Maryland, Virginia and District of Columbia
Art
by Ann Erskine
The Washington Village/Federal Hill Windowboard
Project, Baltimore, Maryland
This project is a continuation and an expansion on a project coordinated
by Mary Ferguson during the 1998-1999 school year. Mary is a local community
artist who was sponsored by a fellowship from the Open Society, a foundation
started by a Baltimore philanthropist. She worked with a group of elementary
school students in the Washington Village neighborhood to paint images on
plywood board. The boards were then installed in the window spaces of vacant
buildings in that neighborhood, a low socioeconomic area.
This year, the project is being coordinated by Ann Erskine
and expanded to include an exhibition of the windowboards in a gallery in
Federal Hill, a higher socioeconomic area. Ann has been working with 
Shawn
James, the elementary school's art teacher, and with Kenlynn Schroeder,
the owner of Lucinda Gallery. The students are painting images on boards
which will then be exhibited along with stories about the boards written
by the students. The exhibition will include photographs of the children
at work and of the windowboards themselves and will take place during the
month of May. The framed photographs and some postcards of the work will
be on sale at the gallery and proceeds will be returned to the school for
use by the children. Local businesses are donating food for the opening
reception. Senior citizens from a local church center will volunteer as
gallery staff.
After the exhibition, the boards will be installed in vacant
buildings in Washington Village. The installation will include cleaning
up the vacant lot and painting any boards that are already in place. The
selected vacant rowhomes back up to the football stadium so the windowboards
can be viewed by visitors to the stadium.
This
project directly serves the citizens of Baltimore by teaching young children
that their creations have a value beyond their own community, by teaching
two communities about the commonalities between them, by helping to change
two communities' "images" of one another and by adding aesthetic
appeal to some vacant buildings in one community. This project does not
seek to solve the problem of vacant buildings; only to add some visual appeal
on a temporary basis.
The objective of this project is to create a bridge between
the children, businesses, neighborhood activists and volunteers of two communities.
This project will bring together people of different socioeconomic backgrounds,
different races, different generations and different social backgrounds.
It is truly a comprehensive program that will unite a school, a church,
neighborhood centers and businesses.
Read more columns on Maryland, Virginia
and District of Columbia Art by Ann Erskine in Resource
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Copyright 2008 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
This project is a continuation and an expansion on a project coordinated
by Mary Ferguson during the 1998-1999 school year. Mary is a local community
artist who was sponsored by a fellowship from the Open Society, a foundation
started by a Baltimore philanthropist. She worked with a group of elementary
school students in the Washington Village neighborhood to paint images on
plywood board. The boards were then installed in the window spaces of vacant
buildings in that neighborhood, a low socioeconomic area. 
