BmoreArt’s Picks: November 12-18This Week: Reception for Timothy App at Goya, screening with filmmaker Raven Jackson at Clifton House, Rooted Shadows opening reception at Rosenberg Gallery, Stoop Storytelling at AVAM, Baker Artist Portfolios opening reception at The Peale, reception for Barry Nemett at Arting Gallery, Neighborhood Design Center hosts a virtual Architecture Clinic for Creatives, Jacob Budenz at The Walters, Bao Nguyen in conversation with Kathy O’Dell at The Ivy, and Sankofa Dance Theater celebration at the BMA — PLUS Crow’s Nest call for window sculpture and more featured opportunities!BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.To submit your calendar event, email us at [email protected]!Timothy App: Equipoise | ReceptionWednesday, November 13 :: 6-8pm@ Goya ContemporaryPlease join us at Goya Contemporary GalleryWednesday, November 13th from 6-8pmFor a reception on the occasion of the exhibition:Timothy App: Equipoise“…The artist’s procedure is straightforward yet often surprising to first-time viewers of his work. App typically creates one or two studies for each painting, then transfers the compositions, often with modifications, onto stretched and carefully prepared canvases. He tapes out his shapes, making small adjustments along the way, as he often deviates from the original studies. App carefully prepares his palette to achieve a fluidity that makes control challenging; then he begins the process of glazing bolder colors with wide flat brushes to mute them down, layer by layer, building translucent, precisely opposing directional layers that conform to the warp and weft of the canvas. This accumulation not only tones down the hue but also provides a structure of light that affirms the artist’s intention. While some areas within a work may feel stark, flat, solid, and opaque, others retain a sense of light that seems to emanate from within, evoking a spiritual quality.Through his poetic use of paint, App operates with restraint, even as he celebrates the unpredictability of an aqueous medium within the boundaries of a controlled and ordered hand. This confrontation is evident with some of his shapes where the paint pools at the taped edge, highlighting the humanity of the maker while showcasing the handmade quality of the artwork. Many viewers have considered this phenomenon, coupled with the complex special ambiguity, to be the subtly enchanting essence of App’s work.Although App has avoided literal representation in his practice, many works throughout his career metaphorically reference the open space of a window or a stage, the formidable presence of architectural forms, or, in the case of his Homage series, created between 2005 and 2019, the distillation of canonical Western artworks into his distinctive abstract, geometric vernacular. With the Multiform paintings, which began in the late 1990’s and continue to the present, App engages in a set of variables that, like all of his work, “begins with a complex grid that interacts with a selection of elemental forms that are circular, angular, and rectilinear”1 to arrive ideally at a state of equipoise, or a condition of resolve resulting from a complex interaction of prescribed variables. This condition, according to the artists, “has personal, ethical implications that act as a guide in life. What seems at first to be objective, prescriptive and dispassionate has become, over time, unquestionably and indefatigably personal.”2…”1 Conversation between Timothy App and Amy Raehse, 20242 Conversation between Timothy App and Amy Raehse, 2024– Excerpt from the catalogue Timothy App: EquipoiseFIRST / FILMS Featuring All Dirt Roads Salt of Salt with Raven JacksonThursday, November 14 :: 6pm@ Clifton HouseFirst Films is a cross-genre series designed to spark creative inquiry around the elements, processes, and structure behind making a “first film”. Whether a directorial debut or a shift in genre, this series showcases debut projects from local, national, and international filmmakers who are pushing the medium to tell vital stories. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is the directorial debut from filmmaker, poet, and photographer Raven Jackson. Described as, “a haunting and richly layered portrait, a beautiful ode to the generations of people and places that shape us”, the film invites audiences into the lushly quotidian lives of a Black Mississippi family as seen through the eyes of both child and adult Mack, the story’s protagonist, as they navigate love, grief, and persistence across generations.The film screening will be followed by a brief Q&A with the director.If you would like to request accommodations, please email [email protected] Raven JacksonRaven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Her work often explores landscapes of indefinable experiences and emotions, as well as the body’s relationship to nature. Recently nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director, Raven’s debut narrative film, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, made in partnership with Maria Altamirano, PASTEL, and A24, world-premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and was named one of the top ten movies of the year by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and RogerEbert.com. The film has screened at the New York Film Festival, San Sebastián International Film Festival, BFI London, AFI Fest, and more.She has served as a Story Editor for HBO’s adaptation of Sula, based on Toni Morrison’s novel, and co-wrote an episode of the Apple Series Surface. A 2024 Sundance Momentum Fellow and Rideback Rise Resident, her short films Nettles and A Guide to Breathing Underwater are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. Stories From a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the companion book for her debut feature, is currently out from A24. Her photography can be found in the book, as well as in BOMB Magazine. She is a Cave Canem fellow and holds MFAs from New York University’s Graduate Film Program and the New School’s Writing Program. Her chapbook of poetry, little violences, is available from Cutbank Literary Magazine.Rooted Shadows | Opening ReceptionThursday, November 14 :: 6-8pm@ Rosenberg Gallery, Goucher CollegeYou are invited to:“Rooted Shadows” Nov 14th 2024-Jan 30th 2025 at Rosenberg Gallery at Goucher College.1021 Dulaney Valley Rd, Towson, MD 21204Gallery hours at 9am-5pm Mon-FriCurated by Liz Faust and OTS productions Featuring works by artists:Azumi O ELucia Shuyu LiSetsuhi ShiraishiBao NguyenRiya Devi-ashbyOpening Reception Thursday, Nov 14th 6pm-8pmfeaturing two performances by: Bao Nguyen + Ni Xin w/ KAMRooted Shadows is a convergence of six Asian and Asian American artists, whose works interrogate the complex interplay between identity, place, and the self. These artists—Riya Devi-Ashby, Lucia Shuyu Li, Bao Nguyen, Azumi O E, Setsuhi Shiraishi, and Ni Xin—are not merely performers but explorers of the profound dialogue between personal history and the environment they inhabit. Their medium is performance, their canvas the intricate web of cultural memory and contemporary existence. What unfolds in this exhibition is not simply the presentation of art but the invocation of a deeper questioning. The artists use performance, collaboration, and multimedia practices to probe the spaces where heritage meets the present, where the self is both rooted and in flux. Maryland, with its nuanced social and physical landscape, becomes more than a backdrop; it is an active force, shaping and being shaped by these works. The performances range from the evocative movements of Butoh to the meditative strokes of live calligraphy, from the raw immediacy of experimental vocals to the immersive realms of sound installations. Each act, each gesture, each sound is charged with the weight of personal history, while simultaneously refracting that history through the lens of the here and now. Rooted Shadows compels us to confront the paradoxes inherent in being. It reflects the tension between the rootedness of cultural and familial histories and the shifting, intangible nature of lived experience. These artists, drawing from their ancestral legacies, transform their origins into something that transcends mere memory—something fluid, mutable, shadowed. The exhibition is an invitation to witness how tradition and the present, personal identity and communal spaces, continually interact. It is a meditation on the ways art can embody this tension, casting shadows of the past even as it roots itself in the unpredictable contours of the present.Opening reception schedule:Schedule:6pm doors6:40pm introductions by Liz Faust6:45pm-7:10pm Bao Nguyen7:25pm-7:50pm Ni Xin w/ KAMRead more of this week’s picks at BmoreArt.