationships resulting from warped self-image, the artist uses painting to construct worlds that describe the emotional shifts and waves that one goes through in recovery. Pettit’s compositions shift between confrontational and minimized figures, each representing the duality of the strength survivors of abuse are "supposed" to feel, and the fear and doubt they carry with them. Color mirrors emotion, bold brushstrokes emphasize thick flesh, and depictions of tender moments in the bathtub are followed by those representing the melodrama of depression and panic. In BIG SEXY, Pettit seeks to reclaim authority over her image - she’s sharing her own fat, white, unconventional body, and her life inside of it.
Lydia Pettit is an artist and curator from Towson, Maryland. After graduating in 2014 from the Maryland Institute College of Art, she opened Platform Arts Center, a studio building, and Platform Gallery, a contemporary art gallery that focused on showing local and regional artists. She ran the gallery with her partner until 2017, and is currently focusing on her painting practice. Pettit is a two time recipient of the Elizabeth Greensheilds grant for representational art. She currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
Image credit: Lydia Pettit, Big Sexy
TEST PATTERN
Test Pattern
A group exhibition featuring works by:
Tom Boram, April Camlin, Roxana Alger Geffen, Luke Ikard, LoVid and Rives Wiley.
Curated by Melissa Webb
Test Pattern demonstrates a collective longing for reconnection with the simplicity of the analog era, while examining the psychology of our multi-generational society post Digital Revolution. Alternating between the material and the virtual, these artists layer analog and digital technologies through the use of video and sound, textile, painting, sculpture, and live performance. Throughout their processes of making they convert voltage into data, synthesized and percussive sound into imagery, and computerized experiences into physical objects. The resulting works explore social conventions and family life in the Information Age, the handmade vs the digitally rendered, the preservation and degradation of information, and ultimately, the relationship between the simulated and the tangible.
Image credit: Tom Boram - A New Type of Sex Nobody Has Ever Tried Before (still from video)
BODIES IN SOUNDED SPACE
Bodies in Sounded Space
An exhibition of sculpture and musical performance by Fionn Duffy and Katie Shlon.
Bodies in Sounded Space explores the architectural and social boundaries that differentiate sound from music. Fionn Duffy and Katie Shlon investigate the role our bodies play in creating a score for new sound works and how what we see influences what we hear. The artists are interested in how humans alter the sonic fabric of our surroundings and how space, as a body, responds to our actions.
Transforming architectural space into the body of an instrument, the artists create sculptural interventions as structures for sound. These act as listening devices and instruments, creating new sounds or triggering collected audio recordings. The artists test the ways in which introducing a set of tools or pathways into a space transforms an audience’s experience. Movement through the space activates the instrument: bodies experiencing localized ‘music’ dependent on positions relative to permanent and interventional structures.
Image credit: Katie Shlon and Fionn Duffy- Floor Harp (detail)
This project is supported by a Rubys Artist Project Grant for Performing Arts. The Rubys Artist Project Grants were conceived and initiated with start-up funding from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and are a program of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
(UN)FAMILIAR TERRITORY
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(un)familiar territory
An installation by Bobby Coleman
(un)familiar territory by Baltimore artist Bobby Coleman is an immersive art installation that echoes the urban environment through an abstract lens. Through large-scale wood-panel paintings created with “oops” paint and sculptural components, Coleman interprets the visual noise and chaotic nature that confront us on an everyday basis. Common urban elements are translated into familiar yet foreign lines, forms, and colors, and incorporated into deeply layered compositions that force the viewer to consider time and space within the work. What once represented a street sign may be adapted and built upon until it is only a faint memory -- clouded and recontextualized over time. Coleman explores the boundaries of traditional painting, allowing the works to interact by reaching from one to the next, creating an abstract urban landscape. To step inside Coleman’s (un)familiar territory is to enter an environment none of us know, yet all vaguely recognize.
Image credit: Bobby Coleman - (un)familiar territory (detail)
SLOW FORM
Slow Form School 33 Art Center’s 2017 Juried Exhibition #2.
A group exhibition featuring Mary Baum, Mollye Bendell, Kei Ito, Elizabeth Mead, Lake Newton, Nick Primo, Margaret Rorison, Matthew Sepielli, and Doohyun Yoon. Curated by Natalie Campbell.
This is an exhibition of photographs, sculpture, painting, film, and video works that embody a sense of transition between two seemingly contradictory states. As we attend to these objects, matter dissolves. Focus shifts. Everyday experience is flattened, pressed, reconfigured. Simple reflections take on a kind of substance and weight. Sound is traced in ripples of sand. While individually distinct in their approach, the works of Slow Form share an ability to communicate a sense of the physical world in a state of flux. As such, they act as portals between lived experience and other forms of sense and understanding.
Image credit: Mary Baum – Point of Entry II
DECOMPOSITIONS
Decompositions A Solo Exhibition of works by Chris Zickefoose.
Decompositions explores structure, renovation, and the physical traces of time. Referencing the sensitivities of minimalism and Wabi-Sabi, Zickefoose utilizes negative space to contemplate the inherent virtues and in common construction materials both new and reclaimed. The work facilitates an exercise in objective observation, focusing on seeing versus looking.
Image credit: Chris Zickefoose – Acceptance and Decline
LOST EARRING
In his multi-media installation, Lost Earring, Elliot Doughtie ponders how our cultural touchstones shift over time while considering the evolution of his own queer sexuality and transgender body. Found materials and cast plaster sculptures of familiar plumbing implements surround a projection of an isolated clip from the 1996 movie Bound by the filmmaking duo the Wachowski siblings -- pruriently discovered by Doughtie as a teenager in search of his own identity. As two disembodied hands endlessly tighten and untighten the hidden plumbing of a bathroom sink, this charged and repeated gesture explores a non-heteronormative narrative of function and aspiration. Through the use of light, objects, and moving imagery, Lost Earring reimagines the commonplace setting of a bathroom in a queer and trans context -- where bodies and minds are often flooded with emotions from terror to desire.
Image credit: Elliot Doughtie – installation detail from Lost Earring
Events
Happening Next
Currently, there are no events scheduled.
Studios
Studio Residency Program
Coming Soon...
School 33 Art Center along with Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower are leasing artist studios. The studios offer the opportunity to work and create inside two historic Baltimore arts buildings. With up to 300 square feet of space, the studios are spacious enough for private practice so that artists may work safely and socially distanced while still connected to a community of fellow creatives: painters, performers, photographers and more.
The studios have and continue to host the best of Baltimore’s creative community, from well-established names to emerging talent.
Resident artists have also had the opportunity to show their work in exhibitions hosted in both buildings. In addition to the private studio space, artists have access to common area exhibition spaces for selling and displaying work. All spaces offer 24-hour access, utilities and WiFi so that artists may fully focus on their practice.
BOPA offers these studios as a safe space of creativity so that artists, and our creative community, may continue to thrive.
For leasing information, contact Annie Applegarth.
Studio Artists
MARY BAUM
ARTIST BIO
LYNN CAZABON
ARTIST BIO
Lynn Cazabon creates multi-faceted works using a diversity of media including photography, audio, animation, and video, taking form as installations, public displays, websites, mobile applications, and community collaborations. Her work has been exhibited extensively extensively nationally and internationally for the past 20 years, including public art, solo and group exhibitions with WRO Art Center (Wroc?aw, Poland), Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (New Plymouth, New Zealand), The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA), Artists Space (New York, NY), and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo, NY). She has recently received grants from the Puffin Foundation (2016), Maryland State Arts Council (2016), Fulbright Scholar Program (2015), and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (Rubys Media Arts Grant, 2014). Her work has been featured in books and catalogs, including most recently in Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph by Geoffrey Batchen (DelMonico/Prestel, 2016). Cazabon is an Associate Professor of Art at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
CHEENY CELEBRADO-ROYER
ARTIST BIO
Cheeny Celebrado-Royer (b.1991, Naga City, Philippines) is a multidisciplinary artist currently working in Baltimore. Celebrado-Royer immigrated to the United States in 2005. She earned her BA in Studio Art from McDaniel College in 2014 and graduated with her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Mount Royal School of Art) in 2016. Her work has been exhibitedthroughout the Mid-Atlantic region such as: Fjord Gallery (Philadelphia PA 2018), School 33 Arts Center (Baltimore MD 2017), Esther Prangley Gallery (Westminster MD 2017), Peale Museum (Baltimore MD 2016), ‘sindikit Gallery (Baltimore, MD,2016), Gallery CA (Baltimor MD 2016) and Spacecamp Gallery (Baltimore MD 2016). She was a semifinalist for the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize in 2018 and 2016, an Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) Teaching Fellow in 2017 and the recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award in 2014. Celebrado-Royer served as the Community Artist (CAC Americorps) for Refugee Youth Project (2016-2017) and was an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute (2017-2018). Currently, she is the Artist in Residence for the Post-Baccalaureate Program at MICA.
TAHA HEYDARI
ARTIST BIO
Taha Heydari was born and raised in Tehran, he moved to Baltimore in 2014 to pursue his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), completing his degree in Hoffberger School of Painting, in 2016. Since his graduation, he was granted an O1 (Artist Visa) and has worked full time in a studio space at School 33. He is interested in painting as a possibility of encountering what images do in relation to what they are made of and how they appear to us. Pixelated broken tv images, caused by Iranian government satellite jamming, triggered Heydari’s fascination with the moment of glitch. He uses acrylic and various palette knives, rollers, and airbrush to create complex, highly detailed surfaces where he can accentuate the significance of tools, material, and technology in the act of representation. Heydari is represented by Haines Gallery and his work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC (2017) Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2016-2018), Ethan Cohen Gallery, New York, NY (2015). Artist Website
LUKE IKARD
ARTIST BIO
Luke Ikard (b. 1990, Houston, TX) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, MD, where he is an Artist in Residence at the School 33 Art Center. He is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University, Carroll Community College, and Maryland Institute College of Art teaching multiple courses in 3D design and new media. He completed his MFA in Multidisciplinary Art from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017, and received his BFA in Studio Art from Sam Houston State University in 2014. Ikard was recently selected as a 2018-2020 Hamiltonian Fellow in Washington, DC. He received the 2015-2017 Merit Scholarship from the Mount Royal School of Art. His work is part of the College of Fine Art and Mass Communication permanent collection at Sam Houston State University. Ikard has also produced site-specific work at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum Park and has exhibited throughout the United States. His work has most recently been shown in group exhibitions at Maryland Art Place, School 33 Art Center, Hamiltonian Gallery, and the International Art Gallery in the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. Artist WebsiteARTIST STATEMENT
I employ domestic objects guided by sound to create the opportunity to perceive an unfamiliar past or to invent a new one. I utilize my knowledge of sound, emerging technologies, and skills as a woodworker, to investigate the object's capacity to serve as a trace of authentic experiences. I use domestic materials, animation, stage equipment, 3D printing, cassette tapes, and interactive electronic technologies to create a sentiment of displacement; a longing for a home that no longer exists or never existed. I focus on furniture as a system that generates a narrative from my childhood and expands my notion of home. I draw from objects that exist as samples of distanced experiences, an experience which the object can only evoke and resonate, and can never entirely recoup. These objects suggest potential narratives, loss, and memorial fragments which collide to form new events.
STEPHANIE J. WILLIAMS
ARTIST BIO
Stephanie J. Williams (b. 1981) is an interdisciplinary artist living in the northeast quadrant of Washington, DC. Her three-dimensional sculpture and stop-motion animations investigate our relationship to food culture. Williams is a current faculty in the animation department at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and is the newest artist residence at School 33! Artist WebsiteARTIST STATEMENT
I used to think that when I grew up, I’d be a butcher. I had no interest in running a store nor providing any kind of practical service, but I liked that food as a raw material, when turned into a prepared meal, could be transformed into almost anything. I would prepare meals with my mother, the jobs that my sister thought too gross to touch. Working together, I learned how to remove a turkey gizzard, how to prepare liver, how to clean a squid, about shrimp paste and fish sauce. This stuff is honest even in its pieces. These pieces, even when dissected from the whole, connote something too important to be politely omitted.
Support Us
Membership / Sponsorship
School 33 focuses exclusively on Baltimore’s contemporary arts and its promotion through public exhibitions, special art events, and educational outreach to both children and adults. Thanks to the support of Baltimoreans like you, the Center’s century-old school building in Federal Hill has served as an inspiring hub of homegrown creative activity and learning that is unique to Baltimore for more than 25 years:
• We consistently showcase the finest artistic talent in the region through a year-round program of exhibitions and events.
• We provide art education classes for children and adults.
• Our full schedule of exhibitions, workshops, studio tours, and fundraising events such as Lotta Art attracts diverse audiences to the Federal Hill and South Baltimore area.
• Initiatives like the School 33 Art Center Members’ Gallery, gives artist members the opportunity to exhibit work in a professional gallery.
To maintain this pace of activity, School 33 Art Center needs your support!
Membership
Members receive invitations to openings and activities and advance information about classes and events. Artist members can apply to exhibit in our member's gallery. Your contribution of $35, $60, $125 or more can make all the difference for School 33 Art Center.
To download a membership form, click here.
Sponsorship, giving opportunities
School 33 Art Center conducts a variety of small and large-scale programs and events each year. We rely on the support of sponsorships to enable us to bring these wonderful activities to the Baltimore area. In return, we provide our sponsors with a maximum level of pre-event marketing, on-site presence and brand affinity where applicable. There are a wide range of sponsorship opportunities and levels.
To become a sponsor or for more information, please contact:
Stacy Handler
Sr. Director of Development – Corporate Sponsorship
Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts
shandler@promotionandarts.org
Phone: 443-529-0403
Fax: 410-385-0361
Donation
Donate to School 33 Art Center by becoming a member or by making a donation to support the programs and operations throughout the year. To become a member, please call 443-263-4350. To make a donation, please contact BOPA’s Development Officer to make a gift to School 33 today.
The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) is deeply grateful for the generosity we receive throughout the year. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, contributions from our funding partners, and individuals like you, allow us to accomplish our mission of making Baltimore a more creative and vibrant city!
But, we still need your help to make it our best year yet. Make a contribution to School 33 today by contacting Stacy Handler at 443-529-0403 or email shandler@promotionandarts.org for more information.
Donate Supplies
School 33 Art Center welcomes donations of various materials, office and art supplies, computers, furniture or equipment. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation of an item, please phone us at 443-263-4350 or email jdowns@promotionandarts.org.
Volunteers
School 33 Art Center welcomes the work and enthusiasm of volunteers. Volunteer opportunities exist year-round at special events including Lotta Art and Open Studio Day, during arts education and exhibition programs, and in the administrative office.
Each volunteer activity provides its own unique rewards. All volunteers will gain the satisfaction that they are actively promoting arts and culture in the city of Baltimore. Also, we thank our volunteers with benefits such as event t-shirts, refreshments, and free parking when available.
All volunteers must be at least 18 years of age and be willing to attend a pre-event orientation session(s) specific to the volunteer activity and/or event. Most importantly, volunteers should be excited to work with the public, help support the arts, and be part of a team.
For current volunteer opportunities, please visit: www.myvolunteerpage.com and type in "Baltimore" under the second option.
For more information, contact us at 410-752-8632.
Interns
Please check back for future internship opportunities.