Comments on: Baltimore: city of ART neighborhoods

By: Deborah Patterson

Deborah Patterson — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:06:43 +0000

Kara, thanks so much for writing. Your work looks beautiful and, given your comments, it would be a gift to Baltimore to have you here! Since every Baltimore neighborhood has its own unique character, you really should experience each of them firsthand. I’ll be happy to show you around, if you’d like. You can contact me at: info@artblocks.org

By: Kara

Kara — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:05:43 +0000

Hi Deborah,

I really agree with the Placemaking process. Committing to ownership of a project because it’s in your backyard is the best way to sustain it. On that note, I would like to move to Baltimore. I’m a landscape designer. I would like to be involved in an artist community and would like to live in the neighborhood I’m involved in. Do you have suggestions of which neighborhoods I could focus on during my search?

By: Deborah Patterson

Deborah Patterson — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:33:16 +0000

Many thanks for the kind–and constructive–comments. There is a critical piece that I left out, however, and that is PLACEMAKING. True placemaking, that is, which is an actual organic, grassroots and place-centered process. Working from the ground up, real placemaking leads to ownership and sustainability of projects while also hampering gentrification. It produces a comprehensive vision that generates a greater number of projects and, in turn, increased opportunities for collaboration among residents, artists, and stakeholders. The result is the creation of DESTINATIONS where people really want to be. As one person recently said, “Placemaking is the art of creating public ‘places of the soul,’ that uplift and help us connect to each other.”

By: Michael DiMenna

Michael DiMenna — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:29:33 +0000

Deborah,
A wonderful way for a neighborhood to flex its collective visual,performance,music identity. All projects that build a culture of expression that nurtures a ‘sense of place’ in a neighborhood will always resonate with whats needed and wanted by most of us that see so much that is broken down, dysfunctional, abused, washed out, falling apart, shunned in comparison. The more we all raise our heads up higher, the more Baltimore can flex that collective cultural muscle that binds us in place and heart. A staggering number drop out. This project will allow many more to tune in. Bravo!

By: Rachel Ciprotti

Rachel Ciprotti — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:13:44 +0000

This sounds like such a wonderful idea. Once off the ground, the Tourism sector as well as the local chamber of commerce could hopefully be tapped into to help provide funding and publicity for the project!

By: Karen Stults

Karen Stults — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:14:34 +0000

Deborah,

Kudos to you for the work you are doing and plan to do in Park Heights and throughout Baltimore.

I wanted to add a glimmer of hope to your grim analysis of the Baltimore “brand.” I work at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) which attracts students from 48 states and 52 countries. I am told by those who speak routinely with our incoming freshmen that while students used to come to MICA despite it being located in Baltimore, they are now, increasingly, coming to MICA because it IS located in Baltimore!!!

Our City’s reputation, at least among artists, designers, and the entrepreneurial creative class, is changing. But I agree that we need to do a better job of getting the word out.

Thanks for thoughts!

Karen Stults

By: Peter Bruun

Peter Bruun — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:53:00 +0000

I applaud Deborah’s vision, passion, and hard work on behalf of our communities. She’s one of many under-sung examples of community artists using their creativity to build a better Baltimore.

Unfortunately, visionary community artists committed to residents’ expressing themselves and building their neighborhoods almost inevitably find themselves living a gerbil-wheel existence, madly scrambling for the next dollar just to keep the wheel turning at all. Funding is scarce, uncoordinated, and sporadic, and the end result is a fracture in community arts efforts — individuals scrambling, scrambling, scrambling on their gerbil wheels, in balkanized solitude.

The problem is not hard to diagnose; more difficult is finding solutions. But the promise of community arts is too real to leave things as they are — more ought to be done to re-tool the system so it works better for all of us.

Solutions begin with ideas, and ideas begin with people coming together to focus on a problem. We have a problem, so let’s come together and focus on it.

Anyone up for a commission on building sustainability for community arts?

By: Deborah Patterson

Deborah Patterson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:43:27 +0000

Thank you for your response, Barbara, and congratulations on landing a venue. In terms of exploring social issues through art, groups such as the Creative Alliance address that need, but of course there’s always a need for more. While part of ARTblocks’ mission is to generate more opportunities and venues for all artists, our primary focus is on the residents and their neighborhoods. And if they want to address important social issues through their art, even better!

By: Barbara

Barbara — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:04:33 +0000

I’m going to chime in here – I am a birth activist both in Baltimore and on the national level. I came up with the idea last summer to hold the country’s first ever cesarean art exhibit in April in Baltimore. I have just spent the last SEVEN MONTHS trying to secure a venue for our project after being turned down for a variety of reasons. One gallery said our work wasn’t “fine art,” another rejected us for not being “prossive enough,” and the head of one major arts institution called our topic, “too narrow a focus, like doing an exhibit for people who have had tonsillectomies.” I read the City Paper and thought that the number of community art galleries that exist in our city would ensure that venues are available to all artists. Boy how I was wrong! I’m happy to announce that as of this morning I FINALLY landed a venue – the lobby of a church in Catonsville who supports our project and allows community use of their space “by donation only” therefore making it within our price range. We will be hanging our art from portable art walls which another organization has agreed to loan us. So, is Baltimore an art town? I guess. Is it accessible to all who wish to pursue art as a way of exploring important social issues? I’d say no.

Barbara Stratton
Baltimore chapter co-leader
International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN)
http://www.icanofbaltimore.org