Maurice began in 2021 at 806 Berry St. in Hampden, as a residential art gallery that sought to cultivate an artistic community through the creation of monthly programming featuring artists and exhibitions across an array of creative disciplines. In 2023, we concluded our programming at 806 Berry, in order to free ourselves to expand the scope of our exhibitions while seeking new and exciting opportunities in and around various locations in Baltimore. We continue our interest in collaborating with Baltimore-based artists in the creation of artworks and exhibitions that are experimental in nature; opportunities that allow artists to create works that could be considered an aesthetic or conceptual detour from their previously established bodies of work. We encourage collaboration between artists selected for exhibition, and new artworks are often produced on site under the guise of a fictional artist, Maurice, a character cultivated with the purpose of allowing artists to experiment and produce with the security of anonymity.

Over the past nineteen months, Maurice has hosted artists from Baltimore and other locations across the US to create exhibitions in Hampden and other various locations in Baltimore for artists by offering cross-disciplinary programming with an experimental and collaborative ethos. With each exhibition, we strive to showcase the uncanny through encouraging the artists we work with to step outside of their primary artistic practices in favor of new, exploratory modes of artistic production. Every room of a given location is a potential exhibition/performance space, and can be modified or altered to meet the conceptual and aesthetic needs of the artists. Artists are our priority, and we strive to expand our audience on social media and within the local community in order to promote our artists and help foster awareness of their work beyond the city limits through our ability to network with other project spaces.

Maurice strives to expand the scope of its programming by fostering relationships and networking opportunities with artists within the Baltimore community and beyond. Maurice’s continued programming provides us with the ability to further disseminate and showcase artists, solidifying it as a legitimate, alternative exhibition model. As directors of Maurice, we’re passionate about expanding the scope of our programming, and mounting exhibitions has allowed us collaborate intimately on the production of visual works, working with artists from a variety of backgrounds, and aesthetic sensibilities-it’s been an outlet for our individual creative practices.

Maurice embraces absurdity, and allows artists the ability to step outside of themselves in order to play and experiment in new and innovative ways that may deviate from their previous bodies of work. Through the use of the fictional artist, Maurice, we allow artists to freely explore and conceptualize in ways that may be unfamiliar. Maurice consists of a constantly rotating cast of artists, and any number of individuals can comprise the character of Maurice in accordance to the needs of any given exhibition. Maurice also functions as the collective spirit of our exhibition model, and reminds our audience that we prioritize the spaces we work with as alternatives to the traditional white cube gallery. Maurice has become the driving force of our ethos, and provides a catharsis for artists who are looking to channel new and experimental forms of unbridled creativity.