UMBC’s Performing Arts and Humanities Building received a positive review in the Baltimore Business Journal in an article published November 18. Written by Klaus Philipsen, president of ArchPlan Inc., an architectural firm in downtown Baltimore, the review describes how the building is poised to make a lasting impact: “…this state-of-the art performance venue, designed by top-level experts, will indeed let students create community. It gives UMBC — and Baltimore County — a cutting edge in the region.”

Photo by Marlayna Demond

The author comments on specific features of the building and highlights the PAHB’s ability to house several different academic programs while providing modern facilities and spaces for performances, teaching, and research.

“The 176,000-square-foot center accommodates a diverse program ranging from classrooms for philosophers and English majors to dance and music studios, a concert hall, black box and proscenium theaters and a high-tech recording studio.” He later adds, “each theater, music room, practice studio and classroom represents perfection of its own, visually, functionally and acoustically.”

To read the complete review titled, “UMBC’s new arts building creates community,” click here.

Portrait Garden is a series of audio and photographic portraits of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institute for Women in Jessup, MD, culminating a 1-1/2 year long collaboration between Ruby Award winning artist and Associate Professor of Visual Arts Lynn Cazabon. In the collaboration the inmates created perennial gardens on the prison grounds consisting of plants chosen to represent each woman, and Professor Cazabon recorded interviews with each about the selected plants and her past and present experiences with gardening. The completed portraits are photographs of the selected plants that were planted and cultivated over the course of a year, displayed with a short textual excerpt from the audio interviews and QR codes, which when scanned with a mobile device, play the full interview with each woman. The complete set of images and audio interviews are available through the project website: http://portraitgarden.org

For the month of December, Portrait Garden will be displayed as a series of 100 posters in trains within the Baltimore Light Rail system. This public dissemination is conceived as a moving gallery designed to bring the women metaphorically into the community of Baltimore City.