Urban Camping NCECA 2005: Baltimore, Maryland March 16-18th, 2005
As for the latest, camping holidays, they encourage a quite indecent promiscuity, indeed I can’t see how camping differs from vagrancy pure and simple. -Andre` Thirion, Le Grand Ordinaire
With promise of a free dinner from RISD, a new city to inhabit, and galleries extraordinaire, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference in Baltimore was a must. While figuring out the budget side of this journey camping was suggested as a housing option in a joking manner, and strangely the idea began building with intrigue.
Originally, we began building a tent from corduroy found previously at Providence’s Royal Mills. After structural problems, we decided to barrow a tent and focus on the new money making venture for our project: Hot Chocolate. And what goes better with camping than hot chocolate (with marshmallows)? Monday night we take a trip to savers and purchase $35 dollars worth of mugs. We decal roughly 100 mugs to read Urban Camping NCECA 2005, and pop them in the kiln. Wednesday morning @ 7 am we started our road trip.
We used our mugs along the way, stopping at Starbucks and many other generic rest stop facilities. Off 95 south and on to Martin Luther King Boulevard, we began scouting our first urban camping spot in Baltimore. It was around 4:30 when we drove past Red Emma’s (http://www.redemmas.org/), an amazing used bookstore/coffeehouse. The neighborhood looked nice, so we picked a spot behind a brick wall in someone’s driveway at the corner of Madison and Morton St.
After checking out Denise Pelletier’s gallery show White on White, we set up our tent next to a Honda that had arrived. Other than waking up cold, the night was perfect. The next day we talked with Alleghany Meadows and Andy Brayman, the artists working the Art Stream, a Nomadic Ceramics Gallery in a renovated 1967 Air stream camper which pirated NCECA four years prior to us. (www.art-stream.com)
It was St. Patrick’s Day in a city filled with drunken ceramists, so we traded our security services for part of the Art stream’s campsite which was across from the convention center (the hub of NCECA). The area was dangerous because it was across from federally owned property which served as a campground for permanent urban campers.
Sadly, the night ended at 3:30 am when the Baltimore police came questioning our project. When the tent unveiled two girls bundled under many blankets talking about some nonsense art project, the officers were intrigued but eventually talked there way back into the fear instituted in our country. They told us we were going to be stabbed and killed…death! Is it really that frightening, can we not just let Terri Schiavo die? But that is beside the point, WE WOULD NOT HAVE DIED! Do not let fear take over; your imagination can be used in more productive ways.
We sold $120 worth of Commemorative Savers (www.savers.com) mugs the next day and managed to go to NCECA on $35 dollars each. So if you’re risky, urban camping can be an exciting sustainable travel option for anyone up for an adventure. ****