Standing next to Albert Einstein and Harriet Tubman in the front room of a nondescript white building on Holabird Avenue, Louis Armstrong is dressed in a black suit and spiffy black shoes, trumpet pressed to his lips and fingers positioned perfectly above the keys. The figures are so lifelike you’re almost surprised not to hear jazz blaring from Satchmo’s horn.

“We took him to New Orleans for a trade show a few years ago, and he was a big hit,” says Joe Bezold, (pictured right), co-owner of Dorfman Museum Figures in East Baltimore, which for more than a half century has crafted figures and scenes for museums across the United States and around the world.

Founded by Earl Dorfman in 1957, the company began with department store window displays before transitioning to creating figures for wax museums. When Earl’s son, Robert, took over in the early 1990s, they began selling them to historic homes, visitor’s centers, and museums, eventually in more than 30 countries.

Bezold and his business partner, Tim Clifton, (pictured left), both longtime employees, bought the business in 2018. Since then, the majority of their sales have been conservation forms—displays made of inert Ethafoam polyethylene that are used to present dresses, uniforms, and other historic clothing without damaging them.

“A lot of museums were focusing on preservation and realizing that the materials of the [figures] themselves were important,” Clifton says. “Some can give off gases that are fairly benign, but once they’re in a case or sealed, it can start to deteriorate fabric over decades.”

Dorfman still makes plenty of the vinyl and silicone lifelike figures as well, for places like the B&O Railroad Museum and Kentucky Derby Museum. From the time a contracted sculptor crafts a clay head of the subject to the moment that the last hair is added to its dome, the goal is to make the figure look as close to a human being as possible. The cost can range from $4,000 to $9,000.

The 10,000-square-foot Dorfman facility is a maze of fake body parts. Arms and legs hang on walls like hardware in a suburban garage. Headless, handless bodies stand at attention like soldiers lined up in formation. On the second floor, you’ll find the collection of more than 800 head molds. Here, on metal shelves, skier Picabo Street sits next to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. In another row, polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk’s head rests across the aisle from Teddy Roosevelt’s.

The company’s figures are displayed in a wide array of institutions, including the National World War II Museum in New Orleans and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick. It has made close to 100 figures and scenes for the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, and recently created soldiers for the Royal Tank Museum in the country of Jordan.

Throughout the years, Dorfman has made figures for the backgrounds of movies and TV shows, and even filled the odd request from private citizens. Once a woman commissioned a figure of her deceased husband. Another time, a big-game hunter ordered a lifelike figure of himself in shooting position, to be situated in his home next to a taxidermied polar bear.

“Any given week someone will contact us from this country or another country who wants to commemorate someone,” Bezold says. “For us, every time, it’s a brand-new history lesson.”

Inspired by pre-Abrahamic religious traditions from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, local multidisciplinary artist Oletha DeVane repurposes found objects to construct monumental spiritual sites. Her new exhibit Traces of Spirit, currently on view in the Spring House at the Baltimore Museum of Art, includes old and newer sculptural assemblages that have been reworked to establish an immersive spirit house—which is loosely inspired by Thai constructions believed to contain the spirits of protective entities.

DeVane’s spirit house serves as a homage to anticolonial liberation efforts, Juneetenth, the legacy of her father, and humanity’s tireless existentialism.

“In terms of looking at religion itself, it’s about how we as human beings are on this incredible search,” DeVane said during a recent studio visit. “It doesn’t mean that any one practice is wrong, it just means that we are all, as a world community, on different paths of searching for that ultimate spiritual essence.”

Traces of Spirit is an etheric exhibition that attempts to embody some of the metaphysical resonance that DeVane initially encountered while traveling to sacred sites around the world. The proximity of the installation to the viewers within the small house creates a deeply intimate and contemplative environment. Out of context, the installation could be interpreted as a meaningless experiment in ornamentalism. But DeVane’s work relies on contextualization beyond Western philosophies, and an openness to appreciate humanity’s attempts to comprehend and encompass the immensity of god.

The signature work, Saint for my City (2007-2010), an onyx black figurative sculpture reminiscent of Catholic statues of sainted martyrs, is situated in the center of the installation. The black saint sits on the apex of a decoratively embellished pillar laden with the names of immortalized African diasporic deities including Isis, Osiris, Horus, Ogun, and Dembala. There is a large snake that coils from the base to the top where the saint stands. The black saint is beautiful. Her crown of floating spheres evokes orbiting planets or stars. She is draped with a long cape that appears to float in mid-air.

There is something hopeful about the presentation of an astral-black holy figure. Imagine the impact such a figuration could have if it were installed around Baltimore City. Stories about the sacredness of the city and its inhabitants are often overlooked. (Most recently, our greatness has been reduced to rat infestation, poverty, and crime.) But those who live here and opt to stay here know that the city is more than its traumas. Baltimore is vibrant unbridled brilliance—charged invention and adaptation. DeVane channels that spirit of the city, its energy, and humanity through the black saint whose outstretched arms reach towards the doorway of the small house as if beckoning saint and sinner alike to find solace in her embrace.

Saint for my City is surrounded by four other smaller sculptural works, including Woman Who Married a Snake (2017), Spring (2018), Two Daughters (2007), and Health (Pilgrimage) (2018). Bottles, mosaics, masks, insects, and a host of other recognizable—and unrecognizable—objects recur throughout the pillar like sculptures. Each work holds layered narratives that include both global and hyper-local musings about the universal, ethereal, and distressing instances of everyday life. Many of the motifs are founded in Haitian and West African spiritual traditions, origin myths, and folktales.

“Many of the pieces are made with materials that I have gathered and things that really speak to me,” DeVane says. “For me, it’s really gleaning—trying to understand my religious experience and what it means to look at nature and those gods with respect.”

DeVane’s inclusion of those narratives stands as a miraculous reminder that despite slavery, and centuries of colonial violence, many of the traditions persist in modern African American communities. “I wanted something that really evolved out of my history and my understanding of what it meant to create.”

Two similarly elaborate large sculptural assemblages, Epiphany (2018) and Dumballa (2018), are installed on the wall behind the altars. A long string of translucent blue and highly reflective beads cascade down the wall between the two panels. Coupled with a meditative soundscape of gently flowing water and a shimmering projection that simulates soft waves, the installation triggers troubling and transformative histories about the volatile and life-sustaining nature of water.

“As a people, we traversed the waters and oceans, either because we were enslaved, or when we were moving around this world, because Africans are on every continent in every country,” DeVane says. “The water is a major conduit for movement and our ability to be everywhere. I look at water as a spiritual element. It’s the lifeforce of the planet and something that we need to take care of.”

The artist known as Reed Bmore has to do a bit of mental gymnastics each time he introduces himself to someone new. The Hampden-based creator is responsible for the bootleg wire sculptures hanging from various telephone wires across Baltimore, and, for obvious reasons, prefers to remain anonymous. A quick Google search—or Caller ID display—reveals his actual name, but we’ll honor his request and stick with Reed Bmore for now.

A Maryland College Institute of Art alum, Bmore has been hanging wire sculptures—animals, video game characters, and Pokémon, among others—for about five years. He acknowledges that what he does could be considered vandalism, but he also points out that city officials only seem to mind when his subject matter is controversial. Chief among them: the sculpture that depicted Healthy Holly hogtied and horizontal during then-mayor Catherine Pugh’s final days in office. It took him about three hours to create and was removed from the intersection near Fayette and Gay Streets only a few hours later. “Worth it,” he says.

His desire for anonymity goes back to his youth as a graffiti artist, but he also wants his art to speak for itself. “In my eyes, wire sculpture is a very small part of who I am,” he says. “[Maintaining anonymity] gives me some leeway to express different avenues within myself.”

Bmore began creating his wire sculptures 10 years ago, but it was when he began hanging them around town and sharing his art on Reddit that things really took off. In the beginning, he was cranking out work at a high volume, eager to make his mark on Baltimore. But now that he has established some notoriety, he’s been able to slow that pace and only produce art that’s meaningful to him.

Still, anonymity remains the key. He wants to separate the street artist Reed Bmore from his life in the real world. But that presents an interesting paradox: Bmore runs a sculpture-focused Instagram account where followers can contact him for personalized work. He’s also planning to showcase some of his smaller pieces during an exhibit in August at Creative Labs in Hampden.

So how does he balance promoting himself while also maintaining his anonymity? He’s still working on that. “I build my artwork on bullshit and doing whatever I feel,” he says. “I just want to have fun and perpetuate lightheartedness and start conversation.”

Fashion is art, right? Or at least it can be. 

The students at MICA aim to demonstrate that fact at the school’s two annual fashion showcases—the Experimental Fashion Event (April 5 at St. John’s Church) and the Annual Benefit Fashion Show (April 11 at the Brown Center). 

The shows will feature wearable art from the school’s fiber, graphic design, illustration, and sculpture students, as well as jewelry from continuing study students at the MICA Jewelry Center at Meadow Mills. 

The students were encouraged to push the boundaries of everyday fashion—creating eye-popping, one-of-a-kind works. 

More information and tickets are available at the MICA store, 1200 W. Mt. Royal Ave. and at store.mica.edu. For more information visit mica.edu/fashion.