Born and raised in London, his childhood interests of graffiti, California skate culture, and punk aesthetic were well nurtured from an early age. Having come across the likes of Jim Phillips and Vernon Courtlandt Johnson amidst the pages of Thrasher Magazine, he was initially inspired to follow a path of graphic design and illustration, before eventually taking a freelance approach to his art. After learning to screen-print his own stickers, he took the public domain of the street as his canvas, blending art, design, and graffiti in a manner that predated the emergence of street art as it is known today.

Fazzion creates pencil portraits as a way to give poetic expression to faces. A series of these portraits is dedicated to Italian actors. Another of her series is dedicated to Hollywood actors, such as Salma Hayek and Ashley Judd, or characters like the Joker, as portrayed by Oscar winner Jared Leto. As an artist, Fazzion has also developed – through Iranian friends and acquaintance – a great passion for the stunning art of Isfahan.

There are set pieces to stumble upon, with Danish armchairs and plastic ashtrays placed in front of a black-and-white TV playing The Munsters, that evil family of witches that look pretty benign by today’s standards. Life magazine covers and poetry journals celebrating the likes of Frank O’Hara and Ed Sanders proliferate and wallpaper kitschy enough to put a smile on even the most erudite in the crowd. 

Baltimore is a gritty space with complicated narratives but is also a hotbed for creativity, with an underground arts ecosystem unrivaled by most American cities of its size. This exhibition celebrates the abstract risk-takers who have been a constant in the Baltimore art scene. Together, these artists are shifting preconceived notions of Baltimore to one that centers community, creativity, and celebration.

Ecologists speak of biological redundancy as natural engineering to protect systems. Any edge is, in effect, a pool of many small variations on biological functions in case any species in the core habitat is threatened or weakened. These subtle complexities reinforce ecotones. That wider impact from the periphery to the heart is the rub. In our age of climate change, unless we intervene in fragmentation, nothing will be left to mitigate the disaster of maximum warming.

Dressing for Carnival,(1877) features a Black man being sewn into his Harlequin costume by family members for a traditional African celebration. Is this a promise of better times for these former slaves, which the wall notes suggest? Perhaps. A helpful hint to visitors would be to let the magnitude of the art speak for itself first, then use the history lesson as needed. A good example is The Cotton Pickers (1876).  A pair of hardy muscle-bound women fills the canvas. Their dark forms cut into the foreground, contrasted by the clusters of snowy cotton in their shoulder bags. The image needs no explanation.

Recognition for some is like being in the center of a floodlight, instantaneous and often too bright to withstand for long. For others, fame can feel like a lucky penny, found in the sidewalk crack after a long rest. For artist Faith Ringgold, there was no rest. If she was under the radar for many, she kept creating, drawing from personal autobiography and collective histories to both document her life and to illustrate the struggles for social justice and equity. 

Moments Spent with Others is an invitation to Dawes’ personal stories wrapped in digital visualizations. Over the recent pandemic, as human interaction became scarce and precious, we grew accustomed to detaching ourselves from others. Dawes embraces these moments by recreating them into datasets, algorithms, and data visualizations by incorporating memories that are personal to the artist but are also universally enjoyed.

Dancy has received numerous significant honors and awards, including: a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, New England Foundation for the Arts/NEA Individual Artist Grant, Nexus Press Artist Book Project Award, Visual Studies Artist Book Project Residency Grant, The American Antiquarian Society’s William Randolph Hearst Fellowship, a YADDO Fellow, Women’s Studio Workshop Residency Grant, Connecticut Commission of the Arts Artist Grant, as well as a Connecticut Book Award Illustration Nominee.