My First Art Fair

Baltimore's Scout Art Fair

My booth at Scout Art Fair, 2025

Scout Art Fair:
Booth: 32 (like my age!)
Dates: Friday, May 23rd – Sunday, May 25th
Hours: 1-6 pm Friday, 11-7 pm Saturday, 11-6 pm Sunday
Location: War Memorial Building, 100 N. Holliday St, Baltimore, MD, 21202

I am thrilled to announce that my work will be featured in Baltimore’s inaugural Scout Art Fair, curated by Derrick Adams and Teri Henderson. This is my first time participating in an art fair, and I am proud to present new pieces from my recent body of work, alongside a selection of silkscreen prints from my thesis work.

I have spent the last three days painting, mapping, and installing my work. I originally was going to paint my booth three different shades of brown, but was talked out of it by a random guy at Home Depot. As I stood at the paint counter with my youngest sister, who was annoyed at me because I was anxiously looking at every shade of brown on the color cards for 45 minutes, this man out of nowhere saw my chosen browns, told me to go with a flat finish (b/c it hides blemishes easily), asked a few questions about what it was for, and then offered his opinion about my work and the wall color. He told me that my chosen shades of brown would swallow my work up instead of making it stand out. He suggested a dark green or dark brown, emphasizing on the green. And man, was he right.

When he said green, I immediately thought about the performance I did in the forest with my Fragility Suit. And I thought about the significance of the color green in my life. As many of you know, I wore green for two years as I healed my heart and tapped into my Heart Chakra energy center (which is represented by the color green).

Green felt perfect.

About the Work:

In December, my partner unexpectedly lost his mother, Vena, a woman whom I was beginning to get really close to. Since her passing, for the past five months, I have been creating these sculpture-like paintings. Thinking about death, the infinite, and the cycles of our bodies, this series is my meditation on fragile material and my fear and acceptance of our fragile existence. This work has come from my heart as I grieve and honor Ms. Vena’s life, alongside the life of my own mother, Eileen.

Made from eggshells crushed into powder (by me), this powder is then formed into a paint and used as the base layer for each painting. Handmade Japanese paper overlays this sand-like surface and is then glossed over with an acrylic medium, creating distinct cracks and ripples of texture from the mixture of eggshell, paper, and gloss.

Some paintings have small silkscreen prints of my Fragility Performance, blended in the paintings, while others have spirals or ridges made up entirely of eggshell dust.

Even though I thought I was done with the eggshells after grad school, I’ve come to accept that these eggshells aren’t done with me.

The silkscreen prints in this show are images from my Fragility Performance (2023), hand-pulled by me using custom-mixed acrylic inks on either Okawara paper or white Bristol paper.

I am amazed at how this body of work continues to grow with these little brown eggshells at its center. I am amazed at how I continue to grow through these shells and through this work. I can’t wait to share more with you all.

I want to thank Breeana Thorne for co-curating my booth with me. Without her, this booth would not be possible or look this beautiful. Her vision, love, and deep understanding of my work are truly one of a kind. She gets it in a way that’s rare, and I’m always blown away by how quickly she envisions my work on walls that reflect exactly how I feel about it.

Thank you, Bree, for your unconditional support and care.

Toodaloo,

Ciarra K. Walters

big heart chakra energy

P.S. Scout Art Fair features 40 Baltimore-based artists and six galleries and is part of Baltimore’s legendary Artscape Festival. It’s designed as an affordable art fair, with works priced between $100 and $5,000.

A few of my close friends are also showing: Lex Marie, Murjoni Merriweather, B. Sterling, Taj Poscé, Charles Mason III, and Anna Divinagracia.

For those who can’t make it, I’ll be sharing a list of available work soon.

P.S.S. Those are crushed eggshells along the wall edges ;)