The theme was the American flag, but not all the art was Yankee Doodle dandy.
Christina Batipps showed a map of Texas with stars in the background and stripes along the southern border to indicate where a fence will be constructed to keep out illegal immigrants.
A collage by Halide Salam intersperses symbols of the American dream with scenes of tortured prisoners at the now-shuttered Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Susan Brandt transformed an American flag into a burqa, a long, enveloping garment traditionally worn by some Muslim women and a sign to many Westerners of the women's oppression.
These and other works are featured in the inaugural exhibition at Galerie Myrtis (pronounced "Mur-teese"), a new Baltimore gallery whose owner doesn't shy away from art that provides social and political commentary. To the contrary, she welcomes it.
"We're going to have the pretty pieces that you can put above the sofa," said Myrtis Bedolla, the founding director. "But we want to take it beyond that, to use art as a tool to educate and inform. I believe in freedom of expression."
With this exhibit, Stars and Stripes: Pride or Despair, Bedolla is planting a flag of her own.
Her gallery, which occupies the first floor of a Victorian-era town house at 2224 N. Charles St., replaces one she had on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The building is part of the Old Goucher historic district and just north of the Station North Arts and Entertainment District. Bedolla said she was familiar with Baltimore and its arts scene because she has taken courses at the Maryland Institute College of Art and gotten to know local artists.
A native of Chicago, Bedolla said she has a background in business, not fine art. Besides running the Washington gallery, she has worked as an art consultant, independent curator and artists' representative. She runs a separate arts consulting firm, called Creative Artisans, which also moved to Charles Street.
Bedolla lives above the gallery with her husband, a computer systems expert who works in Bethesda, and one of her sons. She has been renovating the gallery space for the past two years and officially opened it Aug. 30.
Bedolla said the gallery will feature contemporary works by some of the artists she represented in Washington as well as new ones - from emerging to mid-career painters, sculptors and photographers.
