Blogs: Arts and Minds

Intrepid reporter learns new Gameboy skills. | Image by Frank Hamilton If City Paper doesn’t write frequently about video games, one reason might be the sheer cost involved in keeping up with the medium. Even in these bat-shit economic times, the average alt-weekly reader can likely splurge on a play or a night at...
Read more »

Chris Evans’ “Empyrean” U.S.-based Australian artist Cliff Evans’ mammoth psychedelic fever dream “Empyrean” opens at the Library–the space curated by erstwhile City Paper contributor Jason Hughes–tonight from 6-10 p.m., and it is not to be missed. The five-channel digital projection is a collage of internet imagery stitched into a looped ribbon of post-millennial tensions,...
Read more »

James Rieck’s “Something Special” Saturday, Oct. 18, is the last chance to check out the inventive, if curious, remix of artists and writers that is Entagled: Art and Word at Jordan Faye Contemporary at Case. What’s engaging about Entangled is the project’s very existence: As Jordan Faye Block acknowledges in the show’s accompanying catalog-qua-chapbook,...
Read more »

| Image by from hbo One of the few upsides to imminent economic collapse is that nonessential shit starts to get cheap pretty effing quick. Nothing like spending cash we don’t have to stimulate economic growth, right? With that in mind, whip out those credit cards and visit the HBO Store, where, today only...
Read more »

It happens every four years, but whenever we’ve got a presidential election, otherwise normal-looking people turn to sputtering ideologues, certain that they’re right and the other side is dead wrong, if not completely insane (for confirmation of this theory, please see the rest of the internet). Scientific American has an interesting interview with neurologist...
Read more »

| Image by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington An enthusiastic, if slightly bleary, crowd gathered early Monday morning at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel to watch NASA’s Messenger spacecraft take a spin past Mercury. The maneuver was the fifth cushion in an elaborate interplanetary bank shot that will leave...
Read more »

| Image by from www.theatreproject.org Today through Sunday are the final four dates to catch the American Opera Theater‘s imaginative interpretation of Georges Bizet’s workhorse Romantic opera Carmen. Featuring a new book by AOT artistic director Timothy Nelson, Le Cabaret de Carmen takes as its inspiration an unorthodox 1981 version of the opera as...
Read more »

Wednesday, a story appeared in the print edition of The Baltimore Sun covering the laudable and, yes, newsworthy Baltimore Round Robin Tour. Figured most prominently in the piece was local musician/comedian/talk show host Ed Schrader (who has contributed to City Paper in the past), who also writes a regular column in Sun offshoot publication...
Read more »

It’s an expectedly hit or miss showcase of works, but the reception for MICA’s annual Faculty Exhibition is today, Thursday, Oct. 2, from 5-7 p.m. in the Pinkard, Meyerhoff, and Decker galleries. Some of the faculty pieces are very familiar–Don Cooks’s Emily Dickinson-inspired architectural views, Mina Cheon’s dresses, Raoul Middleman portrait studies–but there’s still...
Read more »

Samuel Shea’s “Animal Mask” A few weeks back J Shoes, whose corporate offices are based in Owings Mills, offered the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Fibers Department the opportunity to re-purpose single shoes left over from its design samples. The proposed question (as articulated in a press release): “Could a contemporary shoe be transformed...
Read more »

Thank you, Venus Zine, for alerting me to the excavation of a forgotten fave from late-night 1980s channel surfing. Lou Adler’s 1981 Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains features a teenage Diane Lane going from generic teen to a fishnet-clad kinda/sorta punk rocker with some next-level eye makeup going on (see photo). And now...
Read more »

| Image by Sam Holden As the Sun‘s Baltimore Crime Beat blog noted Sept. 19, Baltimore crime is “huge in the UK”, thanks to the final season of The Wire recently concluding its British TV run on FX. In fact, it’s been great fun to watch the British press comment on the final season...
Read more »