VALENTINES DAY 2009

The day is Saturday, February 14^th- Valentines Day.  I’m helping take down the cabaret from the previous night’s 14kt Cabaret performance in the BBOX. It was a great success; lot’s of people came and sadly we ended up having to turn some away (you know- those lame fire codes).  Anyway it was pretty wild. Sensory overload comes to mind, but in the most sublime way. A lot of decoration and ephemera from the original cabaret space at the Maryland Art Place was used and it gave it that authentic cabaret feel. Stuff like the tables with the cast iron legs, fortune-teller canopy/awning, and Dan Van Allen’s bone shrine. All of which is what this particular anecdote is about.

So to get back to the story. It’s Valentines Day and we’re all cleaning up the BBOX, Laure and Dan are there also. At some point in the break down I volunteered to help Dan and Laure take the tables, the canopy, and Dan’s bones back to MAP on Saratoga Street. The plan was that I would help them load everything up, meet them at MAP, help them unload and drive Laure and her cart back to campus.   

Five minutes later I’m parking on Saratoga street and I spy Dan’s crazy blue VW bus a few cars ahead of me on other side of the street. I meet them and we start unloading everything- wheeling the tables precariously over Baltimore’s world class sidewalks and into MAP. The three of us crowd into an elevator that I didn’t know existed from my previous visit and Laure whips out a key, slides it into the panel, turns it, and presses “B” for basement. And I think to myself “My God. It’s like a secret hide out. Like the Bond villain in the volcano. Or the Bat Cave…”

I feel that this event illustrates perfectly what my experience with the class and with meeting Laure has been. As I stepped off that elevator I almost wanted Laure to say something really cliché like “You’ve taken your first steps into a larger world!”

For me being in the Exhibition Development Seminar and working with Laure has been one revelation after the other. I’m a Maryland native- a lot of my family is still in the city. For me to learn that there is a rich history in the arts in my native city was incredibly uplifting. I mean let’s face it Baltimore can be hard to like. Sandwiched between DC, Philly, and New York it’s like the pickle you don’t even notice. Anthony Bourdain, still one of my heroes, has one line to say about Baltimore in his book- “it sucks” (pg. 137 of Kitchen Confidential)

But it doesn’t. And it never has. All the good stuff is just out of view. You have to look for it, search it out, like the MAP cave. And when you stumble upon something it’s that much more exciting. Laure and other artists have been active for years making the best out of Baltimore. In the past there was Laure and the Ad Hoc Fiasco, the 14kt Cabaret, and now leading up to the DIY explosion and Wham City. 

For me, as a Baltimore artist I feel like I have two legs to stand on now. I really don’t feel like I have to go to New York, or anywhere else. For me Laure Drogoul has confirmed what I always knew.

Baltimore doesn’t suck.

-Cris Cimatu 

 

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