NARRATOR: "Artworks" is made possible in part by the Citizens of Baltimore County, and by the Ruth R. Marder Arts Endowment Fund, the Robert E Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Endowment for the Arts, the E.T.

and Robert E. Rocklin Fund, The Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation Arts Endowment in memory of Ruth Marder.

♪ WENDEL PATRICK: Hello, I'm Wendel Patrick, and welcome to this special episode of "Artworks".

Here at the Baltimore Museum of Art where we are celebrating the winners of the 2023 Baker Artist Awards.

I'll be having a conversation with Connie Imboden, president of the William G Baker Jr. Memorial Fund board, and we'll be seeing some of the incredible artwork of the artists who work in many different disciplines.

Margaret Rorison, film, video.

Colette Krogol, performance and dance.

Jordan Tierney, Visual Arts.

Abdu Ali, music.

Oletha Devane, interdisciplinary.

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, literary.

And those are your Baker Artist awardees for 2023.

♪ Let's now take a look at the work of Margaret Rorison, who has an amazing affinity for film as opposed to digital.

♪ MARGARET: I'm an artist that primarily works with the moving image.

I mainly shoot 16 millimeter analog film.

I work a lot with sounds and writing um, and incorporate that into my films.

My films are mainly short films that are uh, autobiographical and focus a lot on portraiture of people and places that are intimate with me.

For me in general, nature is very like, a very soothing space.

Um, it's a meditative space where I often go to think and process and work through ideas.

♪ ♪ Loch Raven Reservoir where I am right now is close to where I grew up, since I was little I've always spent time here.

Um, I'm a runner so I love running here and I love walking.

Um, and a lot of my short films have taken place here.

So, my background as an artist I, when I was younger I would draw and paint a lot, uh, and also work in the dark room.

And when I started thinking more and more how the moving image is actually the space that feels most liberating because it combines interest of sound, storytelling, uh, I love working with natural light I love studying and like writing about people and travel.

And so I initially started trying to shoot digitally, with digital cameras but it just...

I kept going back to working with my Bolex camera, which is a 16 millimeter camera.

I've had this camera for 10 years, it was, this camera was really popular in the 1960s.

A lot of um, diaristic films have been made with them, a lot of... it's, it's definitely a camera that has a history of like personal diary films.

It's hand cranked so you have to, there's definitely like more of a physical intimacy with it, you have to, you have to wind the camera.

Um, there's sort of like a dance that I feel I have with this camera that's very different than a digital camera.

Um and I think I really think differently, I think because it's um, limited, I can only put three minutes of film in the, in the body of the camera.

And you have to wind it because there's no battery.

It allows me to really slow down and consider the shots, but I've also gotten used to this rhythm and way of thinking.

Um, I also am like a very tactile person so it allows me to like work more with my hands, and I do a lot of hand processing.

So I, I love working in the dark room I love... so much of my practice is also discovering in the process, so working with analog photography, uh, motion picture film, there's a different intimacy and a more tactile process that I enjoy.

Someone once said this analogy and I really connect with this, that like your camera's also your instrument, and so I feel like the Bolex is like my instrument that I want to play and that I'm not, I don't have that same connection with um, digital cameras.

There's so many buttons and like a different space to navigate um, and it's more direct.

The Baker Artist Award is definitely a big honor to receive and I, I know there's so many talented artists in Baltimore and Maryland and so I just feel really honored to, to receive this award and be recognized for my work.

♪ WENDEL: Colette Krogol is combining many different forms of media, as well as dance.

Let's take a look.

COLETTE KROGOL: Hello, I am Colette Krogol, I am a Cuban-American artist, originally from Miami, Florida now living in Baltimore, and I am a Baker Artist awardee.

I would describe myself as a dreamer, um, I think that my art comes to me in dream.

Not while I'm sleeping, but while I'm wide awake.

Um, I could be... it stirs up in many different ways, I could be in a, in studio, or cooking, or in the shower, driving, and it's one of those things where it comes to me.

When I get into work I'm like deep in the creation of it and so these dream like images come to me in sensations and textures and temperatures.

In movement or moments, and then when I'm in studio, my task is to decipher them, my task is to... create instinctually based off of these dreams, like try to decode them in a way, as I build this new work.

Dance, first was the ways in which I could express myself, it was the ways that I felt most comfortable in my body.

It's a way that um, I feel his innate in us as humans, it's the first ways in which we connect to the world.

As a baby one of the first things we do is move, the ways that we express, yes we can vocalize but we can't say words yet, but we can express through our bodies.

We see the progression of like shifting to rolling on the belly to crawling to standing, and all of that is so innately inside of us that I think as a human I feel so connected to the world through movement.

Like, I see the world through that way, and so dance has been a departure point that then, as I've continued to like excavate what I'm interested in, it's led me towards design.

Projection design, lighting design.

Um, creating dance outside of the proscenium stage the way that traditionally it's been viewed, and know that dance is all around us.

And, and bringing what could be an ordinary space and making it extraordinary by being able to like see a space new because of dance.

And so site-specific work is so intri, is integral in to my process, as well as film work, because film allows us to like, stay with something for longer, where dance is fleeting.

And so, that's been something that as it's progressed, dance with the, the seed that sparked all of these other things.

Um, and so I think that dance and art is the bloodline to life.

And art reveals, art shares, art makes us reframe reality, and consider new ways of thinking.

I think that art allows us to see ourselves and see others.

I'm very moved to win this award, it's something that... funding for independent artists is critical, now and always, and Baker Artist allows you to... it allows you to celebrate your work by creating these portfolios, and then because of your past work, it grants you the opportunity and support to make new work.

WENDEL: Let's take a look at Abdu Ali, who took inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine "Fire!!"

for their 2019 album, "Fiyah!!".

♪ Across the sea.

♪ So many of our ancestors.

♪ Was killed because.

♪ We have never accepted slavery.

♪♪ ABDU MONGO ALI: My name is Abdu Mongo Ali, I am a music artist, a writer and multidisciplinary artist overall.

Um, born and raised in Baltimore.

I go by they/he, and yeah I'm here.

Music has always in the root and the anchor of my practice for a long time, over the past decade.

I, I really see my body and my voice as an instrument within itself.

And with that being said, performance is definitely like the shining star, the sun of my overall work.

You know, even though performance and um, performing music is not necessarily uh... looked at as a physical like, tangible piece of art, like you know a painting or sculpture.

I, I feel like, like once people experience music performance and performance overall, it lives within the person or the audience.

And for me I just feel like a conduit of whatever energy, whatever messaging, what, whatever you know, offering that the universe is bestowing onto me to give to the rest of the world.

♪ I move like clockwork.

♪ I'm bangee like Bizurk ♪ I'm a real real real real real... ♪♪ ABDU: For my Bakers Artist portfolio, showed a wide range of what I can do as an artist.

And I think being born and raised from Baltimore, a city that is just raw, unruly in the best ways, and to be a Black queer artist from Baltimore City is just really profound.

My last album, "Fiyah!!

", which I recorded here in the studio, um, I feel like was just a really great example of who I am as an artist.

That album infused so many different types of genres, and my performance within that album was just, really just celestial in my opinion, and just out of this world.

And it was genuine, it was authentic.

And, you know it came from a really, you know, it was inspired by, you know from something that was really, really beautiful.

Like, that whole album was inspired by this literary magazine that came out in the 1920s called "Fire!!"

that was um, produced and founded by Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Richard Nugent, and Langston Hughes.

And I just think that energy, being inspired from that literary magazine kind of helped shape how this album sounded and how it felt.

And I was just using some ancestral divine energy to get... you know, the album like, you know in a really good, magical like out-of-this-world place.

To get the Bakers Artist award was... for me very like an honor.

It's one of those artists awards in Baltimore and Maryland that I feel like... you don't get unless you're goated, you know like, it's you know, it's one of the most major prominent awards in the city and across the state, so I just felt really honored to get it, and I felt like... You know, certified to finally be able to get um, such a prestigious artists award.

♪ ♪ WENDEL: Let's hear from some of the winners from last year to hear about how the Baker Award has impacted them.

ERNEST SHAW: Winning the Baker Award, first it validated my career, decades of work in the city.

PAMELA: The, uh, cash award was a significant portion of my annual income.

Got me the attention of other museums, it was voted top five shows in the area.

MENG SU: It was my great honor to receive the Baker Artist award.

This award made it possible for me to get a new guitar from the famous German luthier Julian Dammann.

And it is a beautiful guitar and powerful guitar, and I've enjoyed playing it in concerts in the US, Europe, and in China.

So thank you very much Baker Artist Award.

WENDEL: Let's take a look at the work of Jordan Tierney, who finds inspiration for her work in the streams of Maryland.

JORDAN TIERNEY: So I made up a term called, I call myself a symbiocene epic shaman.

And it's because I inhabit the limbo zones between where we all live and work and drive, and the sort of forgotten, neglected, abused pieces of land that are... no one goes to.

Like by the railroad and the highway.

I feel like we all have so many ways of communicating, and some of it is going down to the White House or the Capitol and protesting with signs and yelling.

And others of it is a tiny books of poetry.

And my method is art.

And so it enables me to bring up difficult subjects with people, you know, about the environment or social justice, um, by making something that's kind of alluring and mysterious and strange.

And then it can open up a door for their imagination and we can have a different kind of conversation.

So, I call this "The Luminous Eggshell Where I Incubate Ideas".

And it allows me to go on my walks and drag all of the sort of, trash and broken things back from the stream, and sort them and catalog them and um, then... yeah, build it all into something new.

It's kind of governed by the things I find in the stream, because the stream holds all of the things that humans have let go of.

Um, you know, cans of soda uh bottles, uh boxer shorts, uh bicycles, parts of cars.

So it's in a way of an archaeological dig when you go out there, and it's telling the story of what are humans up to.

It's also at the same time mixed in with the power of nature when it floods from storms um, when you find um, a heron pellet from... and you can pick it apart and see what they ate.

Um, there's so many stories out there so I just try to bring that magic home and um, you know, share it with other people.

I love it because that website allows Baltimore to showcase all of the fabulous creative people that we have here, and it's huge.

Um, it's so rich with people doing amazing things, so I appreciate it for that.

And um, I turn 60 this year, I've been making art for decades and so it was awfully nice to get that phone call to say hey we see you we appreciate it and here you go.

Yeah, what an honor.

♪ WENDEL: And now, please join me for a conversation with president of the William G Baker Jr Memorial Fund board, Connie Imboden.

Connie, it's a pleasure to see you again.

CONNIE IMBODEN: Oh, it's so good to see you too Wendel.

It's nice to be with you again.

WENDEL: Have you had a good year?

CONNIE: Very good year, thanks for asking.

And you, I know you've been busy.

WENDEL: I have been uh, I've been a little bit busy, it's been a good year.

CONNIE: Good, good.

WENDEL: So what are some of the hopes that you had when you started the Baker program?

And were there any potential challenges that you saw on the horizon as well?

CONNIE: We started with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, and I have to give a big shout out to them because without them it would have never started, and without them it wouldn't be here today.

We have a tremendous partnership and over the years our respect for them has just grown and grown.

So we wanted to do an online portfolio that would be strong enough that artists could put up several different works, different portfolios, uh, resume, a statement, and actually use the site as their own um website, their own personal website.

And I'm thrilled to say that many artists have done that.

Uh, when we started, we wanted to do not just Visual Arts which of course are easy to showcase online.

We wanted to challenge ourselves a bit so we wanted to do all media.

Performance, music, literary, and each one of those comes with its own special challenge.

To be able to show the work adequately, and to protect it from copyrights and such.

And I'm, I'm uh, so pleased that with the um, the generous feedback from our artists, and the brilliance of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, we now have a website that can host so many different media, can serve as personal websites.

WENDEL: Why are the Baker Awards so important in this day and age?

CONNIE: Well I love that question because essentially you're asking me why is art important?

And I'd like to take a, a bigger point of view looking at history.

There are different ways that we measure history, one is through our wars.

World War I and World War II, Vietnam.

And the other way is through cultural movements.

Such as impressionism, modernism, post-modernism, pop art.

But war is about destruction and division.

And art, the purpose of art is to communicate and to connect people.

Art can, can give us access to complex emotions such as joy and ecstasy, um sorrow and loss, and everything in between.

Feelings that are basic to being a human.

Feelings we all have, or will have to some extent in our lives.

Art gives us access to those feelings, to help us understand and process those feelings.

For example, listening to music, the music can take you, can give you an experience that takes you beyond the boundary of words.

And gives, gives the opportunity for that connection, and that connection is what it really is all about.

Connection to oneself and connection to others through exhibitions, through performances.

Connection is so important to us, once we connect with ourselves and with each other, I think it's impossible to hate and to divide.

So, I think art is essential not just to enhance our lives, but to live our lives.

And that's what the Baker Artists are all about.

To support the arts, to support connection.

WENDEL: It's like a family, and it's wonderful to see the family continue to grow.

And it's wonderful to have you continue to be at the helm of that.

CONNIE: Thank you.

WENDEL: Let's now take a look at Oletha Devane, whose work is inspired by social justice, African roots, and voodoo.

OLETHA DEVANE: Hi, I'm Oletha Devane, and I am a multidisciplinary artist.

I actually have been working for over four decades as an artist, if not longer.

And I uh, tend to do a lot of work that revolves around issues that are uh, focused on spirituality.

The frailty of our human existence.

All those things that tend to want to bring us to a point where we know and understand our human dilemmas.

So that's what I think I do.

So what really becomes important is, what am I trying to say by selecting something or selecting a certain aspect of a um, a piece.

I'm very interested in the African diaspora because that's you know, that's where I'm from and what I know.

And so in looking at you know, cultural uh, markers.

Voodoo for one, I always felt like it was a misrepresented religion.

So we are really at this beginning stage of trying to understand our spiritual connections to not only nature but what were those religions themselves about, you know.

They were, they were a function of our humaneness.

First of all I've been incredibly honored, you know, I'm honored to be among the artists that they've selected.

I feel as if it's an opportunity to connect with the artists, you know, that are part of the Baker.

I found one of the artists, we, we actually got so excited, we were you know friends on Facebook, never saw each other right?

But we were at an event for Bmore Art, we got so excited you know, just to talk to each other.

And it was like meeting, meeting you know, someone who is who is part of your soul, you know.

I always felt like, you know that, that to me has always been a wonderful connection about Baltimore.

We think we know each other, but in many ways it's always through our art that we know each other.

That's how we know each other.

And it's pretty amazing.

WENDEL: We now look at Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, winner of the Mary Sawyers Imboden prize, who takes inspiration from her community at large.

ELIZABETH EVITTS DICKINSON: My name is Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, I'm a literary artist and a writer, and I am the recipient of the Mary Sawyers Imboden prize.

You know what's interesting is I think that when people hear you're a writer, they assume that there's a lot of quiet time with books and reading.

Of course, that was the way it was for me, books saved me as a kid.

And my father who was a historian, whenever I had a question always said "go to the books."

But I think what's really... what people forget is that it's really narrative storytelling.

And writing can be listened to, it can be audial, you know.

It can be tactile, it can be um, not just a book that you quietly read but something that has different elements to it.

And I think I really love some of the mixed media artists in our city, particularly who kind of play with both words and the visual arts as well.

I don't think about writing as just the written word, I think of it as a way for us to encapsulate and structure our narratives and our stories, so that we can share them with one another.

I think the word that best describes me really is "curious", I keep coming back to that word.

Because I always have those questions.

I was the kid that asked way too many questions, and so I think that's why I became a journalist in the beginning, but then why I also ended up becoming a fiction writer, and a memoirist, and an essayist, because the questions needed different ways to get out.

And so, curiosity has really been the thing that's driven my creative practice.

I'm currently working on a book, it's going to be published in 2025.

It's um, due to my editor in a few months, so it's an interesting and fun time.

I'm literally in the act of writing it.

It's a fascinating story and... talking about how Maryland inspires.

The story is about a mid-century fashion designer named Claire McCardell, who actually was born in Frederick but made her name in New York.

And it's the story of a woman who effectively invented American fashion, but whose name has been forgotten.

And it's about this constellation of extraordinary women in the 30s and 40s who worked to build what is the fashion industry today, and unfortunately a lot of women's stories have been forgotten, and this is one that I look forward to revisiting so that people know who she was.

What I love about this photo of Claire McCardell, this is her in her office, in New York in the 50s.

Notice her hand is in a pocket.

It seems like such a small thing to give a woman a pocket in her clothes, but it's really a challenge, ask any woman today if she has a pocket in what she's wearing.

And she was always very much thinking about women's independence and how they can move freely in the world, do their jobs, live their lives, and look good and be comfortable doing it.

The goal of the Baker Artist prize isn't just about who's going to win, it's also about the ability to put your work out into the world.

You know, we were born to be artists all of us, and I think we forget that.

I've been lucky enough to do some scientific research around neuroesthetics, just the way we're learning about the literal ways our bodies are wired for art.

To read a book and suddenly you come alive, because somebody created something that speaks to you...

I feel like the arts are integral to everything we are as human beings.

WENDEL: I hope you've enjoyed this special edition of "Artworks", where we celebrate the phenomenal artistry of the 2023 Baker Artist Award winners.

I'm Wendel Patrick, your host of "Artworks", thank you for joining us and we'll see you again next year.

♪