Homo Faber
Whether you’re taking tools to hand, sketching in a notebook, shooting with a camera, setting up an easel or playing at cabaret, you’re demonstrating that homo sapiens is also homo faber. We humans can’t stop ourselves from making things.
In Bay Weekly, we’ve found ourselves drawn to stories about making and makers.
Art en Plein Air
From Annapolis to Solomons, art is in the air, on the streets, everywhere.
Annapolis Sketchcrawl: In Annapolis this Saturday, you get to be the artist, sketching (painting or photographing) Historic Annapolis en plein air in an unpaced event for artists of all levels and ages. Use light, line and color to capture the places that make our capital city synonymous with history.
Sponsored by the Annapolis Arts Alliance and Four Rivers Heritage Area to “see our history through your eyes of art,” says Alliance president Elizabeth Ramirez.
Meet at 10am, sketch until 2:30pm, then show your works at a reception at Chase-Lloyd House 2:30-3:30pm. $10 adults, $5 students; free for Annapolis Arts Alliance members and onlookers: www.annapolis-arts-alliance.com.
At Annmarie Garden’s Artfest this Saturday and Sunday, give yourself over to art appreciation in the open air with 165 booths of artists and crafters and 30 entertainers on three stages. Creative fun for children plus food and beverage trucks.
Plein Air Solomons: In the week ahead, plein air painters from near and far converge on Solomons and fan out throughout Calvert County, culminating in Sunday Sept. 24’s hot-off-the-easels sale (11am-5pm at Carmen’s Gallery: www.solomonspleinair.com).
Two special events invite you join the artists in making impressions of what you see. At Sunset Quick Draw Wednesday (6pm; $25) on Riverwalk, looking over the Patuxent River and up to the mammoth Thomas Johnson Bridge, you and the pros have two hours to compete against the fading light and a ticking clock.
Return to Riverwalk to Paint the Town for a Cause Saturday (9am-1pm; free).
Light Up the Stars: Annapolis Summer Garden Theater invites you to a cabaret-style performance of your favorite numbers from the venerable theater company’s 50-year history. These all-star performances help the theater modernize its power systems as part of the theater’s Stage/2Power Up! Campaign. (Fri., Sat., Sun. at 8pm thru Sept. 24, $25, rsvp: www.summergarden.com).
Art and Technology in Bay Weekly
Engineers, to use a broad term for makers of things that work to sustain our daily lives and dreams, stand side by side artists in this week’s paper. On the one hand, Bob Melamud explores the burgeoning phenomenon of Makerspaces, shared workshops where homo faber try out tools. On the other, we introduce you to artist and teacher Michael Bell, who’s made Anne Arundel’s Southern High School an incubator for young artists.
But please don’t think that’s all. This week’s is a very full issue, running from toadstools to garden ecosystems to land preservation to following a dream.
Sandra Olivetti Martin is editor and publisher of Bay Weekly; reach her by email: [email protected], or www.sandraolivettimartin.com.