BMA Presents Baker Artist Awards Exhibition Celebrating Interdisciplinary and Visual Art Awardees

Selin Balci is an interdisciplinary artist based in Annapolis. Originally from Istanbul, Türkiye, she moved to the United States and transitioned from a background in forestry to a career in art. She earned a B.F.A. in Intermedia from West Virginia University and an M.F.A. in Mixed Media/Installation from the University of Maryland.

Balci’s Contamination series (2024) explores the intersection of biology and art through the collection and cultivation of mold spores. For this installation, she collected mold spores from Baltimore’s Wyman Park, incubated them on panels that allowed them to grow into vibrant organic patterns, then coated the panels in epoxy resin, halting further growth while preserving the intricate forms and colors. For her Faces (2025) work, Balci took Polaroid portraits of BMA staff as well as her friends and family, then collected invisible microorganisms from each person’s body and applied the samples to their corresponding photograph. By growing mold spores directly on the image, she reimagines portraiture beyond the visible, illustrating the complex and often overlooked ecosystems within and around us.

Kelley Bell is an artist, designer, and educator who lives in Baltimore. Bell received a B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute and an M.F.A. in Imaging and Digital Arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Visual Arts. Bell’s connection to the region continues through presentations of her work at festivals, galleries, public facades, and in the Baltimore Harbor.

Fantastic Village (2024) is inspired by the artist’s memories of a playground designed by Virginia Dortch Dorazio (1925–2010). Dorazio won a playground-design contest in 1953 and her cubic concrete rooms perforated by circular portholes and blobby doorways were placed in parks nationwide. The colorful geometries of Fantastic Village invoke the artist’s memories of the now-demolished playgrounds in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore’s iconic rowhomes, while also suggesting saltbox houses of a seaside town, a cluster of earthen homes, or any community where people live and dream together.

Born in Baltimore, Oletha DeVane is a Baltimore-based interdisciplinary artist. She received a B.F.A from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. DeVane has made an indelible mark on the Baltimore arts community through her work as an artist, educator, and arts administrator.

DeVane explores materiality, mythology, identity, and transformation through works that encompass public art, sculpture, installation, and works on paper. Snakes, birds, saints, mermaids, and other symbols populate her work, evoking the possibility of communication between reality and otherworldly realms. She has spent decades learning, teaching, and making art about the most profound phenomena of the human condition and life’s transformative experiences. The exhibition features six of DeVane’s works created between 2012 and 2024.

Jordan Tierney was born on Long Island, New York and graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 1985 with a B.F.A. in Visual Communication. Since then, she has lived and worked in Baltimore as an illustrator; owned a custom framing and art handling business; renovated houses and galleries; fabricated exhibits for the Smithsonian, the BMA, and American Visionary Art Museum; and taught immersive outdoor art workshops.

Believing a healthy culture grows from the soil up, Tierney fabricates her work from what she can find on foot. Her artistic practice involves a daily pilgrimage to the urban streams and forest buffers of Baltimore, surrendering to whatever the Jones Falls watershed decides to teach her. The six sculptures featured in this exhibition encourage us to imagine new stories for our future and remind us of the sacred relationship we have with our living, breathing planet.

Stephen Towns was born in 1980 in Lincolnville, South Carolina, and lives and works in Baltimore. He is a trained painter with a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of South Carolina and has also developed a rigorous, self-taught quilting practice. Alternating between media practices, Towns mines archives and family stories to explore African American history.

Towns’s installation includes three oil paintings from 2022 and two quilted works from 2024 depicting Paradise Park in Ocala, Florida. When it opened on May 20, 1949–Emancipation Day in Florida— Paradise Park was one of the few vacation spots open to African Americans in the U.S., and quickly became one of the most popular. Drawing from extensive archival research and photographs, Towns’s richly textured and vibrant quilts and paintings represent African Americans freely at play and in moments of leisure.

Established and funded by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund and managed by the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Baker Artist Portfolios and associated awards were launched in 2009 to recognize Baltimore’s talented artists, engage the public in supporting their work, and promote the greater Baltimore region as a strong creative community. Each year, one artist per discipline (visual, literary, film/video, music, performance, interdisciplinary) is awarded a $10,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize and one of those awardees is selected to receive the additional $30,000 Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize. At $40,000, this is the largest art prize in the region. Awardees are selected by a two-tiered juried process from up to 900 Baltimore-region artists who have created a free, online portfolio at www.bakerartist.org.

A leading nonprofit provider of services to artists and cultural organizations in the region, Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance creates equity and opportunity In, Through, and For arts and culture in Greater Baltimore. Whether they are emerging or established, mainstream or underground, grassroots or institutional, GBCA believes in unifying and strengthening all members of the creative community. We do this through marketing, education, financial support, and developing innovative programs that increase equity in the cultural community and beyond.

The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund believes that arts and culture play a central role in the development and growth of healthy individuals and thriving communities and commits its resources to promote and sustain a vibrant arts and culture sector in metropolitan Baltimore. Its grants support organizational effectiveness and provide cultural experiences that welcome people of all backgrounds, enrich residents’ lives, strengthen the region’s sense of cohesion and identity, promote local artists and their work, and make the metropolitan area a desirable place to live.