Highway to Nowhere

Art Action and Civic Engagement
Yesterday, my fellow Master's candidates and I met with MACA alum Ashley Milburn ('07) to talk about his on-going work with the 'Highway to Nowhere'. The project is centered on the "multi-mile stretch of Route 40 between Martin Luther King Jr. , Boulevard and the West Baltimore MARC station that dead-ends in the middle of the city". Ashley is currently working with community residents to transform the space into the East Coast's largest mural space that would employ thousands of artists and city-residents and revitalize the community of W. Baltimore potentially drawing tourists from around the globe.

The History of the Highway
"Before its completion in 1979, the highway displaced thousands of residents and more than 700 homes, schools, hospitals and small businesses, disrupting life in the black community [of W. Baltimore]. The original plan called for the highway to connect with Interstate 70. Instead, it simply cuts off after about a mile and quite literally goes nowhere."
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/baltimore/focus_areas/community_fellowship/case_studies/milburn_2007

What is Community Art?

Hello Everyone!

As Sarah mentioned in a previous post, my name is Holly Crawford-Seay and I am a Practicing Community Artist (PCA) living in Baltimore.

What is Community Art?

Community Art is a "public art practice with roots in social justice and popular and informal teaching methods. In the art world, community art signifies a particular art-making practice, emphasizing community involvement and collaboration (e.g. a mural). Community art is most often art for social change and involves some empowerment of the community members who come together to create artwork/s with artists." [Wikipedia]

What do you do?

As a graduate student in the Master's of Arts in Community Arts Program at MICA and an AmeriCorps/Community Art Corps (CAC) member, I co-facilitate an after-school art program twice a week at the Baltimore American Indian Center in Upper Fell's Point/Southeast Baltimore. My co-facilitator is Open Society Institute (OSI) fellow, Ashley Minner (MACA '07).

I do my best to design projects for and with my students to help facilitate their artistic voice and make an impact on the Native American community and non-Native community living in Baltimore.

When I am not facilitating, I make art utilizing text to begin discussions on the value of expression and hope in a community we call Baltimore. (Since I am currently working on my thesis, this description will (hopefully) become less vague!)

How did you become a PCA?
I became a PCA almost by accident. In the the summer of 2007, I interned in the Education Department of The Walters Art Museum (WAM). I was not working directly with young people at that time, but I became interested in museum education and museum-based community outreach. My overall vision is to use art as a transformative vehicle to unite human beings regardless of race, age, color or creed in a shared public space.

As a guest writer, I will make weekly posts related to the community arts spectrum. I am so happy that Sarah has asked for my input and anticipate a greater understanding and interest in the field of Community Art.

Spotlight: Eleanor Farley

Hello!  It's Tuesday night, and I'm super tired, but I'm trying to keep up with my schedule and write a new post every weekday!  Therefore, I bring you a Spotlight on the work of my friend Eleanor Farley.  Eleanor is currently a senior at the Maryland Institute College of Art.  The image above is of a brand-new piece of hers, in her studio.  Eleanor and I talked last year about her work for a blog I had to write for my Contemporary Art class.  Eleanor told me that her work is about "personalization of mass produced objects, making a home, what we need v.s. what we think we need, and inside/outside."

And these concepts are what I got from her work just by looking at it- the idea of building a home, the idea of home and how can you mass produce a home when the notion of home is such a weighted, nostalgic, complicated, symbolic thing- how can you really define "home," what things make up or consist of "home"- you can define "house" as a building where people live, but the notion of "home" is an altogether different thing.  What's great about Eleanor's work is that "home" is not one thing or one phrase or even a phrase at all, but a litany of experiences, memories, tender moments, "domestic affections," structures and material culture, which culminate over time and take on this word "home" which resides in a very special place in our heart, whether we are conflicted about our home or not.

You can check out more of Eleanor's work on her blog, egfarley.blogspot.com!

Spotlight: Robert and Shana Parkeharrison

Today's Spotlight is on my favorite husband-and-wife photography duo, Robert and Shana Parkeharrison.  I have been absolutely entranced with their photographs since high school, when I was studying photography, and I continue to be entranced to this day.  Their other-worldly, mysterious, aged-looking photographs are stunning.  They came to speak at MICA while I was there (sadly, I cannot remember or find out exactly when they came and I cannot find my notes from the lecture....irresponsible sounding, isn't it?), and I was SO EXCITED to hear them speak.  Their photographs are elaborate, requiring extensive props and effects.  Robert poses in most of them, as the lone figure in a post-apocalyptic looking world, where he always appear to be attempting to reinvent the wheel, or reinvent flying, or just invent anything.

They are ghostly, romantic, sad, and beautiful.  I learned along the way that they were ecologically driven, aimed at issues of global warming and other environmental problems that we face, but have to say that I was perfectly happy with them before I knew anything about them.  I almost prefer to contemplate what they might mean, all the unspoken, poetic thoughts and feelings that seem to surround them, than to pigeonhole them as "environmental" works.  They are that and so much more.  To check out Robert and Shanna Parkeharrison's new works and locate galleries and museums you can find their work in, go to www.parkeharrison.com.

Spotlight: Herman Maril

Herman Maril is an artist who came to my attention recently.  The Walters Art Museum here in Baltimore did a show of his work titled, "Herman Maril: An American Modernist".  Since I work at the Walters, I had many occasions to see the show, and even teach it and help pass out evaluation forms to visitors.  I was surprised I had not heard of Maril's work before.  Born and raised in Baltimore, he attended MICA and taught at the University of Maryland.  He also spent summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and his work is influenced by those two places.  His paintings are simplified down to color and shape, two elements that Maril considered extremely important.  In an interview by Carl Schoettler for the Evening Sun in 1983, Maril said, "My preoccupation in painting has always been space...Huge open areas of space.  I like to think of the concept of space.  I like to deal with big open spaces.  And color.  Color and space is painting."

I too feel that painting consists of color and space, and so I appreciate Maril's work and approach to painting.  His work has elements of Cubism, Fauvism, and Modernism to it- i.e. breaking down surface planes and objects into basic shapes and multiple view points, bright unnatural colors, and color field painting.  His beach scenes and delicate interiors also remind me personally of the artist Fairfield Porter, and my own childhood growing up on the beach.  You can see Maril's work in person at the University of Maryland, the Provincetown Art Museum, and other select locations.