Each year the organizers of Artscape, Baltimore's annual outdoor arts festival, boast that the event has gotten bigger and better. But this year that growth wasn't found in a larger crowd or a big-name concert act, but at the core of the festival's mission: the artwork on display.
There are many explanations for the top-flight work, none of which presume to be scientifically objective. But people who have watched the city's art scene for years - and many of the artists themselves - all point to one common denominator: the Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize.
"Baltimore has had a contemporary art community for a long time, but the Sondheim award jump-started things," says Megan Hamilton, program director at the Creative Alliance. "Now it's a cultural community on steroids. To have that one, big, high-profile prize is a very affirming, motivating thing."
Named in honor of the longtime Baltimore civic leader and his wife, the $25,000 award, in its second year, has honored and encouraged the city's own artists, made Artscape a magnet for quality work from across the region and significantly raised the city's profile as a cultural destination. The competition finalists and semi-finalists' works were prominently displayed throughout the three-day festival.
The prize - and the opportunity to exhibit in venues such as the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Maryland Institute College of Art - have attracted a fertile mix of young artists as well as established, midcareer artists who might otherwise skip Artscape's yearly round of shows.
"The Sondheim Prize has made a critical difference by focusing attention and giving an important imprimatur to the work being done here," says Hamilton, who is also an author of a history of Baltimore's underground art scene.
Artscape has also drawn a more geographically diverse group, including many Washington and Virginia-based artists who normally wouldn't make the trek north to Baltimore.
"The buzz about the Sondheim really grew this year among artists in Washington," says Washington-based performance artist Baby Martinez, a finalist for this year's award. "Last year I had to explain what the show was to people in D.C. This year a lot more people know about it."
This year's Sondheim competition, which is open to artists in Maryland, Washington, Delaware and parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, drew more than 300 entries, about a third of which came from outside Maryland.
"The ambitiousness of the award and the way the selection process has been set up with such high-caliber jurors, it's hard to imagine any artist who would not want to be involved," says Jay Fisher, associate director of the BMA, where the works of the seven competition finalists are on view.
"The size of the award, the jurors and the fact that the work is wonderfully displayed make artists see it as a major plus for their careers," Fisher said.
The Sondheim jurors this year included New York-based artist Derrick Adams, Becky Smith, owner of Bellwether Gallery in New York, and Yale art school dean Robert Storr, a distinguished critic, curator and commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale.
"It's an honor to have people like that consider your work," says Kathryn Cornelius, a Washington-based installation and performance artist whose work hangs with those of the 30 Sondheim semifinalists at MICA. "Usually it's very difficult to get an audience with people from New York unless you have a gallery working for you."
Organizers say the number and quality of entries for the Sondheim award had the effect of raising the bar for Artscape's other exhibition venues.
"The Sondheim does pull in a larger pool of artists," says Gary Kachadourian, Artscape's long-time visual arts coordinator. "So if you're a [Richard] Cleaver or a [John] Ruppert, you've shown at Artscape before and might not feel like you have to exhibit every year," Kachadourian said. "But with the Sondheim Prize, you want to."
The prize also has encouraged Baltimore artists who exhibit mainly in New York and elsewhere to take the plunge in their hometown.
Karen Yasinsky, a film-and-video artist who teaches at the Johns Hopkins University and whose show at New York's Mireille Mosler Gallery will open later this year, says preparing entries for the Sondheim competition helped motivate her to try out new ideas and meet new people.
"I hadn't been part of the Baltimore art scene much before that, so it was nice to see all this great work and meet the artists," says Yasinsky, whose film and video works are in the finalists' exhibit at the BMA. "The prize sort of brought me out of my shell, so to speak."
The Sondheim award has had a ripple effect in raising Baltimore's profile as an exhibition venue for artists outside the city.
"People are definitely more aware this year than last," Cornelius says. "There's been a lot about it on the blogs and in the papers."
What it all adds up to is that the Sondheim award, which Artscape's organizers launched last year as a leap of faith, already has had a big impact on Baltimore's art scene - and much sooner than anyone might have imagined.
"There's not a doubt in my mind that the award has stimulated the local arts scene in a way that is palpable," says Jed Dodds, artistic director at Creative Alliance. "It began last year, but nobody was quite ready to believe it. But this year, when [the finalists' show] was held at the BMA and everybody could finally grasp the significance of it, suddenly it felt real."
glenn.mcnatt@baltsun.com