Gerald Hawkes made this Victory Head in 1995 from wooden matchsticks and food coloring
Baltimore's Visionary Art Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum showcases innovative work
On a sliver of land nestled between Baltimore's Chesapeake Bay and historic Federal Hill lies an oasis of open-mindedness and creativity.
It's a quirky, whimsical place that pushes the limits of what is possible, what is art, and what it means to be an artist. It's a museum dedicated to inspiration and innovation, to seeing the invisible and discovering how dreams become reality.
They call it visionary art.
What you'll find inside the American Visionary Art Museum is probably far from what you'd expect to see at an art museum. No marble busts or landscapes in oils and gilded frames. We're talking vintage automobiles covered in shards of glass and pottery; a 15-foot pink poodle made from tulle, tissue and plastic flower petals.
And it's all made by people you probably wouldn't consider artists: Religious visionaries, mental patients, recluses and the homeless -- none of whom have formal training.
"We collect and assemble the work of people some might consider to be on the fringes of the art world and society in general," said Pete Hilsee, communications director for the museum. "But we try not to affix labels. Our whole mission is about the validity of everyone's experience; that there is a creative wellspring in all of us."
Because many of the works displayed are made from common items - found objects, household materials, broken glass, etc. - some visitors might view the pieces a little differently than they would if they were hanging in the Baltimore Museum of Art.
"The fact that someone thought to assemble 193,000 toothpicks into the Lusitania . . . well, that's not nothing," Hilsee said.
Still, it's not like anyone who makes a Popsicle-stick figure or candy-wrapper creation can have their work on display there. Curators select pieces that demonstrate talent and fit with the theme of a particular exhibit. They also work to tell the life stories behind the art; the stories of the self-taught, self-made, free-thinking innovators who made it.
Hilsee said Baltimore's reputation as a working-class city makes it the perfect place for an offbeat museum like this.
"We're celebrating extraordinary work by everyday people," he said. "It kind of meshes with Baltimore's sense of itself."
When the museum opened in 1995, the goal was to preserve the area's identity as the industrial waterfront.
The 35,000-square-foot main building - formerly The Copper Paint Co. - has been referred to as an architectural jewel because of the rehabilitation of a former industrial space. The renovated Four Roses whiskey warehouse next door is now a barn with 45-foot ceilings that accommodates large sculptures and exhibits.
From there, visitors can either wander through a wildflower garden or cross the granite-and-quartz-paved, terraced sculpture garden that connects the museum with Federal Hill and Inner Harbor.
Stand in the sculpture garden and look up. You'll see a 38-foot wide stainless steel Bird's Nest Balcony. Look down and you'll find your reflection in a mirrored mosaic Cosmic Galaxy Egg.
The final building in the complex is the Jim Rouse Center For Visionary Thought, which opened four years ago. Once a whiskey barrel warehouse, it's now a showcase for large-scale pieces including the results of the museum's annual Kinetic Sculpture Race. The third floor holds classroom and meeting space for the museum's workshops.
A rainbowed "O Say Can You See" sign on the brick exterior reminds everyone who drives past on Key Highway what the place is about, while harkening to the city's Star-Spangled heritage.
"When your back is to the sign, you're looking at the spot in the harbor where Francis Scott Key was moored when he wrote 'The Star Spangled Banner,'" Hilsee said.
Condominiums now obscure some of that view, but still, you can imagine . . .
