In Baltimore, Artists Win a Vote of Confidence
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 22, 2009
It was only a matter of time before "American Idol" infiltrated the art world.
Billed as the first arts competition of its kind to incorporate public voting in an online forum, the inaugural Baker Artist Awards recently invited artists from Baltimore and its surrounding counties to upload examples of their work to a Web site. More than 650 people responded, in disciplines as diverse as drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, video, film, animation, spoken and written word, dance, theater, graphic design and craft.
More than 35,000 visitors to the site then voted on their favorites, narrowing the field to a top 10, from which three were chosen by an interdisciplinary panel of experts to receive $25,000 each, no strings attached. Each of the seven runners-up got a check for $1,000. As with the MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowships, the judges were anonymous. The money comes from the William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund, established in 1964 in memory of a Baltimore investment banker but only focusing on arts and culture since 2007.
And guess what? The results, on view in a bricks-and-mortar showcase at the Baltimore Museum of Art, aren't half bad. You can view, listen to or watch submissions by all 656 artists at http://www.bakerartistawards.org. But to fully appreciate the work of the top three prize-winners -- sculptor John Ruppert, jazz saxophonist Carl Grubbs and Hadieh Shafie, whose works here are in a variety of 2-D media -- you'll need to tear yourself away from your computer.
That's particularly true for Ruppert, one of whose sculptures, made from chain-link fencing, is on view outside the museum. It's called "Orb," and it's about the size of a storage shed, a kind of rounded cage. Inside the museum, you'll find several of his smaller pieces in stone, cast metal and plastic, along with a video documenting the installation of another chain-link piece at a Baltimore art gallery. It's a shame the BMA couldn't find room to show that one, called "Origins," which involved a dramatic light show.
Much of Ruppert's work evokes ancient artifacts, a fascination dating to his several years spent in Jordan as a youth, during which he participated in several archaeological digs. There's also a subtle sense of reparation, a desire to fix what's broken, to make visible the buried or the ephemeral. One sculpture, in cast iron and burnt sand, captures a jagged lightning bolt.
Shafie's art has less physical presence. Drawn from the Iranian-born artist's "Esheghe" series, most of the drawings and paintings center on the Farsi word for "love" (in script, it resembles a skeleton key) written over and over until it forms an abstract pattern. More than a picture, it's a kind of performance, really, prayer made concrete.
More powerful is Shafie's "27989." Like her other work, this one also features Farsi text but written and printed on scrolls of paper that have been rolled up into little cylinders, so that you can't read them. After being bundled together between the walls of a picture frame, the scrolls form a pattern of circles. Part sculpture, part painting, it calls to mind Jae Ko's works made from rolls of adding-machine paper. There's an aura of mystery, though. Does the hidden text represent the artist's private hopes, wishes and dreams or darker, more closely held secrets?
As for musician Grubbs, visiting the exhibition will give you a fair sense of what he sounds like. Three short performance videos, totaling about 12 minutes, play in a continuous loop in a darkened gallery. It's nice but little better than listening to a CD. (Several of his recordings are available in the museum shop.) For a fuller measure of the man and his music, you should go back to Baltimore this summer, when Grubbs is giving a concert in the museum's sculpture garden. (See program details on Page 43.)
All in all, the Baltimore art scene's first venture in democracy proves that Charm City doesn't have just talent, but also taste.
