September 7 – November 9, 2025
EXTREME HEAT
ZINE WORKSHOP
WITH RACHEL STEIN
Saturday, August 16, 3 – 5 PM
​
OPENING RECEPTION
Sunday, September 7, 3 – 6 PM
​
BROMO ART WALK
Thursday, September 11, 5 – 9 PM
​
OPEN STUDIOS
Sunday, October 5, 1 – 4 PM
​
ARTIST TALK
SPONSORED BY CIRCA/UMBC
Monday, October 20, 5:30 – 7 PM
​
VIOLENCE & TREES
A CONVERSATION WITH SOCIAL SCIENTIST & ADVOCATE NIKITA MTULU
Sunday, October 26, 3 – 4 PM
​
PUBLIC SERVANTS PANEL
Saturday, November 8, 3:30 – 5 PM​
Extreme heat is a rapidly-growing threat to public health in urban areas around the world. In Baltimore, the summer of 2024 was the second-warmest in three decades. Two dozen people died of heat-related causes in Maryland last year, including sanitation worker Ronald Silver. Overall, researchers have found that after many years of decline, heat-related mortality in the United States increased 117% between 1999-2023, with the decline reversing sharply after 2016. Given the trends in climate change, the challenge of rising temperatures will only continue to grow.
This show features original art from our three Extreme Heat Fellowship winners, Kei Ito, Rowan Bathurst, and Rachel Stein. The artists interacted with academics from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University who are studying extreme heat and its impacts. These interactions informed the artists' work.
​
Some works exhibited include Shade Provider, a window installation by Rachel Stein, and Ode to Disappearance, a collection of photogram prints by Kei Ito.
​​​​​​​​
Kei Ito employs innovative techniques, including using extreme heat itself as a creative tool, to invite us to reflect on what we are losing as climate change advances. Rowan Bathurst's people-centric works bring our attention to communities​​​
experiencing extreme heat and interrogate our relationship with something that brings both intense pleasure as well as peril. Rachel Stein challenges us to learn to live — and perhaps even flourish — on a warmer planet, including by repurposing waste as heat-defensive infrastructure and to think about water as a means to cool ourselves.
​​
​
For this exhibit, each of the three artists created a free giveaway item for the public relating to their work.​​​
Ode to Disappearance (Poster Version) by Kei Ito (left)
Make Your Own Shade by Rachel Stein (right)
ARTISTS
​
Kei Ito (b. 1991) is an interdisciplinary installation artist working primarily with photographic media and sculpture.​ Ito’s photographs are fundamentally rooted in the trauma and legacy passed down from his late grandfather, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the loss of many other family members from the explosion and subsequent radiation poisoning. His work meditates on the complexity of his identity and heritage and seeks to visualize invisible forces such as radiation, memory, and human mortality. Ito received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology followed by his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.
​
Rowan Bathurst (b. 1995, Baltimore, MD) is a painter living and working between Baltimore, MD, and São Paulo, Brazil. Her practice centers on portraiture, primarily depicting women, drawing from her own photographs of close friends and incorporating landscapes and visual elements inspired by her time in rural Brazil and travels across continents. Beyond her latest exhibition, Bathurst’s recent work explores the connection between present-day women and prehistoric artifacts, particularly Venus figurines and ceramic antiquities. Bathurst earned her BFA in Painting and Art History from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018.
​
Rachel Stein is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Baltimore, Maryland, who aims to activate the mind and body through immersive installation that encompasses video, photography, soundscapes, and interactive sculpture. Her interest in the connection between tactile experiences and inner states of being has inspired her to consider ways of reframing the body in relation to everyday materials, particularly synthetics. Rather than trying to return to a pristine world, her work provides alternative ways of being-with the waste and pollution that we inherit. She invites viewers to question their own consumer reality and relationship with pleasure through sensory stimuli. Rachel received her MFA in Studio Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2024.
paintings by Rowan Bathurst
Water Portals by Rachel Stein
Shade Provider by Rachel Stein
Zen for a Dying Planet by Kei Ito