Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC)
Maryland Traditions UMBC Folklife Network
Folklife Apprenticeship 2025-2026
Nether 410 and TWZ |Alexis Tyson
Folklife Apprenticeships support traditional arts education by funding a mentor artist and apprentice artist to work together for one year. Nether and Lexi have worked together on Baltimore street art.
The artist interviewed one another about their practice and their philosophies on art and Baltimore’s street art tradition. Hear the artists in their own words below:
Both videos recorded and edited by Bill Shewbridge’s Media & Community Studies students.
Overview of Baltimore Street Art Apprenticeship:
This apprenticeship focuses on Baltimore street art as a tradition that pulls from the folk art of graffiti while being pulled towards the sanctioned art of murals. Street art straddles these tensions as an urban art form with deep historical roots. Its modern form emerged during the rise of hip hop and graffiti in the 1970s, which coincided with resistance to the destruction of the urban fabric of American cities due to urban renewal processes. Baltimore’s street art is unique in its connection to voices of the street and the fight for civil rights from Helena Hicks to Freddie Gray.
Baltimore has one of the oldest graffiti subcultures. While having ancient roots, street art as a modern tradition can be traced to the rise of graffiti in the 1970s. This art form was first documented by photographer Martha Cooper—who grew up in Baltimore and went to college in New York City—in her groundbreaking book Subway Art (1984).
The Baltimore handstyle, one of the most recognizable graffiti styles, has also been documented by Adam Stab. Mentor artist Nether410 met Stab as a 14-year-old skateboarder in Hampden. Nethercut was mentored by artists and documentors of the tradition. Ernest Shaw, a Baltimore legend inspired by the realist style of Pontella Mason, was an early mentor. “Ernest had a really developed way of working with communities, with conceptualizing his artwork,” Nether explains. “He was just this epic, amazing teacher. He taught me a more formal teaching around art, but also just in terms of Baltimore and community.”
Through this apprenticeship Nethercut will pass these Baltimore street art traditions along to Alexis Tyson (TWZ), who is a young Baltimore painter, curator, graphic designer, and street artist who created the Sowebo mural project in Southwest Baltimore in 2023.
This apprenticeship centers and sustains the Baltimore street art community—where the connection to the local neighborhood is central. Both artists have pulled from the folk art of graffiti and worked in the more commercial art of mural painting.
In 2021, Nether worked with Sonia Eaddy and her Southwest Baltimore neighbors on a “Black Neighborhoods Matter” street art project as a tool to preserve her home and a row of alley houses–now a Local Historic District–in the face of demolition. The “Save Our Block” movement was successful at the Eaddy rowhouse and the Sarah Ann Street alley houses were established at the first CHAP Local Historic District in Poppleton in 2023.
The apprenticeship will pass down the street art traditions, including distinct styles and the art of community feedback sessions for collective projects with neighborhoods.
In 2023, as part of UMBC’s Baltimore Field School 2.0 summer intensive, both artists participated in a street art panel discussion with Mama Debbie, wife of Pontella Mason, and Sonia Eaddy of Poppleton. At the end of the panel, Eaddy discussed the harm from urban renewal in her neighborhood and how the mural painted with Nether gave her and those who pass by her home hope.
Eaddy explained, “So with this, the loss of so much physical history, the loss of the people in the culture, these murals help cover that ugly. They help reveal the beauty of what was, is, and should be.”
