UMBC is pleased to welcome the Nature Sacred Firesoul Network to join our monthly Wellness Wednesday event at 12 noon on July 6, and the public is invited too! In partnership with Chesapeake Mental Health Collaborative's Center for Nature Informed Therapy, and supported by Nature Sacred, this forest meditation and nature therapy session integrates traditional therapeutic methods with the healing effects of nature to restore and rejuvenate the mind and body.

Explore the creative vision of 24 artists at SPARK: New Light, presented by UMBC, Towson University, and PNC Bank, August 13 through September 25 at The Peale. SPARK: New Light will ignite your imagination. UMBC artists featured in this fifth annual family-friendly SPARK exhibition include Lynn Cazabon, Irene Chan, Adam Droneberg, Fahmida Hossain, Ahlam Khamis, Kathy Marmor (with Penny Rheingans), Lisa Moren (with Tsvetan Bachvaroff, Dan Deacon, and Woody Lissauer), Timothy Nohe, Corrie Francis Parks, Chris Peregoy, Foster Reynolds-Santiago. Special events will feature Kelley Bell, the UMBC Percussion Ensemble, and the Umbilicus ensemble.

Most prisons and jails across the United States do not allow prisoners to have access to cameras. At a moment when an estimated 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., 3.8 million people are on probation, and 870,000 former prisoners are on parole, how can images tell the story of mass incarceration when the imprisoned don’t have control over their own representation? This exhibition addresses the unique role photography plays in creating a visual record of this national crisis, despite the increasing difficulty of gaining access inside prisons.

In conjunction with the exhibition Prison Nation, the Library Gallery presents Portrait Garden, a display of works by Lynn Cazabon, professor of visual arts and director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity (CIRCA), in the Library Rotunda. Portrait Garden is a metaphorical garden of ‘portraits’ of eleven women incarcerated at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, a multilevel security prison.

Please join us for a public Artist Reception for SPARK: New Light, on display at The Peale. Enjoy food and drink while celebrating the artwork of two dozen UMBC and Towson University artists in partnership with PNC Bank, and celebrate the grand re-opening of The Peale.

In conjunction with the SPARK: New Light exhibition at The Peale, Chris Peregoy will share his love of the magic of photography in two hands-on Lumenbox & Solargraphy workshops.

In conjunction with SPARK: New Light, on display at The Peale, artist Lynn Cazabon will be in the gallery ready to record your winter memories to be added into the project Losing Winter, featured in SPARK and also on display at the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Sessions will be held on September 11, 17, 23, and 25.

The Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents Elaine Eff, who will speak on Baltimore Painted Screens: Understanding City Life through Urban Arts. Join Elaine Eff, the foremost chronicler of painted screens for a tour of the sidewalks of East Baltimore, in search of this homegrown folk art known in no other modern American city. An artful anomaly, a source of privacy and ventilation, painted screens grew from the handiwork of a single Northeast Baltimore grocer in the summer of 1913 to hundreds of thousands of colorful landscape scenes created by known and unknown hands on their neighborhood’s rowhouse windows and door screens.

The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents Oletha DeVane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit, on display from September 22 through December 17. Featuring nearly 100 artworks, the exhibition is the first retrospective of celebrated Maryland artist Oletha DeVane, and traces the artist's extensive career, from her early paintings and works on paper to video artworks and interactive sculpture, including works on view for the first time.

The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents the Opening Reception for Oletha DeVane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit, on display from September 22 through December 17.