Student artists take N. Charles St. as their muse

Beginning in the financial district in the south and intersecting West University Parkway in the north, North Charles Street is one of the principal arteries in a city humming to the beat of 650,000 souls. Between those geographic extremes are the classical grandeur of Mount Vernon, the ramshackle commercial and residential areas of the low and mid-20s and our very own campus. After years in Baltimore, however, many, perhaps most, of us are so inured to the sites of this thoroughfare that we notice practically nothing at all. Thankfully, there are those among us who see things quite differently -- artists who observe and interpret a world that could so easily be ignored as another example of the urban mundane.

This past fall, the Digital Media Center (DMC) at Hopkins and the Master's in Digital Arts program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) quietly began a collaborative project aimed at bringing together young artists from both institutions to perform just such observation and interpretation. Students and staff from each school were given few instructions. They would select one block on North Charles Street and produce an artistic work devoted to it using any medium they chose. The result is Zero to 3600: Visualizing North Charles Street, an exhibit in the Mattin Offit Building that, through the range of its artists and their media, demonstrates the vigorous diversity of a boulevard we thought we knew.

That capacity to render the routine suddenly unfamiliar is probably the most striking aspect of the exhibit. Each image provides an opportunity to "see something new through the eyes of the artist who chose to document it," Joan Freedman, director of the DMC and co-organizer of the exhibit, said. One work that certainly captures that sentiment is Hopkins senior Matt Strerling's ode to the 3100 block. He took photographs of the Baltimore Museum of Art sculpture garden and grafted them onto computer generated 3-D models, which he then deformed. He has given the medium an apt moniker: dynamic sculpture.

Most of the works in the exhibit contain some digital element. Megan Lavelle, a student at MICA, created a composite photograph of the 300 block using Adobe Photoshop and a digital camera. Her work shows a collection of Baltimore residents going about their usual business, but the image is actually an exquisite fake. "I wanted the composites to have a slight eeriness to them," she said, "allowing the superficial quality of the person's presence to be a clue that it wasn't real." The photograph captures that sense of individual presence magnificently. It also exudes a palpable melancholy, a commentary on the life of the average Baltimorean after decades of post-industrial decline.

Another of the more memorable entries belongs to MICA's Katya Chilingiri, a Russian immigrant who came to the United States in 1996. Her photograph is an intimate twilight portrait of a storefront between Pleasant and Mulberry streets. "My intention was to give the [image a] timeless feel," she explained. "That's why there are no objects that identify the time or year when it was shot." A man stands outside the store, but he appears just barely there, as though a wisp of vapor that will flutter away at any moment. To the degree that photography captures a moment in time, he, too, is timeless, caught between existence and ethereality.

To enhance the spirit of collaboration, each artist acquired an artifact from his or her block and passed it along to the artist one block south. Often, the link between blocks is unclear, but in some cases, such as the works representing North Charles between 24th and 26th Streets, the connection is obvious. Gabrielle Hourticolon's sculpture inspired by the 2400 block decries the lack of green space in Baltimore. Reid Sczerba, a Hopkins employee and MICA graduate, picked up on the theme for his rendition of the 2500 block -- a blank 3D computer world wherein all color appears in the form of advertising, save for a lone man bearing a sandwich board reading "go green." Combined, the works make a potent political appeal.

If there is anything the exhibit is sorely lacking, it is a proper space. The lobby of the Offit Building is hardly conducive to the kind of contemplation that the works deserve. But that seems a trifling matter in comparison to the overall quality of the exhibit. "I think the exhibition looks really great -- very professional and some truly great work," Rachel Schreiber, the exhibit's co-organizer and director of MICA's Master's in Digital Arts program, said. The cooperative element of the exhibit was also hailed by many of the participants. "It's really about the collaboration," Freedman offered. "That's what's so exciting to me."

The exhibit is particularly welcome at Hopkins, which is perceived, rightly, as artistically starved. But things may be looking up in that regard. Said Sterling, who has watched the DMC grow along with the University's artistic community, "There's definitely been a push within the last couple years to incorporate some art with our science."