The Eye: Creative Alliance's Jed Dodds and Laura Amussen

Occupation: Artistic director, Creative Alliance at The Patterson

Neighborhood: Highlandtown

Why I love this piece: Magnolia Laurie is one of the eight resident artists we have living here at The Patterson, and this painting is hanging in the hallway outside her studio. She paints these little landscapes that are stripped bare like some battlefield from the First World War, but crisscrossed with lines, that can morph into piles of construction materials, or goal posts, or a string of pennants from a used car lot.

Her paintings are really spare, and modest, but the more time I spend with them the bigger they feel. Somehow they manage to capture a sense of history, and a kind of post-apocalyptic future, but also feel very present, with the environment and the war on everyone’s minds. She’s got a big show, with another of our residents, Rene Trevino, coming up at The Patterson this fall.

BEYOND THE EYE

While you’re there: See Laura Amussen — Lady Chapel

What it is: The exhibit, inside the Creative Alliance’s miniature installation space, intermingles images of the Virgin Mary, Madonna figures and other women Amussen cut out of old art textbooks. The female faces peer out of miniature Gothic windows. According to the Creative Alliance, Amussen displaces these women by literally cutting them from their roles as mothers, lover, friends and wives.

When: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; through Aug. 16

Cost: Free