Down one of Lexington Market’s winding paths, next to stands where vendors hawk deli meats and rows of bananas and apples, among the sharp smells of fish and fryer oil, you’ll find the museum.
It might not look like what you picture – no gilded frames or bronze statues. But there are drawings and paintings displayed on a white wall, some as simple as a slice of pizza, others more intricate – farm scenes and bright-colored houses.
This is the Outpost, the Baltimore Museum of Art’s mobile museum that roves throughout the city. The art is the creation of anyone who stops by, using the watercolors and pastels that sit on a folded easel.
Artists Katie Bachler and Brianna Berry give the passers-by one piece of instruction – show us what home means to you. There’s also a map where they can indicate where they live.
Sometimes, the would-be artists need convincing. Bachler runs up to anyone who gives the booth a second-glance.
“Do you want to create some art?” she asks.
One Friday, she coaxed a woman in black rain boots up onto the platform. A man wearing a camo coat pushing a walker took up a purple pastel.
“I haven’t done this in so long,” he told Berry.
To some, home is safety, others love. The art has also evolved into life advice – from “Call your mother,” to “Change is good.”
The Outpost will inhabit the market on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday afternoons until April 16. Eventually, these works will be displayed in a BMA exhibit on the concept of home that’s still in the planning stages.
Bachler runs out to two men, who have slowed their walk.
She asks, “Do you want to make art about what you love?”