Opening Reception: January 13th, 7pm

Exhibition Dates: January 13th to February 24th 2012

Radio Transmission Ark: Rob Peterson and Lindsay Reynolds will be in residence at Honfleur Gallery collaborating and creating Radio Transmission Ark, an exploration at the crossroads of transmission art and community archiving.  The result of this collaboration will be an installed portrait of the community surrounding Honfleur Gallery, combining found sounds, observational writings, and documentary drawings, using found and refused media.   Additionally, an active and time-based component of the work is a daily radio transmission, created with local residents, businesses, and youth.  Considering vernacular culture as an oral tradition, the artists will collage sound documentation in Anacostia as transmission art.  Gallery visitors will be able to experience and observe the radio transmission in action at the gallery, from a transmission station couched amid the visual research.  Peterson calls this work “Psychogeography Field Work”, referencing Guy DuBord’s concept of “studying the precise laws and specific effects of a geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviors of individuals.”  Peterson and Reynolds will be joined by contributing artists Kate Clark and Jon Williams and the assistance of students from the Hirshorn’s ArtLab+Noise Factory.

Vernacular Preservation Society: Formal investigations of the typographic vernacular of cities from Detroit, Rochester and Baltimore are the foundation of a new initiative in Baltimore by graphic designers Ryan Clifford and Joe Galbreath, the Baltimore Vernacular Preservation Society.  BVPS’s first exhibition will focus on 70′s era audio-visual signage. Photographs and silkscreened prints explore the visual language including artifacts, hand-lettered signs and Globe Printing’s rich history in Baltimore.  Based in decades of combined research, the new initiative will develop not only an archive and history to preserve vanishing geographically and culturally specific language, (swiftly being replaced with automatic, soulless ‘next day’ signage), but additionally, a system for incubating the craft of sign lettering and the rejuvenation and remixing of its usage.