IN CONVERSATION: STEPHEN TOWNS AND RAMSESS WITH CECILIA WICHMANN

Cecilia Wichmann is Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She is the curator of both Stephen Towns: Rumination and a Reckoning and Ramsess: The Gathering on view at A+P October 12, 2019, to January 25, 2020. From 2015 to 2017, Cecilia led the University of Maryland’s Stamp Gallery, an experimental exhibition space for contemporary art, and served as curator and advisor of its innovative Contemporary Art Purchasing Program. She began her museum career at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, where she served from 2007 to 2013. Cecilia earned an MA in Art History from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Hon. BA from the University of Toronto.

Ramsess is a self-taught artist and educator who works in multiple mediums, including textiles, painting, mosaic, illustration, and stained glass. He contributed political cartoons and illustrations to the Los Angeles Times from 1976 to 1994. A longtime resident and leading creative voice in Leimert Park, Ramsess began renting his Degnan Boulevard studio from Dale and Alonzo Davis of Brockman Gallery in 1981, where he lived and worked until 2002. A Los Angeles native, Ramsess continues to live and work in Leimert Park. A life-long fan and lover of blues and jazz music, much of his art reflects that interest, honoring musicians and the music they create. He frequently travels the country to sell his jazz-focused works at music festivals. Ramsess is a member of the Afro-American Quilters of Los Angeles, a partner of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

Stephen Towns was born in 1980 in Lincolnville, South Carolina, and lives and works in Baltimore. He trained as a painter with a BFA in studio art from the University of South Carolina and has also developed a rigorous, self-taught quilting practice. His work draws visual inspiration from Medieval altarpieces, nineteenth-century photography, and Dutch wax print fabrics, as well as from African American story quilts. Towns have exhibited at Arlington Arts Center, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Galerie Myrtis, Gallery CA, Goucher College, and York College of Pennsylvania, among other venues. He won the inaugural travel prize of the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City in 2016, traveling to Ghana and Senegal to visit historical sites that mark the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He is also the recipient of a 2015 Ruby Artist Project Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.