Creative Alliance,We The People: Art as a Mirror for Society

Wednesday, March 5, 2026 1:30 PM EST at Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD

In-person members’ program

An intimate conversation between Creative Alliance's Executive Director (Jason Steer) and Visual Arts Director (Joy Davis).

Join ASG and the Creative Alliance for a candid dialogue exploring how the arts serve as essential tools for processing complex social realities. Through the lens of recent exhibitions like "Walk On By", a Baltimore-Rotterdam exchange examining African diaspora experiences. We will discuss Creative Alliance's approach to curating spaces where difficult conversations can unfold through artistic practice.

This conversation illuminates the intersection of community engagement and curatorial vision in Highlandtown, examining how Creative Alliance creates programming that centers marginalized voices while building meaningful dialogue across difference. We'll explore questions central to our "We the People" theme: Who gets to tell which stories?

How do we create platforms that challenge dominant narratives while remaining accessible? What does accountability to the community look like in arts programming? Drawing from over a decade of museum and gallery work focused on African diaspora art and material culture, Visual Arts Director Joy Davis will discuss her curatorial philosophy of supporting artists of color and democratizing cultural knowledge, while examining how Creative Alliance's multi-disciplinary approach. The programming spans visual arts, film, performance, and community programs and creates unique opportunities for arts-based civic engagement.

Members-only, registration required (limited to 40 people)

Additional Option: 3:00 PM Gallery Walk Through

Following our intimate conversation between Creative Alliance's Executive Director (Jason Steer) and Visual Arts Director (Joy Davis) ASG will get a private gallery walkthrough of Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in Words and Pictures, a new exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Deborah Brown English. English’s debut illustrated novel, Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in Words and Pictures, which also serves as a catalogue for the exhibition, was published to rave reviews in September. Time’s Breath combines English’s paintings and works on paper with accompanying fiction, connected by an overarching narrative that resurfaces a mysterious island and a lost civilization. In a lighthouse off the coast of Norway, a book is found within the debris of a small boat. It contains pictures and stories, written in several hands. Together, they tell the tale of a volcanic island in the North Atlantic called Tokket Fall, lost a century before, and of the community that lived there—people, animals, and mythical beings.

Deborah Brown English grew up on Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore, and intended to be a fiction writer, studying English and creative writing at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She graduated from MICA with honors in 1985, and her work has been exhibited in Maryland at Steven Scott Gallery, Paper Rock Scissors, the Annual Gala Show of the Choral Arts Society of Baltimore, the Academy Museum, and at the former Sales and Rental Gallery at the Baltimore Museum of Art; as well as in galleries in Pennsylvania and Nebraska. She and her husband, Philip, live in Baltimore and are known together for their joint collecting and support of the arts. 

If you are registered for the trip you do not need to do anything to attend the gallery walk-through.

PLEASE NOTE: AFTER ADDING TO CART, GO TO THE CART BUTTON ON THE TOP RIGHT OF YOUR LAPTOP/DESKTOP SCREEN OR THE CART BANNER AT THE BASE OF YOUR PHONE SCREEN. THEN, FOLLOW THE STEPS TO CHECK OUT. YOU WILL RECEIVE A CONFIRMATION NUMBER AND A CONFIRMATION EMAIL.