Both on the cover and inside this issue, you’ll find Baltimore artist Megan Lewis’ brilliant and arresting works.
“Over the last decade, Lewis has worked to master her use of oil paint,” Angela N. Carroll writes in her feature story on Lewis. “Her paintings are passionate reflections of the beauty in Baltimore City. The models for her portraits are strangers, people she meets serendipitously while walking to and from her studio on North Avenue.”
In the piece, Lewis and Carroll discuss how Lewis uses her talent to conquer her fears and to wrestle with grief.
“I’m choosing to step into that power every time. It is kind of a release because I have to be confident. It’s like, okay, you’re scared, but you got to do it,” Lewis told Caroll.
You can see more of Lewis’ works at Galerie Myrtis where her exhibition, Moon in Scorpio, is on view until July 20.
Also in this issue, Multimedia Journalist and News Editor Sanya Kamidi brings her level-headed sensibility and journalistic expertise to the subject of transportation accessibility. The subject of bike lanes has ignited many a debate, but calling the issue a bike lane issue doesn’t fully do it justice.
“It’s not just biking, you have electric scooters, you have mobility scooters, you have all types of things designed to get people to get out and about, to experience the city, to not be so fragmented as we are,” Shaka Pitts told Kamidi. Pitts is a cyclist who leads bike rides around the city on Wednesday nights with his group Do The Bike Thing.
Dominic Griffin writes about “Hit Man,” a film that he calls equally charming and disturbing.
“Hit Man” goes in a much different direction,” Griffin writes. “To achieve what you’ve never accomplished as you are, you may need to become someone you are not. But if you pretend long enough? If you genuinely fake it until you make it, what’s the difference?”
The film stars Glen Powell and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Iya Osundara Ogunsina has your July tarotscopes and the poem for this issue is “Is It Better to Speak?,” written by Writers in Baltimore Schools participant Diamond Abrams. Make sure you get a chance to take in our photostory page, where we’ve printed images taken by young people taking part in Wide Angle Youth Media photography classes.
“The images represent the Wide Angle cohort’s budding, innovative, and creative nature,” the group told us. “The evocative portraits challenge viewers to interrogate their conceptions of the portraiture genre.”
Finally, we’ve been stepping up our content online. Go to baltimorebeat.com for stories and photos that we couldn’t fit into the newspaper.
Thanks for reading!
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