PRIDE

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At Emmanuel Episcopal (an exhibit curated by Gallery Blue Door)

Opening Reception    June 7th, 2024    6pm-7:15pm
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Show runs from -
June 1st, 2024 - June 30th, 2024
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​Emmanuel remains a parish and space that celebrates love and identity in all the ways it appears in our community. In celebration of Pride 2024, we are excited to host our neighbors at Gallery Blue Door by displaying the work of local LBGTQ+ artists throughout the month of June. Each weekend, the gallery will open out to Read Street welcoming visitors to view and appreciate our space and the work displayed in it! The Gallery will be open on the following occasions:
Friday, June 7 at 6:00pm: Festive Opening event followed by Glitter and be Gay! concert at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 8, 11:00am - 6:00pm: Charles Street Promenade
Friday, June 14 3:00pm - 7:00pm: Mt. Vernon Pride
all other Fridays: 5:00pm - 7:00pm
all other Saturdays and Sundays: 12 Noon - 4:00pm

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CELEBRATE PRIDE 2024 AT EMMANUEL!Emmanuel Church welcomes you to our 2024 celebration of Pride. We welcome, affirm, and most importantly, LOVE all people and take time during this special month to honor members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Join us for a gallery exhibition or concert and visit us at our table at Mt. Vernon Pride or Baltimore Pride, and know that you are always welcome at our Sunday worship at 8:30am or 10:30am. Read on for all the details!
Gallery Blue Door at Emmanuel
June 7 - 30 (see open hours below)
Emmanuel remains a parish and space that celebrates love and identity in all the ways it appears in our community. In celebration of Pride 2024, we are excited to host our neighbors at Gallery Blue Door by displaying the work of local LBGTQ+ artists throughout the month of June. Each weekend, the gallery will open out to Read Street welcoming visitors to view and appreciate our space and the work displayed in it! Keep up with show details and special announcements here. The Gallery will be open on the following occasions:
Friday, June 7 at 6:00pm: Festive Opening event followed by Glitter and be Gay! concert at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 8, 11:00am - 6:00pm: Charles Street Promenade
Friday, June 14 3:00pm - 7:00pm: Mt. Vernon Pride
all other Fridays: 5:00pm - 7:00pm
all other Saturdays and Sundays: 12 Noon - 4:00pm


Glitter and be Gay!
A Concert Celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s music
Friday, June 7 at 7:30pm
To mark Pride month, The Emmanuel Choir presents a program celebrating the music of Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) — including the show-stopping aria from his 1956 musical Candide, “Glitter and be gay!” In addition to popular selections from Bernstein’s many stage scores, including West Side Story, The Emmanuel Choir sings portions of his monumental 1971 Mass and a complete performance of the 1965 masterpiece Chichester Psalms. This concert is hosted by Baltimore's own Brooklyn Heights! Don’t miss this fun and varied concert extravaganza, as we celebrate Baltimore Pride and bring our 2023–2024 Music at Emmanuel season to a fabulous and festive close. Find more information and purchase your tickets here!


PRIDE of Mt. Vernon
Friday, June 14, 3:00pm - 7:00pm
200 Block of W. Read Street
Emmanuel is overjoyed to once again join this Pride filled street festival featuring a stage with musical entertainment, local vendors, artists, and businesses, kid activities, & more! Going its our third year, PRIDE of Mt Vernon, in collaboration with PRIDE Baltimore, The Drinkery, MVR, & Adam Galaxy Vintage Showroom, is proud to host this street festival in Mt Vernon, the neighborhood community where it all began years ago, and to begin a weekend of fun and festivities! PRIDE of Mt. Vernon highlights area businesses while celebrating the local LGBTQ+ community and inviting all to dance in the streets, eat until you’re stuffed, enjoy a few drinks, and shop until you drop in the neighborhood where it all began!


Baltimore Pride Parade and Block Party
Saturday, June 15
Charles Village
First, look for Emmanuel’s people in the parade where we will join our neighboring Episcopal parishes to witness to the power of LOVE. Ever wondered if there were Christian churches that love God and love, include, affirm, and honor LGBTQIA+ people? Well, there are and we are looking forward to celebrating Pride together again this year. After the parade be sure to continue on down Charles Street to the Block Party where you’ll find smiling Emmanuelites staffing our colorful booth and handing out special Pride Church Merch!

​Exhibiting artists -
Ram Brisueño
Scott G. Brooks
Damien Cheeks
Joan Cox
Lania D'Agostino
Douglas Johnson
​Scott Ponemone

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​Ram Brisueño is a Baltimore based, self taught artist with a degree in English from UMBC (1993). In 2000 he took his poetry and began painting around, and literally on them. Ram considers himself a collagist focusing on form, color, and stories within his paintings using acrylics, watercolors, found objects and mixed media in a collage of styles, textures, and sculptural objects and details layered within unique and hidden narratives. An almost surreal perspective between material and transformations  that play in stories and dreams.
Ram has lived in New York, but currently lives in Baltimore where he has been showing his work in a number of galleries, venues. His work is collected throughout the region. ​

To purchase his work from this exhibit, email him at - [email protected]

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ramsueno
Instagram - https://instagram.com/ramsueno

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​Scott G. Brooks (b. 1960 - Flint, MI) is a figurative artist living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been an active painter since the age of 17 when he was hired to paint murals and kept that momentum since. Scott received a BFA from the University of Michigan (83') and moved to Washington DC in 1990 where he lived for before moving to Baltimore in 2016. His art borders on the surreal and ranges from portraiture to complex narratives. Scott incorporates historical and religious imagery with current social, psychological, and political issues, then infuses them with a dark sense of humor. Scott has created artwork for an extensive list of clients, including The Washington Post, Metro Weekly, The U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Navy, as well as providing illustrations for children's publications. Scott has exhibited his work internationally, including: beinArt Gallery, Australia; Last Rites Gallery, NYC; Mondo Bizarro Gallery, Rome; and CoproGallery, Los Angeles. The exhibit at Gallery Blue Door is his first solo show since 2015.

To purchase his work from this exhibit, email him at - [email protected]

​Website - www.scottgbrooks.com
​Blog - https://www.scottgbrooks.com/scott-g-brooks-blog/
Instagram - ​http://instagram.com/scottgbrooksart
​Facebook - ​http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-G-Brooks/374098574084
Twitter - ​https://twitter.com/scottgbrooks

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​Damien Cheeks is a multimedia artist living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been an active in the arts scene for years and creates when he can.

To purchase his work from this exhibit, email him at - [email protected]

​Facebook - ​https://www.facebook.com/damien.cheeks

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Joan Cox uses narrative, historical art references, fantastical elements of costumes and autobiography to depict taboo intimacies between women—acknowledging and emphasizing the female gaze. Her work consists of large paintings, photographs and monotypes. Joan creates narrative portraits of lesbian relationships in colorful, life-size compositions.Her work opens up a dialogue about the increasingly open presence of lesbian couples in contemporary society and the lack of their presence in the history of Western art.
She is a Baltimore native and although she left town for a few years to have adventures in New Orleans and Alexandria, Virginia, she has been back in Baltimore since 2011. Joan is a painter, photographer, graphic designer and writer and earned her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art's low-residency MFA program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
Joan recieved a BFA in Painting from Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland in 1991 and has created many different bodies of work, exploring new mediums and exhibiting steadily. She began as a watercolor-based figurative painter, experimented with digital media and collage-based paintings and then transitioned into large oil and acrylic paintings. Her consistent subject is the figure, both actual and implied.
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To purchase her work from this exhibit, email her at - [email protected]

​Website - joancoxart.com/home.html
Instagram - ​www.instagram.com/joancoxartist/
​Facebook - ​www.facebook.com/joan.cox.7773

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Lania D'Agostino (b. 1957) grew up in Michigan, and is an American artist based in Baltimore, MD after moving there in the 1980's to study at The Maryland Institute College of Art from which she received a BFA (1985). 

She is an avid (some would say obsessed) maker of things. Some of these creations begin with direction from an emotionally charged connection to a social issue and others are creations that evolve from a direct flow from her inner spiritual self. This intuitional direction shows mostly in her drawings and paintings as she creates figurative works of child like images with jackrabbits, toys and large eyed children. These all seem to have an underlying feeling of an emotionally charged world of the knowing of the unknown.
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In her spare time D’Agostino runs her company D’Agostino Studios LLC where she designs and build life cast figures and custom mannequins for the museum and film industry. In her personal studio there is the ongoing castings of transgender communities, homeless youth in Baltimore and figurative pieces concerning climate change. These installations have been shown in solo and group shows and she hopes to bring awareness and acceptance of all these issues with this work. Her creations share their stories through wide-eyes and surprising colors, transporting viewers to a place of contrasting emotions. 
 
Lania has been recognized as a Sondheim Semi- Finalist (Myerhoff Gallery) and has received the Gutierrez Memorial Legacy Grant as well as the Maryland State Arts Council. Her work has been on display at School 33 Art Center, Gallery 788, ArtScape, Area 405 Gallery,  Max Gallery, Gallery 1448, Minas Gallery, Villa Julie College Gallery, Manhattan Arts International, Maryland Art Place, Creative Alliance, and Y Art Gallery among several other creative spaces. 

Lania lives and works at her studio space in Federal Hill with her partner and her 2 cats.

(Photo courtesy of Roy Furchgott photography - cropped)

To purchase her work from this exhibit, email her at - [email protected]


The Naked Truth Show
Podcast Interview - www.thenakedtruthshow.com/post/lania-d-agostino

Website - ​https://www.laniadagostino.com/

​Instagram - ​https://www.instagram.com/dagostinostudios/

​Facebook - ​
Lania D'Agostino
D'Agostino Studios​

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​Douglas Johnson is a fine artist who has made Baltimore his home since 1987 when he began his studies at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Johnson lives to create with color and to paint from life. His work continues to explore new possibilities of water-based media: primarily watercolor, gouache and ink. He has recently begun working with watercolor paint made from genuine gemstones such as lapis lazuli, garnet, jade, and amethyst

Figures that have a living presence, landscapes that exude their seasons and  stretch out for miles, expressed in spare paintings made with an economy of swift gestural marks. It is this gymnastic precision in Johnson's brushwork and unbridled use of saturated color that make his paintings so recognizable.

American Artist Magazine has praised Johnson’s “provocative approach to watercolor, one that relies on shockingly vibrant colors [and] flowing strokes of transparent paint,” describing him as a “serious and well-informed” artist.

In addition to his accomplishments as a painter, he has been an active member of the ever-changing Baltimore theatre community as a writer, director, and producer of set designs for Annex Theater, Yellow Sign Theatre, Frith and Inle, Everyman Theater, Stillpointe Theatre, Single Carrot Theatre and the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. 

Johnson's experience in historic preservation includes work on the restoration of the Brumidi Corridors of the United States Capitol, of Baltimore's Basilica of the Assumption, and of Clifton Mansion, the former residence of Johns Hopkins.

To purchase his work from this exhibit, email him at - [email protected]

Website - https://www.dougjohnsonart.com/​​
Instagram - ​https://www.instagram.com/dougjohnsonart/
​Facebook - www.facebook.com/douglas.johnson3

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​Scott Ponemone has focused his work to two parallel explorations of the human condition over a 40-year career as an artist. In most cases his medium has been watercolor, although he never considered himself a watercolorist, rather an artist in watercolors. 

​One route has taken him on a quite literal representation of what it is to be human and what we human beings look like in the process. This exploration began by zeroing in on how we use our hands, since our extremely dextrous hands with their opposable thumbs has given us the ability to be great tool makers and users. Then Ponemone literally broadened his image-making to include whole arms. For these paintings he asked individuals to hold up above their heads objects that help define who they are. For instance an auto repair mechanic holds up a spare tire. Then only his arms and the tire were painted. Most recently he asked couples that he met in public places to become instant models. The resulting paintings presented both the bonds of the couples and the strengths of the individuals. This latest evolution of his exploration he calls “2 by 2.”

For the other line of exploration Ponemone focused on persons’ attempts to make sense of the chaotic and dangerous world they live in. As a world traveler he became fascinated with the details of the decorative arts he was surrounded by: patterns in pavements, carvings on furniture or picture frames, stitching on clothing, etc. He also thought of the patterns of language. Why has mankind needed to create so many patterns? He realized, just maybe, we humans need patterns to make sense of the chaos and the unknowns around us. He decided that the sky, while sometimes beautiful, is an appropriate choice to represent chaos and the uncontrollable–God’s territory! So in his series called “Planets,” he paints a sky–always from memory–and surrounds it with a decorative arts pattern that has caught his eye. In other words, he placed the (man-made) knowable around a celestial moment of the unknowable.

These twin explorations have been celebrated in two dozen solo exhibitions, numerous group shows, awards by watercolor societies, placement in corporate and public collections, and over twenty fellowships and residencies.

To purchase his work from this exhibit, email him at - [email protected]

​Website - http://www.scottponemone.com/
Instagram - www.instagram.com/scottponemone/
Facebook - ​https://www.facebook.com/scott.ponemone