The Arthouse, which dubs itself a “pizza bar and gallery,” is just different enough in just enough ways to have carved a niche for itself in hype-competitive Hampden. Owner Joan Dolina added food and drink to an existing art gallery in 2013, and the result is a welcoming, slightly funky bar that’s neither as fancy as some of its newer neighbors nor as divey as some of its older ones. Creativity is paramount here. During one of our recent visits, I ordered a pickle-topped pizza and was rewarded with a crunchy, tangy pie unlike anything else I’ve tried.

The focal point of the first floor is the long wooden bar, where couples sip wine, friends throw back beers, and solo drinkers enjoying a post-work cocktail. On my visits, the two TVs were turned off while bands like Gang of Four and Devo played on the sound system. Paintings by local artists hang on the yellow walls of the narrow dining room. We particularly admired one of a woman with a Dalmatian by Mattye Hamilton that’s selling for $1,500.

Luckily, happy hour deals at The Arthouse, 1115 West 36th Street, 443-438-7700, are considerably more economical. For every $12 cocktail like the Bitters and Smoke I imbibed——a combination of tequila, mezcal Cynar (an artichoke-based bittersweet liqueur), and fernet that packs a serious punch—there are several $6 craft beers. Drafts are $2 off from 4-7, and Natty Boh and Miller High Life are always $3.

Plenty of them are downed on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights when late-night revelers pass the hours in the second-story lounge with a pool table, dartboard, and bagatelle table (a centuries-old tabletop game involving balls, pins, and pegs) and devour pizza until the kitchen closes at 1 a.m.

About those pies. They emerge from the brick oven in the back (split logs rest in a bin just beside it) with perfectly charred crusts. Artsy combinations like spicy blueberry and brie—blueberry and chili compote, mozzarella, brie, chives, and balsamic reduction—dot the menu. After eating one slice too many, a few sips of the Bitters and Smoke remained in my glass. “It’s very spirit-forward,” said the bartender, Nick, who’s always happy to whip up something new for a customer. “It’s a sipper. An end-of-the-night drink.”

He was right. After finishing it my evening was over, but I plan on ending many future nights at The Arthouse.

Baltimore’s landmark Lexington Market, the longest continually running public market in America, currently sees more than one million visitors each year. The food hall has fed the city for nine generations, and now, it’s added art to the menu.

Today marked the official opening of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s (BMA) branch location at Lexington Market. The new gallery space welcomed nearly 120 people to a public opening reception last night, which showcased images from a youth photography program at the Greenmount West Community Center. From photos of flowers to selfies of smiling teenagers, the exhibit showed the community in a whole new light.

In addition, a workshop for young adults was led by New Orleans-based artists Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick. The two have worked together for more than 30 years photographing Louisiana and its people.

“We felt extremely strongly that it is not enough to change our public programs and expect people to descend on us,” says Chris Bedford, executive director at the BMA. “Rather we found it important to extend ourselves into the city to engage different communities.”

But this is not the first extension of the museum. Two branch locations were established during World War II and saw more than 55,000 visitors between 1943 and 1948. The Lexington Market space continues to add to that legacy.

“The activation of a stall that had previously sat vacant for a few years with art and programming does wonderful things for the market,” says Stacey Pack, Lexington Market project manager. “Equally exciting is the energy and discussions that take place within this area. This also gives people another reason to either visit the market or linger longer.”

There are a lot of issues to consider with the redevelopment of an institution like Lexington Market. With a lot of residents relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), locals are concerned about gentrification and price increases.

According to Dave Eassa, manager of community engagement for the BMA, rotating themes will inspire future programs and activities. In honor of the market where the branch resides, the first topic is food, and it will touch on aspects such as nutrition, access, and local foodways.

“Food was the most prevalent issue when talking with merchants and users of the market,” Eassa says. “Many merchants are losing SNAP and as Seawall is trying to redevelop, everyone is worried about access to fresh, affordable food that they have relied on the market to provide for over 200 years.”

A redevelopment project, Transform Lexington, is currently being planned to include a new market structure and urban plaza. The East Market will remain open throughout the revamp and regular hours at the BMA branch will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday through Saturday with free admission.

“This location is very unique because it truly is a public space where people from all backgrounds and walks of life gather and visit,” Pack says. “Lexington Market has always been a hub for Baltimore City so this location really is perfect.”

Although the market is going through a transformative period, the BMA branch is expected to remain a part of the space. The inspiration came from another program the museum has run previously called the Outpost, which was essentially a nomadic museum that roamed across Baltimore.

“Those communities were not satisfied with a fleeting engagement, but instead wanted a far more sustained conversation with the BMA,” Bedford says. “[We want to make] it clear that we are the specific museum for the city, that our doors are open to all, that our fundamental mandate is relevant, and that we are willing to go to any lengths to achieve that.”

Jordan Faye Block thought she was out of the gallery business. When she closed down Jordan Faye Contemporary in 2017 after 11 years of showcasing local visual artists, Block switched her focus to Thrive Atelier, her yoga studio and art space on East Federal Street in Station North.

But when building investors Paul Hancock and Patricia Solar offered her the chance to curate a new gallery in her own apartment building, Station North’s Nelson Kohl Apartments, it felt like a perfect fit. “This is actually my fourth gallery over almost 20 years,” Block says. “I never thought I’d get that far, but I guess I never saw myself doing anything else.”

Nine months and six exhibitions later, this section of East Lanvale Street is practically Block’s block. Once she began filling Hancock Solar with shows and salon series featuring regional artists, Block was asked to supply Milk & Honey Market with rotating pieces for the its walls. She also shows pieces at Station North Books next door, which is run by her partner, Ned Sparrow. Block’s goal is to make art accessible to everyone, whether something inexpensive strikes their fancy over a cup of coffee or they’re looking to expand their established collection.

Her most recent experiment is The 40 Day Practice Project, which challenged 10 local artists, including Maryland Institute College of Art student Blythe Thea Williams and painter Kate MacKinnon, to each create one piece a day for 40 days, with new artworks added to the Hancock Solar Gallery wall until March 2. While some pieces went for hundreds of dollars, others were priced as low as $40.

“Art seems like a luxury, but what people realize when they bring a real piece of artwork into their home is that art has this energy to it,” Block says. “It has this thing that emanates from the wall, and it changes the way you look at the world.”

Much like the art that will be experienced here, the interior aesthetic of the soon-to-open, artist-owned space Le Mondo is experimental, nonlinear, and slightly unorthodox—a collage of various time periods, architectural styles, and visions housed under one roof (and, if things go according to plan, two more roofs by 2020).

An unearthed swatch of floral wallpaper from a bygone era is left intact near the entrance and will, perhaps, become a component of an art installation that incorporates live plants, echoing the abandoned buildings nearby whose hollow windows serve as frames for weeds that grow wild inside them. Antique tin ceiling tiles found elsewhere were brought to the 406 N. Howard St. building for decorative appeal. A long, wooden bar with two large mirrors on the wall behind it was gifted by a contractor who found it in a building being rehabbed on Calvert Street. Who knows how many conversations were shared on it over decades of drinks, and how many more will come forth when the bar is given new life as a nightly meeting spot and arts hub here in the historic Howard and Lexington shopping district, where the building originally opened as The Strand movie theater in 1916.

After a trial run from summer through fall of 2017 that included art exhibitions, concerts, and dance and theater performances, the long-awaited grand opening of the first of three Le Mondo buildings will come this fall, complete with the aforementioned bar, a performance space that can be manipulated to serve both large-scale and intimate productions, and 10-12 artist studios.

The arts incubator, three years in the making (so far) and estimated to cost roughly $4 million upon completion, was financed through private and public funding and loans. It will later include two additional adjacent buildings, which will house a 100-seat black box theater, a headquarters for one or more arts groups, artist apartments, and a cafe. A small grassy lot—where another building once stood but burned to the ground in 2015—will remain a green space.

Le Mondo is the grand vision of Carly Bales, Evan Moritz, and Frederick Gerriets (another founder, Ric Royer, was fired after several women accused him of harassment and abuse). All three remaining founders have deep roots in the DIY arts scene here—Bales as the brains behind EMP Collective, and Moritz and Gerriets as creators of Annex Theater—and all of them desire a secure foundation for that scene to thrive.

“There’s a real need for an affordable, flexible space for developing new work,” Bales says. “We’ve been seeing a decrease in accessible spaces for the type of work we want to see flourish.”

Annex Theater, which will use Le Mondo as its permanent venue, has moved “from space to space to space—warehouses and storefronts,” Moritz says. “The idea is to have a bunch of groups team up and share a long-term building . . . a midsized venue with a bar and diverse programming.”

Bales spent several years immersed in the Washington, D.C., arts scene as an actor but ultimately made Baltimore her home in 2013 because of the ability—and affordability—to produce work here that takes risks rather than what she calls “fear-based” work that you’re more likely to find in D.C.

“Economics plays a lot into the psyche of an experimental arts community. If it’s more accessible financially, you have an opportunity to fail and use that for growth, rather than it being a detrimental setback to your career,” she says.

Le Mondo will serve as the Charm City Fringe Fest headquarters in November, one of the first events to christen the space.

Ultimately, Bales, Moritz, and Gerriets see Le Mondo as a catalyst that can spur a revitalization of the whole block. Across the street, for instance, Current Space gallery, which has leased its city-owned property on a month-to-month basis since 2004, is now buying its building as well as the large, three-story building to the south of it, and developers’ interest has already spiked in buildings on the block that have lay dormant for years.

“We fell in love with the idea of being here and creating a footprint,” Bales says. “You get this feeling of history on this street. There’s a spirit to the area that’s really sort of beautiful, and there’s so much untapped potential.”

Seth Adelsberger and Alex Ebstein are no strangers to the Baltimore art scene. They’ve lived in the city for the past 15 years and have been actively involved in its culture as students, visual artists, curators, and gallery owners. And for this, they’ve experienced firsthand the rise and fall of several artist live and work spaces that served as music venues and and galleries.

They lived in the H&H Arts Building for a solid decade, during what one might call its hey day, and five years of that was spent operating their gallery Nudashank there, one of a handful of gallery spaces inside the H&H that was open to the public.

These days, the public is not so lucky. 

When it comes to the underground warehouse spaces that the Baltimore art scene has become known for, there’s not much around anymore.

The H&H—in all its DIY music and art scene glory—faded out, as did the famous Copycat building, home to eccentric artists (spawning such legends as Wham City, Dan Deacon, and Ed Schrader) and housing several experimental venues. The Bell Foundry—where artists lived, worked, and held events—was condemned in 2016 by the city. In early 2018, the Post Office Garage studios building was condemned, artists forced out during a frigid few days in January.

Adelsberger would’ve been among those kicked out of the Post Office building, had he not left his studio there just a few months before its shutdown to open a new gallery, studio, and framing workshop with his longtime partner and collaborator, Ebstein, on Park Avenue downtown.

“It was sinking a quarter-inch a year into 83,” Adelsberger says of the Post Office building, acknowledging that he unknowingly dodged a bullet but other artists weren’t so lucky. “It shows how precarious the art scene is—because it’s a DIY scene,” he goes on. “And there’s not much of a safety net.”

Their new gallery, Resort, in an online description, is referred to as contemporary, and it’s the job of contemporary artists to be looking to what’s ahead. The result is an avant-garde space that serves as a catalyst for new ideas and community dialogue, as well as a legit venue for emerging and established artists to show their work.

The first floor is a public gallery, while the second is used for Adelsberger’s framing and fabrication work, and the third acts as a studio for both artists—Adelsberger for his large-scale abstract paintings, some of which were shown at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2014, and Ebstein for her collages made from yoga mats.

Solo and group exhibitions are already lined up through the year, and additional events are being planned to make the space more than a destination for visual art. In an atypical curatorial move, Ebstein and Adelsberger chose artists based on past work rather than proposals for specific shows.

Currently on view is A Big Toe Touches a Green Tomato by Philadelphia-based Roxana Azar and former artistic director of The Contemporary Ginevra Shay. The exhibit melds human and natural forms through photography, sculpture, and ceramics that are often abstracted or conceptual pieces while maintaining a graceful beauty, if darkness, about them. A reception will close out the show from noon to 4 p.m. March 11.

Next up, the space will host the group show Noise Margins and Sophie Friedman-Pappas’ solo project Broken Eggs beginning March 17.

Ebstein says visitors to the gallery’s first reception on January 20 were pleasantly surprised with the space. She also jokingly told them that she might not remember any conversations that night; it had been a long week (months, really), leading up to the opening.

When the building at 235 Park Avenue became available, Ebstein and Adelsberger knew it had potential, but they also knew it would require a lot of work to transform the space. There were flimsy walls and poorly made ceilings. There was one electrical outlet per (massive) floor. There were pigeons and asbestos. There was no heat.

“When the toilet froze over, that was kind of it for me,” Ebstein says. “People would come in and just couldn’t see it. People were coming in two, three weeks before the [January] show and just saying ‘good luck.’” (Just check out some of their early Instagram posts for proof.)

But that is what artists do best: transform. They transform blank canvases and other people’s garbage into works of beauty or thought-provoking pieces (or both). They transform themselves and the people who interact with their work. They transform buildings that have fallen into disrepair into new venues, and in so doing transform what once was boarded up, condemned, or otherwise abandoned into new places to think and play.