The demonstration at City Hall overflowed its expansive grass plaza. Protestors wearing hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin and carrying signs that read “I Can’t Breathe”—the last words of Eric Garner—stretched to the War Memorial Building. Some of the crowd, which had marched from Gilmor Homes, dispersed after the planned rally. Others headed to Camden Yards.

“That’s where all the police were stationed to make sure we didn’t mess up the game,” recalls Devin Allen, then just a year older than Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old from West Baltimore who had succumbed to injuries suffered in police custody six days earlier.

A self-taught, independent photographer still new to documenting protests, Allen had friends who, like Gray, lived in the sprawling Gilmor public-housing complex. He, too, had once been arrested and been given a so-called “rough ride,” and he knew one of young women screaming out in the viral video of Gray’s arrest.

As protestors pushed past the ballpark’s outdoor bars, both Orioles and visiting Red Sox fans began taunting them—laughing, and throwing food and drinks.

“It became this clash of Black protestors, 17, 18 years old, early 20s, and fans calling us the N-word and monkeys—stuff these young guys never  heard directed at them from white lips,” Allen says. “It was like the last drop in a bucket that overflows. Fights break out. Windows are smashed. The police cars blocking everyone in get stomped.”

To save space on the small 8-gigabyte memory cards he could afford, Allen picked his shots. At one point, he saw a young man with a red bandana covering his face throw something at a line of riot gear-clad police.

“I was about to take a picture right then, but let him run toward me instead,” Allen says. “I’m thinking in that moment, and I’m not thinking. It’s muscle memory. It’s instinct. I snap the picture. I look down at the image and now I’ve got to go—the police are charging, and I hop over this gate.”

He’d been documenting and uploading to social media all day and posted the image to Twitter and Instagram. While everything was still unfolding, he wrote, “We are sick & tired.”

He shot until the sun went down and woke up with more than 10,000 new followers. The BBC called the next morning to interview him about police brutality and the city’s protests. Allen had been covering all the events following Gray’s arrest and subsequent death for a week. However, he chose not to photograph Gray’s funeral two days after the confrontation at Camden Yards.

“I’d lost too many friends. To me, it would’ve been disrespectful.”

Nor did Allen shoot the destruction that followed. “Photographers, TV cameras were coming to Baltimore, with everyone focused on the CVS that was burning” at the busy intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues, he says. “I knew people in that area, and in the Mondawmin community where things started when Frederick Douglass High students got out of school that day and the system shut down their buses. I lived, and still live, five minutes away. I needed to check on my friends. I tell people I mentor that being a good photographer is sometimes about the pictures you don’t take.”

That night, Allen went to work at the group home where he helped supervise individuals with developmental disabilities. The next morning, his phone blew up with calls from a blocked number, which turned out to be Time magazine.

His photo of the young guy in the red bandana would soon be on its the cover.

“I think people forget that the protests began before Freddie Gray passed,” says Allen, reflecting on one of the most momentous events in the city’s history after a recent discussion of Black voices in the media at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. He notes that the initial demonstrations were not that large. Mostly, they involved Gray’s family and friends, people from his Sandtown-Winchester community, and others from the People’s Power Assembly gathering in front of the Western District Police Station.

“The week he died, they started getting bigger and bigger,” Allen continues. “That whole of 2015 and into the summer of 2016 was a depressing period in a lot of ways, but activists, people in the community, we dubbed it the Baltimore Uprising. That wasn’t outsiders. That was us. It didn’t become ‘the riots.’ We in the city, we wanted to shape and own our narrative and not have others do that for us, or to us.”

In fact, what made Allen most proud of his Time cover was not the affirmation of his budding talent. He was only the third amateur photographer to ever land the then-92-year-old magazine’s front page. Nor was it the money. He admittedly knew nothing of copyrights and fee scales. What mattered was that his pictures, which were also featured inside the magazine, had not been reframed to fit some pre-existing reputation of his hometown. (See: The Wire.)

“I only wanted the work­—real imagery from real Baltimore, from the ground up—to get out into the world and it did.”

At the same time, as soon as the news broke on social media that an amateur West Baltimore photographer had snagged the cover of Time, professional documentary photographers and journalists started posting things like “you’ll never hear from him again” and “he’s going to disappear.” Some shared the sentiment to him face to face.

Instead, the magazine interviewed him and shared more of his photos for its LightBox blog. Allen followed that up with a Time photo essay called “The Heart of the City,” which put flesh on the Baltimore that he knew with intimate portraits from Gilmor Homes, Sandtown-Winchester, and Pennsylvania Avenue.

In July 2015, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum hosted his first solo exhibition. In August 2015, Under Armour hired him to shoot NBA star and brand ambassador Steph Curry on a trip to Asia—Allen’s first trip outside the U.S. Though he normally shoots in black-and-white, Allen switched to color for that campaign as opportunities and his photography continued to evolve. He visited Japan, China, and the Philippines, and Austria, as well, where he shot a Syrian refugee camp filled with families trying to get to Germany.

“I ONLY WANTED REAL IMAGERY FROM REAL BALTIMORE TO GET OUT INTO THE WORLD AND IT DID.”

By the end of the whirlwind year, his work had been featured in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and acquired by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, with additional exhibitions in Washington, D.C., and New York.

Along the way, he also managed to launch a youth program, giving out free cameras and teaching photography to city kids with little connection to art. And when Def Jam Recordings co-founder Russell Simmons learned of the GoFundMe page that Allen had put together to support the project, he wrote him a check for $20,000.

A singular Baltimore career was just getting started.

In 2017, Allen’s first hardcover book, A Beautiful Ghetto, with an introduction from his close friend, the Baltimore writer D. Watkins, was published and subsequently nominated for an NAACP Image Award. His third hardcover book, Devin Allen: Baltimore, supported through the Gordon Parks Foundation and a Steidl Book Prize grant, is due out this spring, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Uprising.

The collection is essentially an early retrospective of Allen’s career from Steidl, one of the most prestigious publishers of fine-art photobooks in the world. The book includes portraits, images of protests, and scenes of city street life from 2014 to 2023, including a few from Allen’s January show at Charles Street’s Galerie Myrtis, which represents him, and many never published before.

“There’s a trust and there’s a collaboration going on between Devin and his subjects,” says Peter Kunhardt Jr., executive director of the Gordon Parks Foundation, which made Allen its inaugural fellow in 2017. A self-taught photographer whose career continues to inspire Allen, Parks is considered perhaps the greatest Black photographer of the 20th century. “That’s also why Gordon Parks was so successful, because he was able to capture moments that were quite personal and complicated, and he was able to make sure that his subjects trusted him, and it’s very clear that Devin has that same skill.”

One of the projects Allen is currently working on is a series around his maternal grandmother, Doris, who let him put his first camera on her Best Buy credit card. She was, coincidentally, his first introduction into photography. The family’s informal documentarian, his grandmother had been snapping photos on Christmas morning, at Easter, during July 4th cookouts, for his entire life, always keeping a camera in her vicinity. Allen’s mother, Gail, typically wrote the captions.

Now suffering from dementia, Doris attended every show and gallery talk when his career took off. Allen, who has been renovating her home, has since come across dozens of his grandmother’s pictures, including some from her Douglass High graduation and wedding. She kept everything, he learned, including magazine and newspaper clippings of all of his work, which he found in a large Ziploc bag.

Baltimore, Allen says, is a city that can be beautiful, big-hearted, and close-knit, i.e. “Smalltimore,” and he considers himself fortunate to grow up where and when he did, and certainly with the family he had. He rode bikes as a kid, took karate lessons to be like a Ninja Turtle, and played Little League baseball.

But it’s also a city that leaves scars, and he witnessed and experienced plenty of pain and trauma as a child growing up through Baltimore’s AIDS and crack epidemics.

“I was blessed where I had a good mom, a good grandmother, an active uncle, and I had aunts in my life,” says Allen, whose disarming smile and affable nature belie the seriousness and intentionality of his work. “But that’s not the same for a lot of my peers growing up.”

He mentions a friend who lost both parents to heroin overdoses. Another who had to raise his little brothers and sisters. He estimates he’s lost 20 friends to gun violence, adding he’s had friends who have killed other friends.

“Baltimore is one of those places where sometimes you grow up with a chip on your shoulder from going through so much pain and so many trials and tribulations,” he says. People will be like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe a person did this and did that.’ But you don’t know what that person might have been through. That’s one of the things when you’re dealing with people like Freddie Gray [who suffered lead paint poisoning as a child] and others in the community. They got their own traumas, and during the Uprising, all that pain was released at one time.”

When he says that photography saved his life, he means it literally. Two years before the events of 2015, Allen lost his two of his closest friends to gun violence over the same weekend. One was shot seven times in front of a family member’s home. The other was killed outside of a store the next day. If Allen, who had hustled and sold drugs as a teenager and knew his way around the city’s street corners, hadn’t been shooting photographs that afternoon, he most likely would’ve been with him.

He had been shot at himself before, but after the birth of his daughter, recognized he needed to change. His mother helped him get him a job “pushing paper” at Transamerica. Not surprisingly, he found it boring, and when the life insurance company laid him off after three years, it proved a turning point.

A self-described “follower” in school, he first tried expressing himself through poetry (“I was terrible”) and spoken-word (“I hated performing”), but nonetheless found a supportive arts community in the Hollins Market district. When he later borrowed a buddy’s Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot, he realized he’d finally found his medium (“he had to ask for it back”).

Many of the friends he grew up with didn’t understand his passion for art and dismissed his efforts to become a photographer. They told him he was too old, the window for getting into an art institute or a school like Maryland Institute College of Art had closed. Not his grandmother, however.

“The name of her series is, She Saw Me Coming,” Allen says.

ALLEN’S WORK GOES AGAINST STEREOTYPES AND CELEBRATES THE DAY-TO-DAY BLACK EXPERIENCE, AND ITS TRADITIONS AND CULTURE.

D. Watkins, the Baltimore native and New York Times bestselling author of books like The Cook Up, The Beast Side, and Black Boy Smile, knew Allen before he became a photographer, when Allen and his crew were known for throwing popular parties on the city’s west side. He says one thing that people often forget is that Allen had begun garnering social media attention in Baltimore’s Black community for his photos and portraits before the Freddie Gray protests and Time cover.

“That photograph was not some lucky, random shot,” Watkins says. “A rank amateur could not have done that. He just wasn’t published.”

Allen had sent samples of his work to The Baltimore Sun and had never gotten as much as a reply. The former City Paper had at least sent a note back when they turned his work down.

“Devin will say, ‘My career was built on the broken back of Freddie Gray.’” Watkins says. “I challenge him on that. I don’t believe that.”

To Watkins, his longtime friend’s decade-long rise in the art world has been unique and sustained, because Allen, who admittedly considered moving to New York to further his career early on, remained committed to his community.

“He’s a success in the art world, but he’s not a guy from the art world, he’s a guy from the street,” Watkins says. “He moves like how we move outside. He talks to people, he asks questions, he doesn’t project any pretension. He doesn’t think he invented the camera—he loves the skill set and he loves what he’s able to do, but he respects people more.”

Watkins adds that when an artist, filmmaker, writer, or journalist is telling stories of places of struggle or people dealing with hardship, it is always a delicate matter. Many writers and artists don’t have any accountability to those people, and some get locked into the accolades or awards they want to win.

“I’ve been to galas with Devin where you look left and you see Usher, you look right and see Chelsea Clinton, you turn around and you bump into Gayle King,” he says. “That’s not who he is or why he does what he does. I’ve seen Devin at one of the New York events on Tuesday, and Thursday he’s back in Park Heights, at Gilmor Homes, over Whitelock, in those spaces shooting pictures or talking at a middle school.”

Myrtis Bedolla is the founder of Galerie Myrtis in Station North, which has represented Allen since 2022. The mission of her gallery supports the subjects and themes of his work, she says, providing a space and platform for its social, cultural, and political concerns. In turn, his work serves as a vehicle for discourse and discussions in the Black community.

She still remembers “the rawness” of Allen’s Time cover the first time she saw it. “I think we all felt the weight of what that image portrayed given Freddie Gray’s death,” says Bedolla. “But his photography was never solely about the Uprising and protest. Sometimes we need to look through his lens and voice for things, experiences, that are a bit more complicated.”

Allen’s work goes against stereotypes and celebrates the day-to-day Black experience, and its traditions and culture, she continues.

“Those stories and that imagery are also important,” says Bedolla. “It’s also important for Black children to see themselves portrayed in those positive images, too.”

To his credit, Allen has had the city’s youth in mind since he first had the opportunity to make an impact in their lives. Over the past decade, he’s given away more than 500 cameras and has visited more schools, taught more workshops, and mentored more students than can be counted. He says most people would be surprised by the number of kids who grow up in the inner city who have few photographs, unlike he did, simply of themselves and their families.

For his exhibition titled The Textures of Us at Galerie Myrtis earlier this year, Allen invited two of his mentees to participate with him, gladly yielding the stage to them during the show’s closing reception.

Photographer Joe Giordano, a Baltimore contributor and instructor at the Baltimore School for the Arts, says he’s taught several students who received their first camera from Allen. (Giordano, who shot the Uprising for the City Paper, shares an exhibition with Allen this month at the Creative Alliance.)

“Some kids are more comfortable with their phones,” Allen says. “So, when I give them a camera, it’s just like, all right, let me show you. But what I am trying to do is help them tell their story and own their truth.

“Everything that was happening in Baltimore 10 years ago, I was able to show the honest story. When I look back at some of the headlines or how they talked about Freddie Gray or how people were calling us thugs and these other things—through my imagery, you see it in a different light. It’s about speaking up for yourself. When I’m teaching, it’s more the history of photography, the importance of Black photographers and telling Black stories, and why we need to tell these stories. The technical stuff comes on the back end.”

“It’s funny,” Watkins says of Allen and his journey. “These kids, many people in the city, they know Devin because he has been in their neighborhood, to their school. And so, when he is on television, or they follow his Instagram and see good things happen for him or the awards he receives, they root for him.

“To me, that’s the part that is special. He’s not a politician, or a bigwig businessman, or even an NBA star, and I can name 10 of those from Baltimore. His story is powerful for people. He’s the guy from the trenches that picked up a camera and made it big.”

This year we celebrate our 50th Best of Baltimore issue—our biggest and boldest yet. Subscribe before 6/20 to guarantee your copy commemorating this milestone anniversary. 

When Jeffrey Kent moved into a luxury apartment overlooking Druid Hill Park in the ’80s, it was one of the nicest places he’d ever lived. It reminded him of a scene straight out of a Woody Allen film, with treetop views of Baltimore’s “Central Park.” Except for one thing. There was no art on the walls.

And he had ample time to stare at them. He’d just gotten fired from his day job at a Georgetown haberdashery, where he sold menswear, after being arrested for possession and conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He decided to make his own art and started creating bright, abstract acrylic paintings, often with words embedded in them, to hang in his apartment. Meanwhile, he continued hustling, because, as he put it recently, he still had rent to pay—and now lawyer fees.

“But then people started trying to buy the paintings,” Kent recalls. “People I was selling drugs to—lawyers and doctors and accountants—and the people I was buying drugs from, who had money from selling drugs…they started buying the paintings off my walls. So I had to keep making more.”

It worked out nicely. He fell in love with making art, and he’d also inadvertently given himself a business front. He could tell his family he was selling paintings. Kent never imagined then that art would one day become his life and that he’d influence so many people through his creative work and vision.

In the decades since, Kent has become a mentor for emerging artists, a lodestar for people looking to navigate the art world, and a liaison between working artists and collectors, ultimately being instrumental in putting Baltimore on the map of the art world.

He gave Amy Sherald her first studio space and worked alongside the artist who would become world-renowned for painting her Michelle Obama portrait, which is in the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Kent and Sherald remain close friends.

Kent also gave Jerrell Gibbs his first studio space, mentored him, and encouraged him to apply to MICA’s M.F.A. program in painting, despite the fact that Gibbs had not earned an undergraduate degree (after all, Kent had done it). Gibbs was later commissioned to paint the Elijah Cummings portrait for the U.S. Capitol and is now represented by the prestigious Chicago-based Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, which exhibited his work in a solo show in Paris this summer. Kent joined Gibbs there for the opening reception.

Kent set out to be a successful artist long ago—and he achieved that, with work in collections at the National Academy of Sciences and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, among several other institutions. But how he finds time to work on his craft—and still sleep—is something of a mystery, even to his assistant.

Because ultimately the work he’s become best known for is the sculpting of the Baltimore art world itself—as co-founder and co-director of Connect + Collect, chief curator at the recently reopened Peale museum, an adjunct professor at MICA, and founder of Accomplished Art Apprentices, among other roles. His quiet influence over the work and careers of so many artists—as well as collectors, curators, and gallerists—has grown and innovated our regional art scene.

“We all started under Jeffrey Kent at 120 Studio,” says Baltimore artist, author, and entrepreneur Chris Wilson. “He has this gift for giving advice, and he’s influenced a lot of artists’ careers heavily. He’s the king- and queen-maker.”

On a warm September day, Kent’s tall stature exudes a calm presence over his living room in Station North, where he takes a seat next to his assistant, Cleo Rose, at a glass table against a backdrop of art—a miniature who’s who gallery of the Baltimore art scene and beyond. Directly behind him is a work of his own, a floor-to-ceiling collage made of pages of O, The Oprah Magazine, with a large “O” painted over it in blue and a glossy, layered finish. The piece is part of a series, he explains, that will be included in his autobiography through art, which he’s been working on for years. The “Zero” series pays homage to a particular Winfrey show that told the stories of women who had quit their day jobs to live their dream—an episode that played in the back of Kent’s mind for years before he would essentially do the same thing.

Long before that, as a kid growing up in Baltimore, Kent found inspiration in the TV show Bewitched—in particular, the character Darrin Stephens, who worked at an advertising firm. Kent’s young-but-entrepreneurial-minded brain was intrigued.

“Of course, I had pipe dreams of doing something creative, because no one in my family thought it was a good idea,” Kent says. “I got no support growing up.”

“HE’S INFLUENCED A LOT OF ARTISTS’ CAREERS HEAVILY. HE’S THE KING- AND QUEEN-MAKER.”

After the wake-up call of his arrest, and the subsequent newfound passion for painting, Kent inquired about a vacant building on the corner of Baltimore and Charles streets that got heavy foot traffic. He had the idea—innovative at the time—to install his art in its storefront windows, as he felt ready for the public (not just drug dealers and his clientele) to see his work after two years of painting. The owners were not only excited by his proposition but asked if he’d be interested in operating a full-scale gallery inside.

“I’m like, I’m an artist. I’m not a gallerist. Like, what is this? They told me, ‘You don’t have to pay any rent, no electric, just get a phone and a sign.’ I’m like, I guess I can’t say no to that. So, that’s how I got my first art gallery, Hand Originals. It was really crazy.”

The new space became the impetus for Kent connecting with the Baltimore art scene and expanding his client base—and also for getting clean, after a brief relapse. He also learned he had a penchant for transforming spaces. After running Hand Originals, he moved into a studio in the Copycat Building and renovated the space so well that when the owner saw it, and realized what he could then get for it, he wanted to double Kent’s monthly rent, Kent recalls with a laugh.

Instead, Kent left and found another place to work, this time an 8,000-square-foot warehouse space in the Abell building on the corner of Baltimore and Eutaw streets. It had sat vacant for more than 25 years, he says, and he worked to transform it into a dream studio. The space was so inspiring that Kent, with that Oprah episode in mind, quit his day job selling cars to focus on art
full-time.

“I told myself I’d rather be dead than do anything else but make art for the rest of my life,” he says.

Fast-forward another 10 years of making art to 2008, and Kent was accepted into MICA’s graduate program in painting. He credits Leslie King-Hammond, then dean of the program, for giving him a deeper understanding of art and helping him to develop his skill for critique.

“She taught me so much about myself and my art,” Kent says. “MICA changed my life.”

At the same time, before, during, and after his schooling, Kent was running SubBasement Artist Studios, a huge live/work space on Howard Street that closed in 2014 after a decade in operation.

Cara Ober, founding editor and publisher at BmoreArt, discovered SubBasement as a grad student at MICA and was immediately impressed with what Kent was doing.

“It was really the only artist-run space that was effectively selling art. He was the first person selling Amy Sherald, who had a studio there. I remember at the time thinking, ‘Good God, these prices.’ Amy Sherald’s paintings were selling for $5,000. I was like, ‘These are gorgeous, but I don’t have $5,000,’” Ober says.

“So many artists were undervaluing and underpricing their work, and Jeffrey was like, ‘Nope. This is the price.’ And, as a result, the people who could buy, did…Jeffrey was the one person who was actively cultivating relationships with real estate developers and different kinds of collectors or, as he described it, ‘people in a position to support artists.’ People who could buy art for the price that it deserves to get. Is my husband mad at me that we didn’t buy any Amy Sherald back then? Yes. He’s like, ‘Why don’t you just buy everything Jeffrey buys?’ He’s right. Jeffrey just seems to have a sense of whose work is gonna blow up.”

In 2019, Kent and Ober would go on to found Connect + Collect, a program under BmoreArt that connects collectors to emerging artists in Baltimore through studio visits and talks, usually with Kent serving as host.

“Most collectors buy in New York or Basel or Miami,” Ober points out, “but a lot of these people are also buying a significant amount in Baltimore, and I think that is in large part because of Jeffrey.”

By the 2010s, Kent had gained a solid reputation for himself as an artist and curator and organically became the go-to mentor for young artists, especially Black men in Baltimore.

Devin Allen, for instance, after receiving national attention for his black-and-white photo of the Freddie Gray riots that appeared on the cover of Time magazine (he would land another Time cover in 2020), found himself wanting to evolve his art and break free from the limits of photography. He wanted to branch out into painting and sculpture and try different mediums. Like so many others, Allen reached out to Kent, whom he’d met a few years prior, and Kent gave him studio space, where he worked for three years.

“I didn’t go to MICA or any of that,” Allen says. “I hung with local rappers, I used to hang at the Crown, but I didn’t really know any artists. When I started experimenting with sculpture, I reached out to Jeffrey because he was one of the few artists I knew who worked in different mediums. I started playing with charcoal, I would sit and watch him paint, just to learn. But from there, he taught me how to make editions, how to sell art, how to price my work, and that led to him curating my first mixed-media show.

“I’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s not perfect,’ and Jeffrey was that vehicle that assured me that it doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needed to be great. He’d be like, ‘This is important work. Do it.’”

The mixed-media show, Spaces of the UnEntitled, was installed at The Peale museum in 2019. It was Allen’s first time showing color photographs, as well as multi-media performance art, a component created by Kent and Allen together.

“That was the show that showed people, ‘Oh, he’s able to move into these other spaces.’ It transformed the way people looked at my art and what I was capable of doing,” Allen says.

The exhibit was equally as meaningful for The Peale, where Kent serves as chief curator.

“From the beginning, I wanted the programming at The Peale to be driven by the community, and here was Jeffrey coming to us as a community creator who had a story to tell with Devin, so we were very happy to put The Peale at his disposal,” says Nancy Proctor, chief strategy officer and founding director of The Peale. “The show was important, at that point in The Peale’s history, for getting the museum back on the cultural map. It had been shuttered for 20 years. Most people forgot it had even existed.”

“I TELL PEOPLE I’M A SELFISH GIVER,” KENT SAYS. “I GET SOMETHING OUT OF EVERYTHING I DO.”

Kent proposed a second show, work by Baltimore street artist Adam Stab, which he mounted later that year. By 2020, he was invited to be part of the leadership team. Proctor credits Kent’s vision as being instrumental in the rebranding and rethinking of The Peale’s mission. That year also saw the launch of Accomplished Art Apprentices, an initiative Kent founded at The Peale that allows young, marginalized men to learn the ins and outs of working in the art business—everything from handling, installing, and wrapping art to learning historical preservation techniques, mastering power tools, gaining financial literacy, and identifying best COVID policies and practices. Kent personally teaches some portions of the program but also hires other professionals to lead sessions when needed.

The first four apprentices who went through the 36-week pilot worked alongside a team of contractors who were renovating The Peale and were paid $20 an hour. Two of them have gone on to start their own business.

Kent has also recently become an adjunct professor at his alma mater, teaching MICA’s First Year Experience. He shares with freshmen what he’s learned over a handful of decades—not just painting techniques but how to be confident in your work and how to grow thicker skin, even if influential figures in the art world visit your studio and tell you your paintings are “too dusty” or your signature is “too large” (yes, Kent was told both of those things).

One might think Kent’s own art gets lost among his many other involvements, but he makes time to get into the studio every day.

Everything is thought out well ahead of putting paint to canvas, down to his signature—which, like most of the text in his pieces, is written backwards, not just a nod to his dyslexia but to give viewers the experience of having dyslexia by forcing them to slow down in order to read.

His conceptually oriented work explores social and political history, systemic racism, and groupthink, including the ways in which commodities are marketed and societal systems erected. The amount of thought behind each piece gives them multiple layers of meaning—and, often, mediums.

Following his passions and curiosity has broadened his career, reputation, and mind. In fact, there’s very little Kent hasn’t tried—in the art world and in his own art.

“I tell people I’m a selfish giver,” he says. “I get something out of everything I do. I only do something if I want to do it.”

On that note, he’s worked with nearly every material imaginable, from the more traditional (charcoal, acrylic) to the more experimental (shredded money, bricolage, and, currently, a technique he’s not yet revealed publicly). Even within a series, he’s likely to include several mediums.

He no longer has extra studio space for artists because all of his home studios are currently occupied by his own works in progress—a different medium in each room. Yet, he’s still exploring new ideas, whether it’s launching a nonprofit or venturing into a new medium.

Meanwhile, his spray-painted mural of a backwards, upside-down flag—a distress signal he painted when Donald Trump was elected, he says—runs along the length and width of his entire long and narrow house.

“I haven’t tried oil yet,” he says. “I’m gonna try that next.”

For the fourth straight day, Donald Trump continued his assault on the city of Baltimore, describing it “like living in hell” while addressing reporters on the south lawn of the White House Tuesday morning. Further, the president claimed, without offering evidence, “that billions and billions given to Baltimore” in federal funding “had been stolen.”

Trump also continued his personal attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings, who represents Maryland’s 7th District, suggesting Cummings is “in charge” of Baltimore, which the president had called “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” over the weekend.

“They’re largely African American,” Trump said of Baltimore’s residents. “You have a large African-American population, and they really appreciate what I’m doing and they’ve let me know it.” Again, the president offered no information about who specifically from Baltimore had reached out to him. He tweeted that the city’s economic and crime numbers are “the worst in the United States,” neither of which is true.

In Tuesday evening’s Democratic presidential debate, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, whose husband teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law, decried Trump’s assault on majority-black Baltimore. “Little kids literally woke up this week and turned on the TV and saw the president call their city, the town of Baltimore, nothing more than a home for rats,” Klobuchar said.

To a question about how the candidates would change course and help heal from Trump’s tactic of racial division, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders highlighted his Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education, which aims at ending the growth of segregated schools, increasing support for Title I schools, and raising teacher pay, among other initiatives. Marshall, a Baltimore native, founded the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and won the Brown v. Board of Education case that overturned legal segregation in 1954.

On Saturday morning, a “Fox & Friends” segment that was critical of Baltimore prompted the president’s initial verbal assaults on the city and Cummings. Trump apparently viewed the segment as an opening to go after Cummings, who serves as chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Previously, Cummings had offered tough questioning of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan during a hearing on child separations and conditions at U.S. border facilities.

On Sunday, Trump referred to Cummings, the son of sharecroppers who grew up defending himself against bullies who tried to stop the integration of a South Baltimore public pool, as “racist Elijah Cummings.” On Monday, after Rev. Al Sharpton and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a Republican, visited Cummings’ West Baltimore church, Trump called Sharpton a racist, too. Meanwhile, Steele said Trump “has a particular venom for blacks and people of color.”

During his remarks to reporters Tuesday morning, Trump referred to himself as “the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.”

Whether American voters believe him is another question. Later Tuesday, Quinnipiac University released a poll that found 51 percent of American voters think the president of the Unites States is a racist. Forty-five percent of voters said they do not think Trump is a racist.

Wednesday morning, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, the renowned former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, came to Baltimore to defend the president and tout the Trump Administration’s “Opportunity Zone” initiative. According to reporting by The Sun, HUD officials planned to stage their press conference on a vacant lot in Southwest Baltimore, but never asked permission from the owners of the property, Morning Star Baptist Church of Christ.

Meanwhile, Baltimoreans have continued their defense of their beloved city, which launched a trending social media hashtag #WeAreBaltimore over the weekend.

Visit Baltimore, the city’s official tourism arm, noted, for example, that the city ranked fifth on the both Forbes’ list of rising cities for startups and Entrepreneur magazine’s list of top cities for minority entrepreneurs, as well as one of the top three U.S. cities for recent college grads by the Wall Street Journal.

In an op-ed to the Baltimore Sun, Under Armour founder Kevin Plank and Johns Hopkins University president Ron Daniel—joined by more than a half-dozen other business, academic, and nonprofit leaders—wrote how they were “proud and privileged” to call Baltimore home. They described Baltimore as “home of creativity, optimism, and determination.”

Others, including Baltimore photographer Devin Allen, continued to show their love for the city in heartfelt tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts and pictures.

By coincidence, Baltimore celebrated its 290th birthday Tuesday.

Trump, of course, most likely didn’t know that. A couple of years ago, he described one of Baltimore’s and the country’s greatest former citizens, former slave turned abolitionist, orator, and author Frederick Douglass, as “an example of somebody’s who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.”

EAT

Feb. 8-17: Maryland Vegan Restaurant Week

Locations, times, and prices vary.

Whether you’re a lifelong plant-eater or started veganism last week to score free Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert tickets (we get it), Baltimore’s annual winter celebration of all things herbivore has got you covered. Spend the weekend eating your way through meat- and dairy-free options at local vegan standbys like Golden West Café, Land of Kush, and Red Emma’s Bookstore & Coffeehouse, as well as participating restaurants like Wicked Sisters and Paulie Gee’s in Hampden and Café Fili and The Grub Factory in Mt. Vernon.

DRINK

Feb. 8: Will’s Back!

Monument City Brewing Company, 1 N. Haven St. 5-10 p.m. Free.

One of the most shared local stories of the week was the citywide search for Monument City Brewing Company’s adopted cat, Willow. Thanks to the Highlandtown brewery’s viral Facebook post and calls to action by local media outlets, Willow (or Will to regulars) was returned on Wednesday by brewery patrons who mistook him for a stray. To celebrate the return of the brewery’s mouse-catcher, Monument City is throwing a party in his honor, featuring the final release of its seasonal IPA and eats from Taco Bar food truck. Bring a cat-related donation on Friday to support BARCS Animal Shelter and raise a glass to the greatest pet saga since Homeward Bound.

SEE

Feb. 8: Devin Allen: Spaces of the Un-Entitled

The Peale Center, 225 N. Holliday St. $20.

Although this West Baltimore photographer has gained national acclaim since his iconic shot of the 2015 Uprising graced the cover of Time magazine, it’s clear that Devin Allen’s heart and inspiration still lies in Baltimore. For the next six weeks, Allen’s latest project and first-ever color show, Spaces of the Un-Entitled, will be on display at The Peale Center, showcasing the young photographer’s analysis of architecture and its impact on impoverished communities. On Friday, experience a live performance by Allen himself as he speaks to the ghosts who were left behind in the gentrification of areas shown in his must-see series.

HEAR

Feb. 8: Jim Gaffigan

The Modell Lyric, 140 W. Mt. Royal Ave. 7 & 9:30 p.m. $35.25-55.25.

Whether it’s in his scene-stealing TV roles, his bestselling books, or his four Grammy-nominated comedy albums, Jim Gaffigan always manages to earn a laugh. The family-friendly comic, who is known for finding humor in the mundane—like doctor visits, food, and fatherhood—will take over the Modell Lyric on Friday for two back-to-back shows that are sure to deliver side-splitting laughs.

DO

Feb. 10: Lunar New Year Celebration

The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free.

Across Asian cultures, the lunar new year marks the beginning of a new calendar year. To ring in the Year of the Pig, the Walters Art Museum is throwing a free, family-oriented celebration in their sprawling Mt. Vernon complex. Visitors of all ages can explore the museum’s expansive and much-lauded Arts of Asia exhibition, followed by a chance to create their own Asian-inspired works. Make sure to catch the traditional lion dance performance, which is believed to bring good luck in the new year.

Visual Art

Devin Allen’s A Beautiful Ghetto exhibit
Baltimore street photographer Devin Allen became known across the nation for his work after one of his images of the 2015 Baltimore protests was featured as the cover of Time magazine. Three years later, and in honor of that anniversary, the Institute for Integrative Health will exhibit a series of his black-and-white photos documenting the riots in A Beautiful Ghetto. Maybe more importantly, the show will serve as a launchpad for community-wide discussions. This kicks off with an artist talk during the opening reception, where his 2017 book by the same title will be available, and it continues with various events with a focus on healing, such as the April 13 dialogue with artists, writers, and leaders about creating healing spaces for their communities. The Institute for Integrative Health, 1407 Fleet St. Opening reception: 6 to 8:30 p.m. March 15.

Adam Davies: Reroutings
Creative Alliance resident artist Adam Davies will transform the space there to bring us Reroutings, an exhibit of his large-format film photographs of outdoor structures that have served as unofficial public forums (think graffiti-strewn bridges and unexpected street art found during a stroll). The gallery space will be completely darkened and the walls painted black and replaced with his huge (56- by 70-inch) photographic images, which will be lit from behind. Alex Zhang Hungtai of Dirty Beaches will perform his lo-fi electronica soundscapes—which were an influence on the photography series—during an opening reception on March 10, and more events will follow. Opens March 10 at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Stephen Towns: Rumination and a Reckoning
Story quilts are an African-American tradition dating back at least some 200 years. Some historians believe that secret codes were sewn into quilts, providing maps for navigating the Underground Railroad. Baltimore artist Stephen Towns continues in this tradition, exploring themes of slavery and perspectives of women and people of color through his large-scale fabric and bead-work pieces, often featuring faceless black figures that appear as silhouettes. The Baltimore Museum of Art will exhibit 10 of his quilts in Rumination and a Reckoning beginning this month, seven of which depict the story of Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion. As if that weren’t enough, the museum will host Towns in conversation with internationally renowned artist Mark Bradford. March 7 through Sept. 2 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive.

Music

Baltimore Plays The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 20th Anniversary
Hard as it may be to believe, it’s been 20 years since the release of the seminal album The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. In a homage to the work, several artists—Jasmine Pope (J Pope and the HearNow), Christen B, Joy Postell, Karin Sings Evans, Marc Avon Evans, Jamaal Black Root Collier—will gather at the Creative Alliance to perform its tracks in their own style. March 18 at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Theater

Humbug: The Great P.T. Barnum Séance
Magician David London will attempt to summon the spirit of The Great P.T. Barnum via—what else?—séance in his new show Humbug at The Peale Center. While we can’t guarantee audiences will make contact with the legendary showman, we do guarantee the exhibition of genuine Barnum artifacts (honestly, that might be a hoax, too—in the spirit of P.T. Barnum, of course). March 8 to 25 at The Peale Center, 225 N. Holliday St.

Film

Everything is Terrible!’s The Great Satan
Imagine being able to get a taste of more than more than 2,000 horror, satanic, and religious films in under two hours. You don’t have to imagine anymore. Everything is Terrible! has done the work for you, creating a narrative from scraps of material to make the kitschy, trippy new film The Great Satan. In their own words: “Since the dawn of time, man has searched for answers . . . and failed. But the fog of existence has finally cleared thanks to the eternal fruits of your favorite found footage collective.” The makers will be at the theater to present their film as part of their cross-country tour. Guests are encouraged to bring offerings of VHS tapes of Jerry Maguire. March 7 at SNF Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Ave.

Kékszakállú

Baltimore’s Matt Porterfield, best known for his films Hamilton and Putty Hill, will host and do a Q&A at two screenings of the gorgeous Argentine film Kékszakállú, co-written and co-produced by him and directed by Gastón Solnicki. The coming-of-age film’s title and inspiration comes from the opera Bluebeard’s Castle and follows a group of upper-class girls as they enter the world outside of their privileged lives. March 2 to 8 at SNF Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Ave.

Literary Arts

An Evening with Laura Lippman at Federal Hill Prep School
Baltimore’s literary darling and New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman will be at Federal Hill Prep School as part of a book tour for her latest release, Sunburn. The novel tells the story of Polly, a runaway wife who’s ready to start a new life but wasn’t quite ready to fall in love in the process. March 24 at Federal Hill Preparatory School, 1040 William St.

A Beautiful Ghetto

Devin Allen (Haymarket Books)

Looking through the pages of A Beautiful Ghetto, it’s astounding that Devin Allen’s professional career took off a mere two years ago. His photographs—which capture strength and beauty, as well as disparity and decay—transport viewers through the protests following the death of Freddie Gray and into the streets and lives of the people of West Baltimore where he grew up. The words that accompany these photographs (by the likes of author Wes Moore and poet Tariq Touré) give context to what Allen’s photographs mean to Baltimore—particularly as he has chosen to remain here, teaching photography in his spare time to young people from his community.

See our full interview with photographer Devin Allen.

Way Down in the Hole

Ed Norris with Kevin Cowherd
(Apprentice House Press)

Ed Norris doesn’t pull punches. That’s evident from his memoir’s opening, in which the former Baltimore police commissioner puts us at the moment he hit rock bottom: He is lying on a jail cell floor at a federal prison, holding a roll of newspapers at the door with his feet to keep the rats out. Norris candidly chronicles how he reached this point—from his beginnings as a drug-busting New York detective to his fast rise in Baltimore and the corruption case that brought it all down. Norris, who now co-hosts The Norris & Long Show on radio station 105.7 The Fan, gives us true-life versions of the tales that made The Wire famous, and ultimately reminds us how difficult being a cop can be.

On April 25, 2015, a young photographer from West Baltimore clicked the shutter of his camera as a crowd of riot gear-clad police officers dashed in front of Camden Yards, chasing a man with a kerchief obscuring his face. The photographer, Devin Allen, uploaded the photo to social media, and the rest is history. 

Within a few days, his image graced the cover of Time magazine, and Allen has since traveled the world on assignment. But he returns to some of his original subjects—the people and streets
of Baltimore—in his first book, A Beautiful Ghetto, reminding us where his heart lies. Here, he reflects on some of his
favorite photographs from the book.

“This is one of the images that made me want to start my youth program. These boys are only 8 or 9 years old, but there’s resilience and fearlessness to them. What sparked the Uprising was the fire from the youth. What’s changing Baltimore for the better is their desire for something better.”

“This photograph speaks about motherhood to me. A lot of the press about my community is negative. We never celebrate the positive. These mothers work so hard. This woman might be a single mom, working several jobs to provide for her kids, which is a beautiful thing. I’m a mama’s boy. My mom left my father and busted her ass to take such good care of me.”

“This was a couple of days after Freddie Gray’s funeral. This woman stood up at a rally and said, ‘As a woman, as a mother, I see only men talking here.’ She was so passionate, and it made me think that we are always talking about black men and we forget about our women sometimes.”

“In the days after the Baltimore Uprising, the schools were closed and everyone was out and about. This building was used on [TV]. It had been neglected for a while, but the report claimed incorrectly that it had been burned during the unrest. I feel like this image froze a moment in time, and shows the poverty we live in. But I also get a sense of peace and community.”

Last night TNT aired the Baltimore-themed episode of Charles Barkley’s four-part series, American Race (formerly The Race Card). The episode drew some headlines and controversy before it aired after Barkley’s town hall on the relationship between cops and citizens dissolved into something of a shouting match. To Barkley’s credit, he stayed and listened, even when one Baltimore resident accused Barkley of “hiding behind a wall” and being “sick.” Barkley’s intentions may be good, but his approach to race relations is naïve and not nuanced—it basically boils down to, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

As for his views on Baltimore, let’s just say that some of his insights—that Baltimore is a “very divided city” or that our inner cities are lined with boarded up or unlivable rowhomes—aren’t exactly revelatory to those of us who live here.

At least Barkley had the good sense to use Devin Allen, the local photographer whose image of a black man retreating from a line of heavily armed cops made the cover of Time magazine, as his guide.

Allen takes Barkley to his house, where his mom makes her famous crab dip (Barkley approves) and Barkley and Allen’s family discuss whether the events in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death at the hands of the police was an “uprising” or a “riot.”

Allen feels strongly that it was an uprising—an expression of righteous rage and an attempt to finally be seen and heard; Barkley, who famously called the Ferguson protesters “scumbags,” thinks it’s dumb for people to destroy their own property. Later it’s Allen who is able to calm inflamed tempers at the town hall, essentially vouching for Barkley as someone who is on their side, or at least trying to be.

Barkley also tours the Sandtown neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived. In a humorous moment, Gray’s lawyer, Billy Murphy, accuses Barkley of voting for Donald Trump. Barkley shakes his head but doesn’t quite deny it, either.

At one point, Barkley goes to the Baltimore Police Station and talks to some cops who seem genuinely distressed over the unrest and Baltimore’s deeply entrenched problems. This is good. Less good is a scene where Barkley partakes in a simulated police training exercise. With his “gun” at the ready, Barkley is instructed to figure out whether or not deadly force is required. In each scenario—or at least the ones TNT chose to air—it was kill or be killed for the cop. In one scenario, a man with a knife approaches Barkley in a stairwell. Barkley doesn’t shoot. The screen goes blank.

“You’re dead,” the cop supervising the exercise tells him. 

Barkley’s heart is definitely in the right place and this country does need to have a more open dialogue about race. (Subsequent episodes look at Muslim Americans, immigration, and Hollywood stereotyping.) Still, for a more thoughtful reflection on race, I’d recommend Ava DuVernay’s 13th, Theo Anthony’s Rat Film (which just played at the Maryland Film Festival), or—if I might be so bold—two of our feature stories: A Tale of Two Cities (on Freddie Gray’s Baltimore) and Who Wants To Be a Cop Now?

So these past two years since the Time magazine cover photo have been pretty crazy for you?
Yes! It feels crazy. Just when I think my 15 minutes of fame are over, I get another email or phone call. It’s very surreal. When I meet people they think I’m this well seasoned, proper photographer. Nope! At the time of the Time cover, I had only been doing this for three years.

One of those companies that has approached you is Under Armour. How is it working with them?
I come in the office every single day—it’s my 9-5. I’m the only black photographer at here. [Black people] have to get into these spaces. I want [Under Armour] to think, ‘We hired Devin to go shoot Steph Curry. He’s from the city and has only been doing this for three years. How many other hidden gems does Baltimore have?’ If they can hire me and I can do some amazing work, I think it will push the envelope and make them open up their eyes and say, ‘Hey maybe we can get more people like him.’

You’re going to be featured in a new exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
I was so shocked when I found out. Aaron Bryant is the reason I have 20 images permanently showcased in the Smithsonian. He’s one of the curators at the National Museum of African American History and he’s been a mentor to me. The exhibit opens on May 4 and I’m really excited. I’m the youngest photographer in the whole exhibit and I have work in there next to Gordon Parks—it’s crazy! It’s definitely a dream. 

Has all of this exposure made it easier to get work?
I still have to work twice as hard—even after the Time cover. I’ve been turned down so many times. Even after the announcement that my photos are in the Smithsonian, you would think Apple or somebody like that would reach out to me, but nope. When I reached out to Fuji, they said they didn’t want to support my work because it was negative. They didn’t want that to represent their brand. Another photographer at Magnum told me, ‘You’re young, you’re black, you have no accolades and hold no degree in photography. You’re going to have to work a lot harder than everybody else.’

Where you probably work the hardest is on a local level—especially with kids. Is teaching something you’re interested in doing?
I want to show these kids that there are other ways they can do things to be successful. The more successful I am, the more they listen to me. I just want to teach; to create a bunch of mini-me’s with a story to tell. I’ve just been so busy. It’s just hard trying to work with everybody that you can and still pursue your own goals. I’m figuring it out slowly but surely. Any time I talk to kids, I leave inspired. The best reward is opening up doors and giving back.

You have a new book, A Beautiful Ghetto, coming out on June 13.
That book (laughs). It wasn’t even supposed to be a book. I never had a plan, I never thought about a book. I didn’t plan my life past 21. I hit 21 and was like, ‘Wow I’m still alive? Shit, I need to do something with myself now.’ So no, I didn’t have a plan; I didn’t plan anything, I thought I would be dead right now. The book, it came together so beautifully, it was completely organic. All the images are from around Baltimore.

How did you come up with the name and the concept?
In an interview a while back, someone asked me to describe Baltimore. I didn’t know what to say, I always hated the city growing up and I wanted to leave. I thought I would be moving to Harlem. I started to elevate a little bit and evolve once I got deeper into my art. Then I started to see the things that are considered ‘bad’ in Baltimore as beautiful; but it’s also the hood, it’s the ghetto. It’s a Beautiful Ghetto—it rolls off your tongue. So I started to hashtag it.

A lot of the images in the book are my friends hanging out, images from the street. After the Uprising that really inspired me to push the envelope because people were thinking so negatively about Baltimore. I thought I needed to change that perception. I needed to document everything that was happening in the city, so I shot the block parties and how everything came together after the Uprisings with #ABeautifulGhetto. I get asked all the time to go to Flint or other cities to photograph, but that’s not my story. They need to find their own Devin Allen to tell their story like I told mine.

I was working with this great woman named Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who wrote the book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. She gave me the name of her publisher and said call him so I did. I told them about the book and sent him some photos and they loved it.

So is it just a book of photos?
Originally, I was going to write some poems to include but then I thought; I’m not a writer so I reached out to some dope writers. I got D. Watkins and Wes Moore, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor to contribute. I know people think the book is about Freddie Gray, but it’s not. It’s about Baltimore and how I see it. It’s broken down into three sections. A Beautiful Ghetto—which my mother wrote the intro for. She talks about how Baltimore was in the ’70s up until the ’90s when she had me and how much it’s changed. After that, it goes into the photos of the uprisings. The last section is called ‘Hope’—guys in the hood with their fists up, kids playing, a portrait of a kid with a police hat on. The book is so well rounded. It gives you a full understanding of Baltimore through photos. The plan is to release an extended version that has all of my photos.

The first book signing will be on June 17 at the Reginald F. Lewis museum since that was the first place I displayed my work. I actually donated my Time photo proofs to them.

What would you say is the key to your success?
Being humble and keeping the right people around me. Lord knows that’s the hardest part—realizing who your friends are and who is really there for you. But luckily, the bad people weed themselves out. I have people like D. Watkins, Aaron Bryant, and Wes Moore; people in my corner that are keeping me grounded. 

What’s next for you? Are you going to continue to ride the wave?
After this book, I feel like it’s time for me to move on. I want this to be the last chapter for me with this. I’m leaving the door open for the next person to come in—it’s time for me to move on. I don’t want to oversaturate this. Next I’d love to get more into shooting sports. I work with some amazing photographers here at Under Armour, so I’m learning more all the time. Then, I want to take the fashion world on, I think I have a good eye so that will be my next venture.

Be sure to check out Allen on TNT’s new show American Race which airs on May 11. 

Female Form

January 9, 2016
Cathedral Street

“A labor of love,” says Jillian Storms, leading a tour through the detailed exhibit she has curated, “Early Women of Architecture in Maryland,” at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Shedding light on a dozen pioneering women whose groundbreaking careers spanned from the 1920s through the 1960s, the exhibit includes portraits, biographies chronicling the steadfastness of their ambitions, and notable accomplishments—such as interior design at the National Academy of Sciences in D.C.—as well as copies of their original drawings and renderings.

Among those profiled: German-born Poldi Hirsch, whose family fled the Holocaust before she went on to study architecture in Switzerland. She later emigrated with her husband, settling in Havre de Grace where she designed a still-standing midcentury office building in which her husband began his medical practice.

Also included are Katherine Cutler Ficken and Rose Isabel Greely, the first licensed female architects in Maryland and Washington, and a reproduction of a Maryland Society of Registered Architects letter to Ficken. Dated May 2, 1938, the note advises that while she was “certainly eligible” to attend the organization’s annual dinner and meeting, as the only women in the society, she should check with her “good father” regarding the propriety of her attendance.

“We had a lot of trouble tracking her down,” Storms says. “She’d adopted a 4-month-old son when she was 45, but she died in 1968 of cancer when he was 11. Our college research assistant was ready to give up when we finally found him. It turned out he’d kept a photo album of her work, including that letter, all these years.”

Day Dream

January 18, 2016
East Pratt Street

“Mom, it feels like we’ve been here all day,” a girl with braids and glasses says, tugging her mother’s arm, not so much in protest, but in amazement at the full slate of MLK Day activities at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum.

At the moment, they’re heading into the museum’s first-floor community space for a reading of The Meeting, a play about a fictional get-together between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, with local photographer Devin Allen’s wall-sized photos of last year’s Baltimore Uprising serving as backdrop. Other events offered today include screenings of the documentary films, Citizen King, The March, and MLK: The Assassination Tapes, as well as access to the current feature exhibition, “Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965): Revelations of African American Life in Maryland and the World,” and the museum’s 8th Annual High School Juried Art Show. There’s also drop-in, MLK Day-themed arts and crafts for kids.

Depicting the civil rights leaders’ differing philosophies but shared sense of urgency and mutual respect, The Meeting draws a standing-room crowd—and this is the play’s second presentation this afternoon. Afterward, Larkis Webber, who portrays Malcolm X, and Doug Goldman, who plays King, join Morgan State University professor David Terry for an audience discussion, much of it centering on the influence of the two leaders’ childhood, religious, and regional influences. “I’ve been living this [stuff] for 51 years,” Goldman says at one point. “In the 1970s, I was bused to Hampstead Hill Junior High in Canton. If you missed the bus after school, you ran through Patterson Park until you got to a safe neighborhood.”

“As a Christian, I’m with Rev. King,” adds a woman at the end. “But as a mother, if someone hurt one of my children, then I’m with Malcolm. I’ll ask for forgiveness later.”

The Flock

January 2, 2016
Conkling Street

“I grew up in Fells Point when this neighborhood was called ‘Little Poland’,” says Anthony Monczewski, 70, the grandson of a Polish immigrant butcher, as he steps inside Holy Rosary Church. “They still celebrate Mass here in Polish.”

Dedicated in 1928, the massive Romanesque shrine includes two-story stained-glass windows, marble altars weighing a collective 49 tons, and a 3,000-pipe, mahogany-encased organ. Monczewski’s visit to his childhood church this Saturday is part of the second East Baltimore Christmas Church Tour and one of seven stops celebrating historic parishes while their holiday decorations remain in full swing.

The morning begins with pastries and coffee at the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which celebrated its first Mass in Highlandtown in 1873. Also included: Our Lady of Pompei in “little” Little Italy, St. Leo the Great in Little Italy, St. Casimir and St. Brigid in Canton, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary at Patterson Park.

Inside Our Lady of Pompei, a gorgeous 1923 church built for Italian immigrants and known for its illuminated statue of Mary, pastor Luigi Esposito smiles as he recalls an early sermon. “Father Lou” recently celebrated 50 years of service to the parish, although the Naples native admits to the group that he occasionally stumbled in his Sunday homilies as a young priest. “I was trying to express the idea of the shepherd helping a lost sheep back into the sheepfold—a very common Christian metaphor.

“Well, the Italian word for sheepfold is ovile, so I figured the English word was the one that sounded closest,” he says, laughing, “and told the congregation that we must each help the lost sheep into the oven.”

The theme of this month’s
Creative Mornings talk was supposed to be about robots. Katie Boyts, the organizer of our local chapter, had it all planned out. That was until a couple of weeks ago, when “robot” didn’t feel like the right subject to tackle.

Though Creative Mornings is a national platform for artists—with 112 branches around the country following the same theme at breakfast lectures every month—she decided to switch things up.

“I looked ahead to June and saw that the theme was revolution,” she said in front of an audience at
Center Stage this morning. “That made sense to me for a lot of reasons, mostly just to stay relevant to the community.”

Her other main motivation was to get
Devin Allen on stage. Allen is a 26-year-old photographer from West Baltimore who is self-taught “mostly from YouTube and a lot of trial and error,” he says, whose photograph from the riots on April 25 was published on the cover of Time magazine two weeks ago.

Allen first bought a camera in 2013 and and his predominantly black-and-white photography began with a focus on fashion and street scenes. But after the protests in Ferguson and, subsequently, Baltimore his images veered toward the political.

“We are blinded by a lot of pain around the world,” he says. “And I knew I had to voice that in my art.”

The photographer is quick to point out that, not only was he documenting the unrest in Baltimore from day one, but he himself was peacefully protesting and was able to see what was happening “on both sides.”

“I try to tell the whole story,” he says. “I have my problems with police, but you just can’t profile them all as bad. We need to see police out walking their beat everyday, making a connection with the community.”

Of course, the clash with police and community came to a head just a few weeks ago when 100 rioters, out of the thousands of peaceful protestors, stirred violence near Camden Yards on April 25. And Allen was on the front lines to capture it.

“I was right on the side of the street and my back was turned, but when I turned around, I saw the police coming towards us and I focused on them on purpose,” he says of the
Time cover photo. “I took the shot and said, ‘Damn, this is a good-ass picture’ and then I bent down to send it to my phone and tweeted it out. Next thing I know, police were telling me to move and helped me over the railing to get out of the way.”

The next few hours, and days, were a blur for Allen. Not only was he dealing with caring for family and friends affected by the unrest, but his photograph went viral. He received calls from the BBC, got tweeted by Rihanna, and then
Time magazine reached out.

“I was like, ‘Time magazine…what?!'” he says with shock still in his voice. “At first it was just supposed to be a blog, then a feature spread, then I saw a tweet: ‘Amateur photographer snags cover of Time magazine.’ I just called my mom and we both started crying.”

(Ironically, his mom, like any mother, wanted Allen to come home that Saturday night. “I told her, ‘Aren’t you glad I didn’t come home?'”)

Allen says he still cries every time he sees the cover. “I just want to inspire kids that a leap of faith can change what you want,” he says. “You don’t have to be a rapper or basketball player to make it.”

The cover catapulted Allen to a certain level of fame that he wasn’t necessarily ready for, but he said the entire experience has made him fall in love with Baltimore, a city that he wasn’t always fond of.

“I used to hate being here,” he says. “I wanted to leave and try to get a bigger following. But seeing these protests and this reaction, people here are so strong. It changed my mind.”

Allen used to have dreams of New York City, but says that he is here to stay both for his day job working with autistic and intellectually disabled patients and, of course, to continue to take photographs.

“I want to do gallery shows, teach kids about photography,” he says. “But also I want to keep the pot stirring here; I don’t want anything to settle. It’s right to follow through on that.”

Allen says his main mission through his photographs is to show people that stories are not one-sided. In fact, the photo he wishes made the cover of
Time? One of a policeman crying listening to Freddie Gray’s family speak.

“I think that could have swayed a lot of point of views.”