Natural hair has always held a fascination for Murjoni Merriweather, who incorporates African American hairstyles – afros, braids, cornrows, puffballs -into her gracefully elongated ceramic figures. “I come from a majority black community so I base a lot of my art work around my own culture,” says Merriweather, 19, who resembles her creations. She is a sophomore in the ceramics program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
Centennial Park located just off Route 108 in Ellicott City, comprises 337 acres, and features a 54-acre, man-made lake which contains a wildlife management area. Home to over 200 kinds of birds, ducks and geese, as well as other wildlife, the lake is stocked with fish by the State Department of Fisheries. The 2.6-mile path surrounding the man-made gem also offers beautiful vistas in every direction.
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My favorite place as a child was splashing in the ocean with my siblings in Cape May, New Jersey in the 1950’s, making sandcastles and burying each other in the sand.
Like ancient striated canyons shaped from water pulsing through the earth, David Knopp’s wood sculptures form flowing layers that evoke the essence of the natural world. The veneered pieces suggest movement, like wind rustling a branch, or waves swirling in a stormy ocean. Both artistic and practical, the sculptures serve as tables, chairs and lamps. “I just like the idea of functionality in art. I always have,” Knopp says. Only one of the 20 or so wood items is purely aesthetic: “Metamorphosis,” a thirteen-foot colossus, took about six months to complete
On Commencement Day, Towson University graduates express their creativity by decorating their mortarboards with messages of thanks to parents, friends, the Almighty, and even coffee.
When it comes to doll repair, Sandy Hohne can do it all, and quickly, too. She sculpts, paints, patches, makes wigs, and replaces eyes and teeth. In her Cockeysville work room, Hohne repairs dolls made in the early 1800’s up to the present. Her tools include a drill press and band saw for replacing doll parts, even surgical clamps for restringing the arms and legs.
For the first time since 2000, the Department of Natural Resources endorsed extending the oyster harvesting season in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries for Maryland watermen. This was due to the harsh winter that froze those waters, causing watermen to miss a good portion of the season. Also, for the first time in six years, state regulators opened up Kent Narrows to shellfish harvesting. It is a rare case for watermen to gain a new area to tong for the prized oysters.
Bursts of colors explode from Gyleen Fitzgerald’s quilts as she unfurls them one after the other, revealing splashes of vibrant reds, blues, greens, yellows and purples. Each quilt displays a different design, each as beautiful as the next. At twenty-three, Gyleen Fitzgerald took up quilting for one reason: she was bored. Having just moved to Joppatowne from Philadelphia with no local family or friends, she signed up for a quilting class. Thirty-three years and hundreds of quilts later, she no longer has time to be bored.
By day they are gallery curators, massage therapists, graduate students, administrative assistants and scientific illustrators. But on Monday nights, they were salsa dancers. On a frigid February evening, they came for the last time to the weekly salsa party at the Harbor East restaurant Talara, The nuevo-Latino is scheduled to close on Saturday. More than 100 dancers showed up. Most were veterans, but some had come for the first time. They twirled, spun, twisted with careful foot movements. Most did anyway. Some slow-danced like they were at the prom. There’s talk of relocating the weekly salsa party elsewhere, but for now, this was it.
Richard Gorelick
For more information about salsa go to www.facebook.com/SentimientoDanceTeam
The demolition of the L Blast Furnace at Bethlehem Steel in Sparrows Point recently brought about the end of an era to a Baltimore County icon. The mill was a place where generations of steel making families worked. During its many years of operation The Baltimore Sun has been there to document the company from industry giant to its final collapse. The Darkroom decided to take a look back at some of the memorable photos over the decades.
Baltimore neighborhoods
Baltimore street photographers
Year in review
Freddie Gray: protests, aftermath
24 hours with...
A. Aubrey Bodine
Viewing Baltimore from above