We Make Baltimore

Yes, there are still things made in Baltimore!

That was the message in a Design Conversation at the Wind-Up space yesterday, where Will Holmann, Sarah Tamplin and Andy Cook presented what types of "makers" are already on the ground and what is planned and envisioned. The Conversation was curated by Lori Rubeling,
Professor of Art and Visual Communication Design and Theatre at Stevenson University.

Made in Baltimore logo by Elizabeth Eadie. The logo refers back to the bottle cork invented
here in Baltimore and made by Crown, Cork and Seal, a Baltimore company that had
locations in what is now Station North and in Highlandtown.

If you want to find out what, buy Baltimore products or support participating artists, makers and organizations, click here. Some of the members you may well be aware of, such as Gutierrez Studios in Woodberry.
Others, like the Living Classroom you may be familiar with as an organization that trains youth but you may not know that they make outdoor furniture.
Yet others like the Station North Tool Library simply provide space and tools to make things.

All of them are united in the idea that modern man/woman doesn't do enough with his or her hands and that we, the city and the world would be better off if more things would be made by more of us locally.

As Will Holmann, one of the curators of the makers movement would attest, this isn't understood simply as a nostalgic return to manu-facturing (making by hand) but very much an attempt to harness cutting edge technology for the purpose of making. Such tools may be 3-D printers, numerically controlled (NC) machines or they maybe artistic skills. Will will scale the maker movement up dramatically when he opens his huge former parcel center at Greenmount Avenue sometime in 2016 hopefully. But in the meantime, he is far from waiting for this project to get built. For example, there will be a "happy hour" event on  Sept 15 at the Industrial Arts Collective in which insitutional buyers are supposed to meet up with local makers. Then he plans MakeScape 2015, a construction kick-off event for his new space on Saturday 9/26.

Andy Cook works for Baltimore City's Planning Department, more precisely the Office of Sustainability which has recently included the makers as part of the green economy and economic development in its sustainability portfolio.

Maker Pop-Up shop in Station North

Sarah Templin who operates a textile business, Radica since 2008 spoke about the makers pop up shop currently in the North Avenue Market gallery (until Set. 26) and her involvement in the Baltimore maker movement. The design magazine Dwell featured her textile in 2013 as one of six "Made in the USA" products they liked. If you want to see some of the more art oriented maker products, don't miss to visit the pop-up store.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
Sarah's last name spelling and her textile brand spelling were corrected

See also my earlier article about Baltimore's makers and Open Works