Artscape

Street closures The following street closings have been planned for the Artscape festival through the weekend.

A half-dozen artists, ranging from a sculptor specializing in what he calls "tombstones for a cemetery that has turned carnival" to a photographer focusing on abandoned spaces and objects, have been announced as finalists for this year's $30,000 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. Finalists for the seventh annual prize, awarded to an artist living and working in the Greater Baltimore area, are: Lisa Dillin , a Silver Spring native raised in the Annapolis area whose interdisciplinary work stems from her interest in what organizers termed "the psychology of the contemporary individual contrasted with that of the primitive one. " She is on the adjunct faculty of the Corcoran College of Art + Design and American University inWashington, D.C. Jonathan Duff , who will be receiving his master's degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art 's Mount Royal School of Art in May, is a 2008 graduate of the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota whose sculptures and paintings have been exhibited throughout the Minneapolis area.

In Friday's paper, you wrote that various prizes "make Artscape a magnet for high-quality entries from artists across the region and raise the city's profile as a cultural destination. " Huh? I was at Artscape on Saturday. I estimate that about one-third of all booths were selling commercial products, including two home improvement companies peddling new windows, two auto companies displaying new cars, at least two banks (neither were local), a booth displaying electric fans and vacuum cleaners, and trucks promoting razor blades and hot dogs.

WESTMINSTER - The Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts has announced that Steve Pearson, an associate professor of art and art history at McDaniel College, and a Westminster resident, has been named among 24 semifinalists for the seventh annual Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. The competition awards a $25,000 fellowship to assist in furthering the career of a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Baltimore region. Pearson is a painter who has taught various art courses since 2004.

Today, it's hard to imagine Baltimore without Artscape, the city's annual outdoor festival of the arts that begins Friday. In the three decades since its founding, the great gathering in the heart of midtown's arts district has become part of the warp and woof of this city's cultural fabric, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year with a multicultural mix of big-name musical acts, cutting-edge artworks and spicy foods. It's been billed as the one time each year when people from every part of the city converge to enjoy themselves and each others' company, and it's altogether fitting that music and art are what make such a celebration possible.

Artscape kicked off its lineup of headlining acts with Fantasia Barrino, an R&B singer who found fame and a solid fan base on the third season of popular show “American Idol.”  Barrino kept her set-up simple; rather than trick out the stage with nifty high tech gadgets, the R&B singer ensured that all audience attention was on her. The stripped down stage suited her and kept the atmosphere intimate, despite the mass of eager fans and families...

There's so much to do at Artscape every year — and more than ever this year — but sometimes it can be hard to know where to start. The festival, in its 29th year, is awash in entertainment options, including comedic performances in the new LOL@Artscape, experimental music at the Exotic Hypnotic stage and the new BetaScape, a three-day series of demonstrations on technology, particularly robots and video games. In addition, artisans will showcast their wares — check out the custom pet portraits provided by Fuzzy Mug — and runways will display local and regional fashions.

Jim Lucio is the guy who introduced Baltimore to cranberry sauce wrestling, at an event that he named The Nightmare Before Thanksgiving. He is the man with the knack for coming up with wildly inventive, tongue-in-cheek names for bands: Joyce de Salvo and the Telemarketers, Wayne Mutant and Miracle Whip. And it was Lucio who organized a mass pillow fight that took place during a rock concert in which, presumably, all the feathers flying around performed double duty as soundproofing insulation.

One of the many costumed people at Artscape over the weekend, by flickr user @rockndroll . To see your nightlife and music photos on Midnight Sun, join our flickr pool or e-mail me directly. A longer gallery of Artscape photos can be found here .

I also have to agree with a letter from Ed of Baltimore ( "Where's the art at Artscape" July 20). My wife and I have gone to the Artscape at least three other times and found it enjoyable. This time we were very disappointed with what we saw. We saw very little art and a lot of commercial setups. Why would I want to spend my time walking around and see everyday companies at this event? There was very little art, a lot of food vendors, and women's clothing, jewelry and other companies promoting their goods.

This summer, the Baltimore artist Robert McClintock can see one of his brightly colored original prints hanging in the prestigious Smithsonian Institution. He just can't get into Artscape. The 54-year-old McClintock is one of Baltimore's most popular — and populist — artists. Though his images of golden retrievers, local landmarks, firefighters and football players can be purchased for as little as $12, people buy enough of them to provide McClintock with gross annual sales that he describes as being in the high six figures.

Washington D.C. is getting its own Starscape. Called Fall Massive, the indoor electronic music festival, billed as DC's largest, is set for November 26 at RFK Stadium and boasts dozens of top DJs, including Moby, Diplo, Martin Solveig and Baltimore's own Scottie B. The one-day festival, which starts at 4 p.m. and ends at 2 a.m., is from Steez Promo and Ultraworld, the promoters behind Starscape, which just celebrated its 13th year....

Artist Gary Kachadourian loves homely things. He appreciates modest, utilitarian objects that don't call attention to themselves, objects that frequently are described as ugly but that are undeniably functional: Dumpsters, highway barriers, chain-link fences. His black-and-white renditions of these familiar sights, blown up to the size of life and on display through Oct. 2, immediately conveys viewers to a world of surfaces and conveys nostalgia for a Baltimore that never existed.

Imagine the crowds that attend Artscape and the city marathon. Add the throngs drawn by Barack Obama's pre-inaugural visit. Mix in a few ethnic festivals and a bunch of holiday parades, and you get a sense of the transportation tangle Baltimore faces when open-wheeled racing comes to town. The city's first venture into Indy car street racing — to run for three days beginning Friday — will tie up traffic for much of a week and disrupt transit patterns for at least five days when the Baltimore Grand Prix turns some of the busiest downtown thoroughfares into a racetrack.

Imagine a city in which the streets always ran smoothly, with no interruptions for special events. Boring! I get a lot of complaints about the traffic disruptions caused by one event or another taking place in Baltimore. If it's not Artscape or the Book Fair, it's an ethnic festival. If it's not the Baltimore Marathon, it's the Preakness. And then there's the Labor Day weekend Grand Prix , which will find me thousands of miles away in blissful — if coincidental — avoidance.

I also have to agree with a letter from Ed of Baltimore ( "Where's the art at Artscape" July 20). My wife and I have gone to the Artscape at least three other times and found it enjoyable. This time we were very disappointed with what we saw. We saw very little art and a lot of commercial setups. Why would I want to spend my time walking around and see everyday companies at this event? There was very little art, a lot of food vendors, and women's clothing, jewelry and other companies promoting their goods.

As of 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the westbound lane of U.S. 40 was closed at Johnnycake Road for emergency repair of a water main leak. City Public Works employees are trying to repair the leak in the 36-inch main without shutting off water service to nearby customers, spokesman Kurt Kocher said. Otherwise, no major accidents were reported on Maryland highways. A few streets around the Mount Royal cultural district in midtown Baltimore remain closed due to the Artscape festival last weekend and are expected to reopen by 4 p.m. today.

In Friday's paper, you wrote that various prizes "make Artscape a magnet for high-quality entries from artists across the region and raise the city's profile as a cultural destination. " Huh? I was at Artscape on Saturday. I estimate that about one-third of all booths were selling commercial products, including two home improvement companies peddling new windows, two auto companies displaying new cars, at least two banks (neither were local), a booth displaying electric fans and vacuum cleaners, and trucks promoting razor blades and hot dogs.