I am honored to be included in the 11th Annual Benefit Exhibition at Maryland Art Place (MAP) this Friday, November 17th from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m.
This will be the second year I have been invited by MAP to exhibit my work in this festive show in which 50% of the sales benefit MAP and their mission to provide thought provoking, contemporary art and other cool things.
At last year's benefit I contributed a larger print (13 x 19") and two smaller prints (9 x 12"). But this year I wanted to submit three works that were more cohesive as a whole and all the same size (13 x 19" which includes the maple frame). My cohesion philosophy was based on a few things: 1) the concept of a beginning, middle and end, 2) the color blue, and 3) confident horizontals and strong verticals.
The beginning, middle and end, like all good stories, is the structure of my triptych. The beginning suggests an encounter (The First Time We Met), the middle hints at the good days, bad days (Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm), and the end alludes to closure, Act III (Curtains).
Is this a happy ending?
On another level, The First Time We Met, was captured in Pigtown and was literally the first time I walked this wonderful neighborhood in March, 2023. Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm was taken in Old Gaucher in July, 2023 and was the second time I shot this location, so I knew what I was getting into, and of course, the weather was as reported—mostly sunny skies with an occasional thunderstorm. Curtains was taken downtown in May, 2023 and is probably a five minute walk from MAP with the title character of the photo being a wide swatch of curtain seen through a window looking up to: nothing but blue.
When all three images are lined up side-by-side, there is a through line of horizontals and verticals. For example: The First Time We Met (Act I) has confident horizontals by way of the glass bricks which pair nicely with the third string of red-white-and-blue streamers in Mostly Sunny Skies With an Occasional Thunderstorm (Act II) and continues through the building reflected in the window of Curtains (Act III). And the vertical line in the middle of Act I flirts with the confident flagpole in Act II and foreshadows the climax of the vertical blues in Act III.
And yes, it’s a happy ending.
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