BEKI BASCH

Bekí Basch  (b. 1987 New Jersey) creates work which addresses the deep value of interconnectivity. Through the appropriation of cultural material of the past and present, she connects the esoteric with ordinary, the sacred with profane— to illuminate constellations which underlie, motivate, and determine value within personal and universal narratives. Her work has been shown in the Baltimore/DC area and nationally including Locust Projects (Miami, FL) and internationally including site specific and gallery exhibitions in Iceland. 

TOM CHALKLEY

Tom Chalkley is a cartoonist and illustrator, resident of Arcadia since 1993 and of Baltimore since 1979.  HIs work is probably best known from 30 years as a contributing artist and writer at the Baltimore City Paper (1978 to 2008), where he produced covers, cartoons, comic strips, illustrations, feature articles and columns. In the1980s and early '90s, Tom also worked as a grassroots coalition organizer with the Maryland Citizen Action Coalition and the Maryland Alliance for Responsible Investment.  Much of Tom's artwork is community oriented, including cartoon maps of Baltimore and its neighborhoods (including Hampden, Fell's Point, Hamilton/Lauraville, Mount Vernon, Charles VIllage, and Canton), and a variety of murals, posters, coloring books, tee-shirt designs, truck wraps, labels, brochures and logos for community-based organizations and small businesses. He has also drawn thousands of caricatures of individuals at parties, picnics, and other gatherings (a line of work that has been all but destroyed by the Pandemic). Tom is a musician and songwriter, performing as one of the Patapsco Delta Boys since 2003. From 2013 until this past spring, Tom and his wife, Ruth Quinn, were part of the small collective that produced the North by Northeast American Roots Music Series, based in Hamilton and Lauraville. Over the last ten years, Tom has been working with his friend and former bandmate, Craig Hankin, on a joint memoir in comics form, covering their short but entertaining years in a rock & roll band, 1978-1980.  This project, which advances whenever other work dries up, is now front and center, and will be the primary project supported by the district art grant.  Much thanks to Councilman Dorsey for initiating this grant program and for spreading it out among six recipients this year.

TAYVON EPPS

A musician, Tayvon Epps was first exposed to music making by his family. In his immediate family, his father is a bass, lead and rhythm guitar player, while his mother is a singer. Musicality expands beyond just his parents, with all his uncles and aunts singing or playing instruments. His family had a gospel quartet group called the Hard Driving Young Gospeleers. So it was natural for Epps to be musically inclined. Epps has played music his entire life, starting with violin in 4th grade, drums in 5th grade, which he continued to play in the Milford Mill Academy's marching band drum line. He began playing keyboards, organ and piano in church periodically starting in 1990, eventually playing for other churches since January 1994.Epps is currently the head musician at Remnant of God Deliverance Ministries in Catonsville, Maryland, having played there for almost 5 years. Epps has his own LLC, Tayvon Epps Music Service. In addition to two instrumental CD's released in 2002 and 2005 that are still selling on all electronic platforms such as Itunes and Google Play.  Epps would use the money to re-invest in my business by purchasing more music equipment.

CARLOS GUILLEN

Since 2008 Guillen has composed & performed under the name of The Expanding Man, a solo musical project that explores instrumental electronic music based on narrative/soundtrack musical styles & spontaneous composition. Spontaneous composition combines improvisation & traditional composition to create works that are both spontaneous & coherent. Guillen composes on the Akai MPC series of drum machines, and on electric guitar & keyboard. Most recently, he released an album titled Getaway Special in 2018 which features music for electronic & gamelan percussion using the concepts of spontaneous composition. Along with his work as a performer, he also works as an audio engineer in several local venues, as well as with the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, where he has provided equipment & consultation for all live performances since 2016.

As a new homeowner in the 3rd District, Guillen had plans to complete my home studio as a way to further serve the artistic community of Baltimore. Due to the impact of the coronavirus, he had to cancel the plans for the studio upgrades. He would use the grant money to complete those plans so that once the pandemic is no longer a threat, he can resume my recording studio operations. With this grant & the equipment upgrades it would facilitate, he can continue recording more of my own original work that he had to put on hold and release more albums written during these times of political & social upheaval.

JENNIFER RODRIGUEZ- REVILLA

A psychologist from Mexico, Jennifer has always been involved in the arts. As a self tought painter, she has had many shows in different galleries in Mexico. Around her 25th birthday, she took up photography. Since then her passion has been street photography, coupled with her job as a wedding photography. Before COVID, she started traveling around the world photographing the daily lives of regular people in countries like India, Nepal, Thailand, and other Asian countries. She would love to exhibit her pictures at some point and expand her photography series to countries in South America.  

EDGAR SILEX

Edgar G. Silex graduated Cum Laude from the University of Maryland University College, and has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. He is the author of two poetry collections published by Northwestern University Press, a chapbook published by New Sins Press, and short fiction. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Maryland State Arts Council. Edgar G. Silex has taught creative writing at the University of Maryland (College Park), at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, and at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He is the only poet who has been selected two consecutive years as the Poet in Residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literary Society (HoCoPoLitSo). He has also been the Poet in Residence for the Diné (Navaho) reservation. His poetry, which touches on his Indigenous and Latino upbringing, is widely published and anthologized and has appeared in many national publications, including Rattle, Callallo, Gargoyle, Chiron Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. Mr. Silex has received eight Pushcart Poetry Prize nominations. His first book, Through All the Displacements was nominated for the National Book Award. His second book, Acts of Love was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in K’in, Chiron Review, Weatherbeaten, Gargoyle and Free State Review. Lately, Mr. Silex has been completing a memoir and creating video poetry. Part of what he hopes to accomplish with this Artist District grant is to complete several more video poems and to launch an online journal that publishes only video poems. He and his wife Lauren, who is a visual artist, have lived in the Hamilton Hills community of Baltimore since 2018.

AARON WRIGHT

Aaron is a rapper that goes by the moniker RoOK (roh-okay). His origins in making music began in the 6th grade during a poetry class, however, he never took writing seriously until the 8th grade when he listened to The Coolest by Lupe Fiasco. This song inspired him so much that he started writing his own verses. By his freshman year of high school, he had written his first original song. Aaron continued to work on his craft throughout high school and by his admission to the University of Maryland, College Park, he had already released a few songs online. It was at the University of Maryland, where Aaron started the music club, the “MD Hip-Hop Collective” where he was able to host a benefit concert at the student union. Aaron withdrew his Junior year and began working in retail full time. However, the experiences in organizing and collaboration he gained at UMD proved invaluable in his future musical career. Tired of hearing the negative perception of Baltimore from outsiders and recognizing the tremendous creative power of the artists in the city, Aaron launched his own label “O-Bay Entertainment” in 2017.

BRIDGETT SULLIVAN

A Lauraville resident for over 30 years, Bridget Z. Sullivan received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from Towson University. For the past seven years she has served as the President of Hamilton Arts Collective and as the Curatorial Director of Hamilton Gallery, a 501.3c non-profit art center located in the Hamilton-Lauraville Mainstreet commercial district in NE Baltimore.  Sullivan has participated in group and solo art exhibitions since 1986 including exhibits at MaxGallery, School 33 Art Center, MAP, Load of Fun Gallery, Make Studio, and Jordan Faye Contemporary all in Baltimore, Maryland; Greenbelt Art Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Adkins Arboreteum, Ridgely, Maryland; Delaplaine Art Center, Frederick, Maryland; Ruby Art Collective, York Pennsylvania, and WomanKraft Gallery, Tucson, Arizona. On two occasions she has been selected to participate in the National Park Service Artist in Residency (AIR) Program– in Acadia National Park, Schoodic Peninsula, Maine and in Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, Maryland.  Sullivan has been awarded 2 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist’s Grants, and her work has been featured in AfterImage: Inklight, and URHere Journal of Creative Geography. Sullivan’s work is a crossing of mediums (digital photography, drawing and painting) that explores nature with a combination of reverence and intimate expression. The images survey natural elements from many angles and distances. These depictions are enhanced and abstracted by painterly additions of color and text. The rich natural images converge with gestural strokes and emotive language that allows the viewer to engage with the greater implications of the pristine subjects. Sometimes these embellishments are delicate; sometimes they obliterate the subject into a space of wonder. Sullivan’s artistic process begins with photography and sustained observation of Nature. She collects images on long walks in natural settings. As she makes her way through Nature the place and the images reveal themselves to her. She is not the usual hiker. She gets lost along the trail, moves at her own pace and becomes absorbed in her meditative act of photographing the forest surrounding her. Each of Sullivan’s photography expeditions net several hundred photographs of the details of forest. The environment presents itself at every turn. Over time Sullivan reviews the images and reflects on their visual and symbolic significance as they relate to her personal investigation of life and death and the human experience of moving through periods of health and illness. She takes care to research and identify the flora in her photographs recording notes on the unique qualities of the subjects she has photographed. Often she incorporates her naturalist’s notes in the final piece as handwriting in the work or works the information into the title of the piece. In the studio she reviews and prepares the images for printing. Once she arrives at an image she prints it and then draws, paints and writes on the print with pastel, acrylic ink, oil or encaustic paint. The result depicts the push and pull between humans and their visual digital realm–it is the meeting of hand rendered mark making and digitally produced images. As an artist and educator Sullivan is investigating and inventing new methods of art making with contemporary tools. Sullivan plans to use the Artist District grant to complete a new body of large scale mixed media work that she plans to exhibit at Hamilton Gallery. 

DAVID FISHMAN

David Fishman has a B.A. in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Florida. His writing has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, on the Lucky Peach website, and elsewhere. David lives in Baltimore with his wife and daughter, and works as a Senior Programmer / Analyst at Johns Hopkins University Press. David writes poetry in both form and free verse. He describes his poems as trying to reconcile the odd contradictions of life while walking the boundaries between the commonplace, the weird, and the impossible—all in the pursuit of truth and beauty. David does most of his writing on a laptop that is dying, and so he will use some of the grant to replace it. He also plans to use it to pay for childcare to create more writing time, which has been limited since his daughter was born.

JUAN VAZQUEZ

Born and raised in Baltimore and a native of Hamilton for over thirty years, Juan became interested in music while rummaging through his older sister’s record collection and listening to her albums.  Among the stacks of vinyl he found The Beatles, the group he credits with changing his life.  He loved the music and everything about them; and he’s certain his life would have been much different without their influence. Juan received his Associate of Arts degree from Essex Community College, A Bachelor of Music Degree from Towson State University, and a Masters of Percussion Performance   from the Boston Conservatory of Music.  He served as Principal Percussionist with the United States Navy Band in Washington, DC from 1988 until retirement in 2014. As a member of the Navy’s premier performance unit, The Concert Band, Juan has performed throughout the continental United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria and Italy. He has performed at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, Carnegie Hall and Arlington National Cemetery. During his twenty six years with the band, he has had the honor of performing   for five presidents and numerous members of the Congress and Senate. Prior to joining the Navy he taught at the Peabody Preparatory, Friends School and privately in his home. He also performed locally with the Baltimore Symphony, Annapolis Symphony and the Maryland Symphony.  Juan  started  playing  drum set with local rock and roll  cover bands in his teenage and young adult years and believes he  “played in every bar and night club in Baltimore; most of them are gone now but I have great memories of a vibrant live music scene in the City.” After retirement Juan chose to show his appreciation for music education and pay tribute to The Beatles, selecting eleven songs from the catalog and arranging them for vibraphone. Most published music for this instrument is of a classical nature, or jazz arrangements of music written for other instruments. Juan felt that new vibraphone arrangements from compositions by one of rock’s greatest groups would attract a new audience to the instrument.  These arrangements are designed for college students and professional percussionist for performances at concerts and recitals. Juan’s dream has long been to bring the vibraphone and Beatles music to a larger audience.  This grant provides the resources needed to create and develop a YouTube page which can showcase the arrangements and professionally transcribe and print the sheet music of the eleven arrangements.  Ultimately, Mr. Vazquez hopes to have the arrangements published and this grant will help provide the needed resources. Juan fully realizes he has been blessed to be able to do what he loves for a living, and that none of this is possible without those who help shape and guide us throughout our lives. Giving back helps nurture the next generation of artists. Currently Juan serves as a volunteer Team Leader for AARP’s Experience Corps. He and his team of volunteers serve as mentors, Literacy Trainers and assistants at the William Paca Elementary School in Baltimore City. Mr. Vazquez is grateful for this opportunity which would not be possible without the vision and   generosity of Ryan Dorsey and his staff.