BALTIMORE — Looking for a local place to buy special, handmade, and artistic holiday gifts this year? MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) is bringing back its popular Art Market Pop-Up, for the first time since the COVID pandemic.
The holiday market takes up three floors of the Brown Center, at 1301 West Mount Royal Avenue. It will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 3 and Dec. 4, and is open to the public. Part of the proceeds will go to the MICA Endowment Scholarship.
"It is a great event that has both faculty, staff, alumni and students - from freshman to graduate level. It's the only event on campus where all four of our constituencies can come together and do something as a group," said Sarah Barnes, who co-founded the art market more than a dozen years ago and continues to manage it.
"In the past, we have gotten probably 3,000 to 6,000 visitors per day. I don't know what we'll have this year, again, since this is the first one since the pandemic but I'm hoping we'll have around 2,000 to 3,000 come to it every day," she said.
The market features "pretty much every kind of object, craft, you can think of. We have ceramics, fibers... beautiful wooden boxes, great baskets that are colorful; I have somebody making ornaments with cut paper of cats; we have prints, paintings, cut paperwork, quilted bags, scarves, knitwork, jewelry, plants, LGBTQ flag supportive work... It's so much that if you can think it, it's probably there."
She added:
"This is such a diverse community that you're really going to be able to find works that are completely original, handmade, handcrafted, and I always feel, if you ever see [online handmade-items retailer] Uncommon Goods, that's what we are. We are all makers and we make such a diverse group of products that it's not the typical craft fair... It's really an opportunity for people to sell for the first time, or maybe it's their second or third time, and they're just kind of working what works at a market like this. So you really get a chance to see people who are just starting out as well as people who have been doing it for a while, and that means their price points are really awesome.... I've seen things for $1 and I've seen things for $800, and it's all original artwork."
One of the sellers is Elina Press, a junior printmaking major. She is a printmaker and a bookmaker, so, besides prints, she will offer items like handmade and handbound journals.
"I had heard about art market in the past as kind of one of the legacy things. I came in as a freshman during the COVID year, so I have only seen what MICA has been like post-COVID, but I had heard that art market was this huge thing and a lot of students would be able to sell," she said. "So as soon as I got the email that it was happening again, I was really excited and I signed up pretty much right away, because I love being able to do craft fairs, especially as a printmaker."
Press added:
"From what I've seen of who's there, there's a really diverse body of work... I'm excited. I'm selling on Saturday and then I'm probably going to wander around on Sunday just to see if I can pick up holiday presents for people."
