Towering above Charles Street, displayed for all to see, a project that pairs words and art plays out.
Images flash on the LED billboard – birds, slivers of faces, abstract objects that are full of color or shaded in black and white. With them come phrases that read like poetry.
“Red winged blackbird / you are not an oriole…” begins one.
“My father taught me how to box….a manly art meted out / in the half-light of our garage,” is another.
These slides are a part of the
Baltimore Ekphrasis Project, a collaboration between the Baltimore LED Art Billboard and the online journal The Light Ekfrastic. Sixty-six artists and writers paired up and created new work based on the work of their partners.
The project is in its first days, and will run through the week of April 6. Each week, the billboard features the work of roughly 16 artists and writers who were paired randomly, said Jenny O’Grady, editor of
The Light Ekfrastic, a quarterly journal that emphasizes collaboration between art and the written word.
They come from all walks of life – some are professionals, others are students, and some just love to create, O’Grady says. One artist’s job is making power tools, for instance.
“You’re never quite sure what’s going to happen with a project like this,” she says, adding she’s been more than impressed with the uniqueness and creativity that resulted.
She hopes it will inspire those who walk or drive by the Charles North neighborhood, whose eyes are caught by the art above them.