Thursday June 5 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS

Liz Downing: Shadow Mother
Psychotherapy by way of Toy Theater with voice, banjo, and puppetry. The setting is the dark, infinite land of the Id. One puppet is "Self" who speaks and the other is “Shadow Mother,” who sings.  

Emma Elizabeth Downing is an image maker, using singing/songwriting, banjoing and painting to create musical performances, plays and Toy Theater. She seeks to make good use of all of her skills, mine the universal psyche, and create art in rich collaborations. Elizabeth grew up in a small town, Alabama working in the the family Motel, singing in a Methodist Youth Choir, touring nursing homes, prisons, and childrens' hospitals. This was a formative idea of how to leave home, how to move people to tears, how to tell a story. She thought of becoming an evangelist, but instead became a painter graduating from Auburn University in Alabama. She then came to Baltimore to study under Grace Hartigan at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Here, Elizabeth joined with other artists and their collaborative efforts led to peformance art, hillbillie operas, story cycle concerts, parades and a lifetime of future collaborations.

Alicia Puglionesi and Carrie Fucile: Circles In Absolute Night
The story of descending into a cave with spoken word, live sound, and projected video. Why do we put faith in false promises and what is it like to be a rock? We will shed light on these questions.

Alicia Puglionesi is a writer, historian, and Baltimore resident. She studies the history of knowledge-making and mystery in the human sciences. Her second book, In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire (2022), examines four sites of resource extraction that also yielded scientific and spiritual narratives core to US settler-colonialism. Her first book is Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science(2020). Other writing, scholarly and journalistic, deals with mediumship, haunting, and memory in the American landscape. Puglionesi works as a lecturer in an undergraduate medical humanities program, as a researcher and curator, and in the production of poems.

Carrie Fucile is a sound artist who creates installation, sculpture, performance, and experimental music. Her research investigates how memories embodied in objects, architecture, and landscapes have sustained cultural resonance. The creative efforts that result interpret the effects of political power, technological shifts, and global economics on the human condition. Ultimately her work seeks to expose how traces of the past continue to live with us in the present. Fucile has presented her work at venues that include The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; Rhizome DC, Washington, DC; Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; Casa Contemporânea, São Paulo, BR; and the Director's Lounge, Berlin, DE. Among other honors, she is a three-time recipient of the Maryland State Art Council’s Individual Artist Award. She has completed residencies and workshops at The World Is Sound in the Czech Republic, World of CO in Bulgaria, and  D’CLINIC in Hungary.  She lives and works in Baltimore, MD.

Erik Ruin: All That Is Solid
An audio-visual environment that layers/juxtaposes quietly transcendentalist video observations of everyday life alongside hand-drawn animations and cut paper projections. A series of reckonings with the state of the state, the self, society, the environment, the interpenetration and complicity of them/us all.

Erik Ruin is a Michigan-raised, Philadelphia-based printmaker, shadow puppeteer, paper-cut artist, etc., who has been lauded by the New York Times for his "spell-binding cut-paper animations." His work oscillates between the poles of apocalyptic anxieties and utopian yearnings, with an emphasis on empathy, transcendence and obsessive detail. He frequently works collaboratively with musicians, theater performers, other artists and activist campaigns. He is a founding member of the international Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, and co-author of the book Paths Toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism (w/ Cindy Milstein, PM Press, 2012). Current projects include the Ominous Cloud Ensemble, an ever-evolving, collectively-improvising large ensemble for projections and music. His work has been recognized with grants from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, nominations for the Art Matters and United States Artists fellowships, and residencies at the Macdowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, AS220, and 40th st AIR.