Megan Hildebrandt

Counting Radiation 7

2012-02-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

Counting Radiation 6

2012-01-31T08:42:00.000-08:00

Counting Radiation, 1200 years old

2012-01-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

Radiation II , 196 x 96 in

2011-12-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

Radiation, 192 x 96 in

2011-12-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

Counting Radiation

2011-12-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

Expectations

2011-11-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

Dust

2011-10-30T12:58:00.001-07:00

Just act like it never happened

2011-10-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

Rub II

2011-10-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

Cells III

2011-09-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

Familiar Weight

2011-09-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

Cells II

2011-09-21T13:39:00.001-07:00

Cells I

2011-09-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

Support Systems II

2011-09-01T12:50:00.001-07:00

Support Systems

2011-08-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Minute Month Year

2011-07-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

Spector

2011-07-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

My Dad Fighting the Jose Lake Monsters

2011-06-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

Night Vision

2011-05-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

The source of bitter arguments between neighbors

2011-05-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

5 p.m. Last Sunday

2011-05-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

Memory Loss

2011-05-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Redevil

2011-04-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

tunnel visions

2011-04-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

How to identify objects before touching them

2011-04-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

Guard II

2011-04-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

The center of tourist activity, much of it in the form of theme parks unrelated to natural features

2011-03-22T09:34:00.001-07:00

Thin Coat Thick Skin

2011-03-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

Crowned

2011-02-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

Bandit

2011-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

I lost my hair because of an alien abduction. I got sick because I ate maple seeds off the ground.

2011-01-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

I became a starved vulture, and watched myself take out the garbage.

2011-01-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

Good Luck Charm and Blurred Vision

2011-01-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

Possible Cause, the ER Priest, Me and Everyone Else, and First Symptom

2010-12-09T12:41:00.000-08:00

Sinkholes are a sign of the Rapture

2010-11-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

Sinkhole Victims II

2010-10-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

Do Your Steps: Baltimore Performance, 2009

2010-09-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

From an article about Do Your Steps in Urbanite Magazine- "Scrubs" by Lionel Foster in 2009:

"The inspiration for the stoop-cleaning project came from a photograph taken circa 1945 by legendary Baltimore Sun photographer A. Aubrey Bodine. The image, Wash Day, is a black and white homage to the prosperity, goodness, and unity of Baltimore's working class. (Hildebrandt first saw Wash Day on the cover of Urbanite's January 2008 issue.) It shows a street full of women and children tending their glistening white marble stoops. Those omnipresent white steps (the marble once came cheap from the Beaver Dam quarry in Cockeysville) came to represent success for thousands of house-proud homeowners in East and West Baltimore. Older residents can recall using water, cleanser, and pumice stones to make the steps shine, a community ritual that Hildebrandt found captivating.

"I've been really fascinated by the fragmentation that exists in East Baltimore," she says. "It's so intense … I want everyone to become unified in a way that's so unrealistic, but then a part of me is like, it could happen if everyone was scrubbing their steps for one moment." So for up to three hours at a time, she walks the streets of Highlandtown, asking if she can clean people's stairs.

That Saturday morning, it took several blocks and a few unanswered knocks before Hildebrandt got her first "yes" from a young Hispanic man on Pratt Street. He appeared to be amused by Hildebrandt's request; a woman looked on from inside the house, and another young man watched through the open living room window. In live street performance, there's sometimes just a hairsbreadth between mockery and genuine engagement, but Hildebrandt seemed to manage that terrain well.

She put down her bucket and slipped on her gloves. She shook out a bit of Bon Ami, dipped her brush, and circled the powder and water into a paste. Then she started to scrub. The sound of the bristles echoed down the street in stereo, amplified by the brick and marble of the house and the concrete pavement; an entire block of scrubbers must have sounded like a sandstorm. "