Events & Exhibitions

Open House: Art, Craft, and Domesticity

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Events & Exhibitions
Open House: Art, Craft, and Domesticity
The exhibition is on view in Fox Building, Decker Gallery from Thursday, Feb. 3 through Sunday, March 6. It is open to MICA's campus community only, and available to view from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday.

MICA and Exhibition Development Seminar (EDS) are thrilled to present Open House: Art, Craft, and Domesticity, a show that calls attention to the relationships between individuals, home environments, and everyday household objects. 

Open House: Art, Craft, and Domesticity features pieces by 12 artists working in fine art, craft and functional design. Using textiles, furniture and ceramics—as well as newly-commissioned sculptures, site-specific installations, and digital graphics—the show invites visitors to consider how they live with and among objects made by human hands. 

“We selected the artists in Open House because of their relationships to functional objects and the everyday,” Victoria Cho ’22 (Painting BFA), a senior in the class, said. “After more than a year of learning and working from home, we all think about labor, art objects and the boundaries between people and places differently—and while this show doesn’t directly address the pandemic per se, it does reflect that changed perspective.”

Related Programming

Programs for Open House include two writing workshops—one in-person on Feb. 10 and one virtual on Feb. 25—with local author and creative writer Dale E. Lehman; a virtual paper flower workshop with featured artist Emily Paluska; and various streamable videos, including an artist lecture and virtual studio visits with featured artists David Knopp and Crump and Kwash.

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Participating Students

Victoria Cho

Victoria Cho was born in Great Falls, Virginia. She attends the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) where she is expected to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Spring of 2022 and her Masters of Arts in Teaching in 2023. Cho is majoring in Painting and minoring in Printmaking and Curatorial Studies. She worked as an art studio teacher in Northern Virginia and in Maryland for three years. Cho’s interest in museum education has led her to acquire work experience at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery in their Advanced-Level Internship Program from 2020-2021. There, she worked two semesters in the Office of Educational Programs, remotely. She conducted research pertaining to the museum’s permanent collection and applied that knowledge to conduct videoconference workshops and develop digital resources for students that are currently in use. Cho went on to work at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) as a Summer Intern in 2021 where she worked remotely in their Education Division to conduct research on artworks from NGA’s collection and to develop and facilitate maker-based adult programs for the virtual space. In MICA’s Exhibition Development Seminar (EDS) course, Cho’s roles include planning promotional and educational events as the Public Programs Coordinator and working directly with artists as Assistant Curator.

Marshall McGrigg

Marshall McGrigg is a Junior at the Maryland Institute College of Arts majoring in Art History and minoring in Curatorial studies. Hailing from Arizona and Colorado Marshall has since relocated and now lives year-round in Baltimore. They work in personal practice with a slew of mediums including Fiber, Ceramics, and Photography with a specific interest in the archival. Formerly they completed an internship run by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver as a public ambassador through their Failure Lab program. After its conclusion, Marshall continued to work in the space as a gallery attendant for several years. Marshall's role in EDS functions as Co-Curator, helping to maintain contact with artists and assisting with deciding works. (Though with such a small group they all do a little of everything!)

Elina Press

Elina Press was born and raised in Nassau County, New York. She is in her second year at MICA, with a major in Printmaking and minors in Curatorial Studies and Art History. Her work currently focuses on self-exploration and mental health, spanning from relief printing to painting and bookbinding. As Installation Manager, Elina’s work in EDS has involved preparing the gallery space for exhibiting art. Over the course of the Open House project, her role has included developing a paint palette for the gallery space, building a floor plan, and creating a full plan to transform Decker Gallery to fit the artworks of Open House.

David Petersen

An Iowa native, David Petersen received their BFA in painting and a minor in French from the University of Iowa in 2020, and is currently a first-year MFA candidate in MICA’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting. David has worked as a gallery attendant at the University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art, and a studio instructor at the Des Moines Art Center. David’s painting practice is centered on explorations of queer identity and their childhood in rural Iowa. Though oil paint serves as their main medium, David often makes use of watercolor, gouache, paper mache, beads, and even film in their work. Open House: Art, Craft, and Domesticity serves as David’s first experience conceptualising a curated art exhibition, where they are the primary designer.

Justin Kwash + Enlarge
David Knopp + Enlarge
Loring Boglioli + Enlarge
Emily Luking + Enlarge
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Participating Artists

Nearly all of the artists in the show live in or near—or have ties to—Baltimore.

Erick Antonio Benitez ’15 (Painting BFA)

Erick Antonio Benitez (b.1988, Bronx, NY) is a first generation Salvadoran-American multidisciplinary artist, musician, and curator based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. They received a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently a MFA in Art and Integrated Media candidate (2023) at California Institute of the Arts. Erick has exhibited work at Connor Smith Gallery (DC), The Baltimore Museum of Art (MD), Greenpoint Gallery (NY), Strange Fire Collective (CO), Galerie B-312 (Montreal, QC), Metafora Studio Arts (Barcelona, ES) and Simultan Festival (Timișoara, RO). Their work has been reviewed by The Washington Post, BmoreArt, The American Scholar, Terremoto (MX) and Le Devoir (QC) and a few publications including the sixth issue of BmoreArt Magazine, Let’s Talk Live (WJLA), and Hyrsteria Zine Vol. 2. Erick is also a recipient of the Ruby Artist Project grant, MASB Travel Artist Award, Baltimore Light City Festival commission, and the Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Award. Additionally, Erick has participated in The Studios residency at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA) and Pigment Sauvage :La Track' residency in Montreal, Quebec-Canada. Recently, Erick participated in SWAB Barcelona International Art Fair 2021 edition, presenting a solo-booth exhibition with La Unica Gallery (ES).

Loring Boglioli

Loring’s mother was well into menopause in the baby-boom years when she discovered she was pregnant for the 6th time. She had a business to run, an alcoholic husband to circumnavigate and little time for another child. A preoccupied father loved Loring, but couldn’t protect her from her mother’s rage and neglect. He died when Loring was 13 years old, when adolescence amplified her tragic beginnings. Loring found joy in her grandmother’s button box and quilt pieces, something for which she was relentlessly chastised. Years of physical and emotional abuse caused head trauma resulting in permanent visual/perceptual learning disabilities, finally diagnosed at age 40. The schoolyard was humiliating, except for Mrs. Wilhelm and Miss Hampton, respectively. Her kindergarten and first grade teachers fueled her passion for fiber arts by crafting rag paper and her first true sewing project― a raggedy Ann doll― both made from scraps and socks. Gleaning was a life-long philosophy and genesis of her body of work. Without much encouragement and scarce resources, Loring generating complicated embroidery at age 10, clothing at 12 and near all traditional American needle arts in adulthood. As an adult, Loring faced her disabilities by completing hundreds of hours of behavioral optometry training and psychotherapy, activating dormant zones in her brain. Prior to her diagnosis her attempts at appliquéd rug making were futile, if not totally unsuccessful. Later, from her 20-year-old vintage felt collection, she garnered national recognition in Country Living Magazine twice. Her images graced many periodicals, and her fiber arts expertise includes cross-stitch and crewel embroidery, quilts and historic costumes, hooked and braided rugs and their repair and restoration. At fifty, she earned a Bachelor of Arts, magma cum laude, professional pastry chef and NYSED and MD teacher certification in three areas. The quintessential found-object, outsider artist, her assemblages of frequently recycled scraps of felt and woolen cloth become undulating, primitive, eye-popping designs, reinforced by meticulous hand – stitching and mounting, skills acquired over a lifetime of tenacity and survivorship. A New Jersey native retired from twenty years of teaching culinary arts and baking and pastry, Loring holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York Institute of Technology, MSDE grades 7-12 (three subjects) teacher and American Culinary Federation pastry chef certification. She resides in Baltimore, where native plant and herb landscaping, common everyday items and the ever-fluctuating variety of on-hand materials continue to inspire her work.

Crump & Kwash

Crump & Kwash is a design studio based in Baltimore, MD, committed to manufacturing contemporary, heirloom furniture. Founded in 2015, Justin Kwash and Paul Crump use their complimentary backgrounds in architecture and sculpture to design products grounded in the belief that, simplicity and thoughtful design speak loudest. Crump & Kwash’s artisans are some of the most skilled in the region. Coupling time-honored techniques with modern manufacturing practices, they are dedicated to the meticulous crafting of every piece they produce.

Josh Frick

Josh Frick is a senior in the Interdisciplinary Sculpture program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) who concentrates his studio practice in digital fabrication. He pushes machines to their limits, redefines their utility, and uses coding to ask questions about the nature of patterns and randomness in our universe.

Kellie Gillespie

Kellie Gillespie’s work, which is mostly sculptural, focuses on issues specifically associated with mental health, as well as the concepts of recovery and survivorship. Through her direct relationship with her chosen subject matter, Kellie embraces the controversial concept of mental illness as she investigates the problematic place it holds in society. Kellie’s artwork is an openly honest representation of herself as she portrays personal experiences to reach out to those who have also experienced similar turmoil. Kellie shares profoundly intimate obstacles, both mental and physical, in her work, as she pays homage to those less fortunate in their attempts at recovery. In Kellie’s pieces, she discusses the functionality of the mind as it struggles to persevere and make sense of the reality the body is forced to live in. Kellie specializes in the use of everyday found and forgotten objects in the fabrication of her sculptural and artistic explorations. Her incorporation of mundane, undervalued materials explores the symbolism in that which is neglected and disregarded as it pertains to those labeled by society as unworthy and damaged. The usage of unappreciated objects is exhibited throughout Kellie’s portfolio, as it strongly correlates with the critical themes she addresses. Repetition is a strong motif in her work, and through the duplication of a singular item, Kellie is able to demonstrate its hidden value. Kellie’s artwork aims to portray: the potential in that which is broken, the value in the castaway, and the importance in the forgotten.

Annie Howe

Annie is a celebrated multimedia paper cut artist. Annie’s intricate papercuts are used for a variety of projects including illustration, surface design, and three-dimensional work. After graduating from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Fiber, she worked in community arts for many years, creating and contributing to the Baltimore art community with large-scale puppetry and shadow puppets. As her love for storytelling grew through this large medium, she found her focus as an artist shifting from large 3D objects to that of the smaller more intimate medium of paper. She founded Annie Howe Papercuts in 2010, creating handmade papercuts for businesses, publications, and private collections, and has not stopped papercutting since. Recent Clients include the University of Maryland Medical Center. T. Rowe Price, Anthropologie, University of North Carolina Press, Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts.

David Knopp

A lifetime Baltimore resident, David Knopp attended Essex Community College and Towson University. While studying life drawing, his focus was on the aesthetic qualities in the use of line. He carried this to another dimension and found a connection between drawing and sculpture. His process evolves with a daily routine of envisioning, refining, designing. It takes months to complete a work. In 2012 Knopp received the Mary Sawyer Baker Artist Award, which included an exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He was a recipient of Maryland State Art Councilʼs Individual Artist Award in 2012. In 2013 he was a semi-finalist for the Sondheim Prize. Since then he has been invited to exhibit work throughout Baltimore, DC and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. Knopp was accepted in juried exhibitions, including Craftforms 2011 through 2016, Living with Craft Invitational 2014, SOFA Chicago 2014 and 2016, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art 2013, 2014, and The Center for Art in Wood in 2016. One of his sculpted chairs is in the permanent collection of the American Visionary Art Museum.

Daeun Lim

B. Busan, South Korea, 1992 Currently based in Seoul, South Korea education MFA in Ceramic Art, Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, South Korea - 2019 BFA in Ceramic Art, Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, South Korea - 2016

Emily Luking

Emily Luking is a fiber artist from Baltimore, Maryland who focuses on creating highly textured and abstractly eccentric home goods. She enjoys crocheting as her main process, and uses yarn to adorn all kinds of found objects to transform them from ordinary to unique.

Emily Paluska

Emily ‘Eun Ae’ Paluska is the Korean American botanical artist and founder behind Revery Paper Flora where she specializes in creating realistic floral art. Emily started making paper flowers after the birth of her first child while she was dealing with postpartum depression. She made one paper flower a day for an entire year. A flower a day was initially meant to serve as a much needed anchor to keep her mentally present while she navigated new motherhood and her depression but instead, it bloomed into much more. Emily has created hundreds of flowers for people all around the world. She also teaches her craft to many in monthly workshops. She has worked with publications like HGTV Magazine, Veranda, & Garden & Gun, institutions like the Smithsonian and companies like Lululemon, Lela Rose & Hart Hagerty to name a few. She is also a certified Skillshare instructor who has taught almost 100 paper flower classes to students all over the world. She finds the most inspiration in both the world around her along with integrating her journey into her homeland of South Korea. Emily’s studio is located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington DC where you’ll find her making flowers and plants late into the night.

Vanna Ramirez

Vanna Ramirez is an artist with a passion for clay. In her work, she often enjoys balancing between sculptural and functional forms while she explores her curiosities for visual and physical textures. She holds a BS in studio art from Skidmore College, and has attended NCECA’s 53rd annual clay conference as a Multicultural Fellow, a short-term residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center and Baltimore Clayworks, and workshops at Penland School of Craft and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Vanna currently continues her journey at Baltimore Clayworks as a Long-Term Resident Artist and a teacher. Outside of the studio she works at the Baltimore Museum of Art Shop as a sales associate and at Greenmount West Power Press as an assistant screen printer. And when life allows, Vanna loves biking into the sun set and watching movies with her pup.

Leo Sewell

Leo Sewell grew up near a dump. He has been using found objects to create sculptures for 50 years and has developed his own assemblage technique. His works are collected by corporations, museums and individuals throughout the world. Leo continues to cull the refuse of Philadelphia out of which he fashions pieces of all sizes, from a life size house cat to a 40 foot installation. His sculptures are composed of recognizable objects of plastic, metal and wood. These objects are chosen for their color, shape, texture, durability and patina; then they are assembled using nails, bolts, and screws. The outdoor sculptures are constructed of stainless steel, brass, or aluminum found objects which are welded together. Ultimately, Leo aims to have fun and hopes to give others joy.

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