The artist looked at the petite, fair-haired Suzi Keats Sinex and saw Winston Churchill, at least around the mouth. Could be, says Ms. Sinex, board president of Maryland Art Place, stepping back from the freshly painted canvas, contemplating her new image: tough broad with deep brow furrows and fierce determination.
"I'm more like this than, I think, that perfect . . ." and with this she clasps her hands together demurely, pantomiming her own sociological profile: Guilford, Roland Park Country School, Wheaton College, erstwhile picture of corporate wife perfection.
"That pretty hothouse flower, that's somebody else's expectations" says Ms. Sinex, a divorced mother of two who turns 39 this month. Beneath her Town & Country exterior surges passion for fine art, she says, and the will to see it flourish in downtown Baltimore at a time when public arts funding is expected to be cut.
Lately she lives with one foot in the world of local high society and the other in the rougher universe populated by artists who work long hours in cold studios and are not so interested in making pretty pictures. If they're lucky, these artists get a show at MAP, one of only a handful of galleries in Baltimore devoted to unconventional art -- work not necessarily designed to complement the chintz curtains.
Much of what goes on at Maryland Art Place might seem out of character for Ms. Sinex, who doesn't dye her hair primary colors, affect black attire or pierce any body part other than her earlobes. The downtown gallery, specializing in work by regional artists, has recently shown sculptures made of chain-link fence, a video of a woman whittling a carrot down to a stub, and an exhibit called "Catholic Girls," in which several artists were asked to interpret their religious upbringing. MAP is also the home of the 14Karat Cabaret, a club in the basement featuring weekend shows of performance art and music that is frequently disturbing, sometimes sexually explicit.
The chief emissary and key fund-raiser for this edgy material amid Baltimore's foundations, corporations and gentry is Suzi Sinex, who frequently wears a black velvet hair band and a
modest string of pearls. Picture Kathie Lee Gifford promoting a concert by Nine Inch Nails.
Not that Ms. Sinex is a complete stranger to the arts. Her father, Edgar Keats, is a retired Navy admiral and defense industry consultant. But her mother, Sellen James Keats, has been an artist since Ms. Sinex was a girl and has an exhibit of paintings and drawings running until Sunday in the lobby of the Mechanic Theatre. Ms. Sinex, who is partial to 20th-century and Italian Renaissance art, majored in art history at Wheaton.
few weeks ago she decided to dip her toes deeper into the waters of local bohemia by offering to pose nude for Raoul Middleman,the artist who did her portrait. She'd never posed before, but "just thought it would be a very good experience for me."
Mr. Middleman talked her out of it.
"It's cold in my place," says Mr. Middleman, who painted the 4-by-3-foot portrait in his studio on Calvert Street. "It's hard to hold the pose when it's chilly."
She sat for the portrait for four hours, with a few breaks. The gregarious Mr. Middleman, who has a show of billboard-sized paintings at MAP through Jan. 28, worked quietly as opera played on the stereo. He saw before him a willful woman and thought of a photograph of a scowling Churchill captured right after the photographer plucked the cigar from the prime minister's lips.
"I told her she had a mouth like Winston Churchill," says Mr. Middleman. "She threw herself into the experience. I told her anytime you want to model . . ."
But not nude, he says. "I didn't think it was the right thing to do, a woman in her position."
No problem, she says, "I would have been fine with it." Given the reticence and politesse in which she was raised, she says she's already had more public exposure than she ever would have imagined.
"I was raised by a mother who believed a woman should be in the paper twice in her life," says Ms. Sinex. The public nature of her position with MAP, which she started last February, "is new to me."
Ms. Sinex starts her workday with a cross-cultural expedition. She drives 10 minutes from her seven-bedroom Victorian in Roland Park to the gallery at 218 W. Saratoga St., down the block from the pink neon "READER ADVISOR" sign, the dusty storefront of a defunct jewelry shop, the sandwich joint jammed into a space scarcely wider than a phone booth. She steps across a sidewalk blotted with pigeon droppings, through the glass door, to begin another day shaking the local trees for cash donations.
Ms. Sinex, who has served on the MAP board since 1991, puts in about 30 hours as president. The position is unpaid, and she does not hold another job; yet she manages to keep two children in private school.
"I'm fortunate enough," she says, "to have other resources through investments and family. So I'm able to do this."
Her commute to a ragged part of town carries some symbolic content, says Ms. Sinex. By showing her confidence in the area, she hopes to inspire folks who normally would not set foot on West Saratoga Street to take a chance on this part of downtown, and on untraditional art.
Ms. Sinex does not decide what kind of art to show at MAP, a showcase for local artists who have few places in Baltimore to exhibit their work. She's committed to seeing art thrive downtown, but she knows its support must come from the world whence she comes.
"She gives it a different kind of legitimacy than I can," says Jack Rasmussen, executive director, who was director of Rockville Arts Place before he joined MAP three years ago. "She comes from a part of Baltimore that I don't know. She provides us some access into the places where the money is."
Like anyone involved in raising money, she works the phones, the lunch and party circuit, ever insearch of contacts, names, potential donors or board members. Her fund-raising skills have not been tested at MAP over time, but by all accounts her enthusiasm and her old community contacts make her a formidable advocate.
"She's able to convey to the corporate world her passion for art and artists," says Mary Ann Mears, one of MAP's founders and a former president of the board.
Jeff Scherr, a partner in the downtown law firm of Kramon & Graham, says the firm has been giving to MAP about four years. The reasons: part civic responsibility, part personal relationships with Ms. Sinex and her predecessor, Fredye Wright Gross of Woodbrook, who served as board president for nine years.
Asked if the type of art ever played a role in the firm's decision to donate, Mr. Scherr said "What's unconventional today is conventional tomorrow."
MAP, a non-profit organization formed in December 1982, lives on a $360,000-a-year budget. The organization earns about $100,000 by renting offices in the upper three floors of the old Johnson Brothers Building, which the organization owns. The balance is raised from a combination of memberships, private donations and grants from federal, state and city governments.
With the arrival of the Republican majority in Congress, cuts are expected in the National Endowment for the Arts, which last year granted MAP $21,000. The Maryland State Arts Council, which last year granted MAP nearly $36,000, may also have less money to give.
Mr. Rasmussen says he's more concerned about the economy than the 104th Congress. But the staff development director, Coleen West, says "it is scary" to contemplate the possibility of big NEA cuts.
"It's just not something I'm going to immediately agonize over," says Ms. Sinex, a perennial optimist, noting that private donations were up substantially last year. She's determined to make sure this works, partly out of zeal for art, partly fear that without a vibrant center, "Baltimore will become another Detroit . . . It's probably good that I am competitive by nature."