Second Saturday (as posted on the third Friday)

 I was going to do this as a full Ignore style column, but damnit my notes completely SUCK (and my head hurts too much to make stuff up).

5:35pm – Arrived at Joe Squared, winner for CP's Best Pizza in Baltimore, where an undisclosed art openning was supposed to open. Place was suprisingly small and crowded (for as early as it is) but I did manage to find a table between the bar and the restroom (glamorous, I know). Service was horrendous, and my "flag" pizza (a single pie cut into thirds – reg cheese, white, and garlic asiago) was nearly unedible. They asked me if I wanted a box, and I told them I refused to carry out food just to throw it out when I got back to my apartment.

6:38pm – Directly across from Joe Squared was a special "grafitti exhibition" wherein the LOF\T gallery had invited several artists to come decorate a 6' x 3' pieces of plywood that were propped up in the sidewalk in front of ther gallery. Their only real audience was two bored 8 year olds, and all the motorists just trying to get onto 83.

6:45pm – Corner of North & Charles, so which way is the party – left or right?

6:54pm – Well, it wasn't left… Soo heading right I find myself at the Hexagon Gallery which was openning a new show that evening. It was a collection of "ink\marker" art, not that it mattered as it was too crowded to get anyway near the art anyway (let alone get out again).

7:02pm – Metro Gallery, which is scheduled to be open for the duration of this neighborhood wide event, is closed.

7:07pm – I stop by just in time to see the end of the infamous Human Foosball game (and yes, its as exciting as it sounds). They had an "announcer" and a drunk looking DJ perched on some scaffolding. Lightng was from a single bulb over the field and from the streetlights outside.
 
7:15pm – They gave the 8yr olds a couple of markers and let them draw on the back of the plywood. The front is coming along rather well.

7:26pm – Spent 10 minutes in line for a free show just to find our they were charging $15 admission. Sorry, but I don't pay money to get into a free show.

7:29pm – A special performance of some play or another is starting in the theatre next door, but since I'm no longer a paid theatre critic, I decided to head back to my apartment and write up a really good post for my blog – Mission failed (thanks for reading anyway).

Review – Da Vinci: Genius

The art world tends to view science centers with derision; they are not museums but “oversized playgrounds.” The Maryland Science Center , however, seems determined to brush off its pre-pubescent image by launching “Da Vinci: Genius,” its second serious exhibition of the year (the first being AntARcTica back in March).

The first room of the exhibit was a gallery of his paintings, a collection of notebooks (“codices”) and a video of the painter’s “golden ratio.” Leading into the next room was a set of scale models based off his codices.

The models continued into the next area (a few of which were interactive), but the focal point of the room was a large collection of anatomical sketches hanging from the partition at the back of the room. There was another video playing on the far side of the room, but no one paid much, if any, attention to it.

The third room was the one mentioned in all of the brochures: “The Secrets of the Mona Lisa.” Included here were: an oversized grayscale image of the famous painting accompanied by an annotated list of said secrets, a collection of “false color” prints showing what the painting may have looked like at various times and a set of close-up images of the painting’s eyes highlighting the famed “missing” eyebrows. If the full-sized 3-D walk around holographic digital reproduction was there, then I surely missed it.

The fourth and fifth rooms featured more paintings, drawings and even several full sized (non-interactive) reproductions of some of Da Vinci’s inventions. There was also a theater at the back of the fifth room showing a biography of the exhibition’s title genius.