Edward's profile
Edward Weiss's career dates back to the early 1980s, East Village art, performance, theater, and music scene. His work during that era falls into all of those categories. His serial, The Onyx Fool, (pictured above) ran at the scene's apex, a club called 8 BC, for a span of 3 months. In 2016, materials -- including original art, photos, posters, and scripts -- from the Onyx Fool became part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Archive of American Art in Washington, DC. His work as a performer, and/or creator, has been shown at numerous venues including: The Pyramid Club (in the original production of Chang in a Void Moon), Theatre For Ever Expanding Universe (the original Production of Drag Queens From Outer Space) the Courtyard Playhouse, The Nameless Theater, The Kitchen, BAM, La Mama, Theater For The New City (all in NYC), and The Mark Taper Theater Complex in LA. He also had lead roles in about half a dozen short films and one feature (The Stupid Years).
Weiss was also active in downtown New York music venues in the 1980s and 1990s, performing songs he wrote at venues such as Downtown Beirut, CBGBs, Luna Lounge, the Spiral, and Nightingales, with bands Bleach House, Tomboy Charm, and Lost, Lonely, & Vicious.
His largest art project is The Forgotten History of Staten Island, 2011 to present, an interdisciplinary, conceptual, public arts project funded by the New York State Council of the Arts. Its subject is the unreliability and mutability of history. His illustrated book Peter Pigeon of Snug Harbor won the 2006 COAHSI Award for Literary Excellence sponsored by JP Morgan Chase and Poets & Writers, as an unpublished manuscript. It was published in 2009 by Rocky Hollow Press.
Since moving to Baltimore (where he had family roots) in 2012, Weiss has created one conceptual art piece The Campaign To Keep Baltimore Inexplicable, but focused mainly on visual art, and returned to music, gigging at local venues (such as Sidebar and Reverb) with the band The Fake Furriers, as well as composing instrumental music. His recent art has followed two tracks, a celebration of the wonder of his adopted city -- perhaps most evident in his 2 street photo series Baltimore City People, and Delirious Baltimore -- and the exploration of personal history, specifically what remains, and what is lost, over the passage of time, as exemplified in his East Village 1980s Memory Series of paintings and drawings, and his recent songs. In 2024, he founded the LISAIL (Life is Short, Art Is Long) Project to arrange/produce/record songs existing songs previously performed live.
Exhibitions in 2024 - 2025
A Media Quilt: A Collaborative Video Installation
February 4, 2025 – March 30, 2025
410 Lofts Gallery, 410 Eutaw Pl., Baltimore, MD 21217
Curated by Mandy Morrison and Aleem Allison
Exhibited Carnaby an animated video created in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects
Baker Artist Portfolios: Off the Web
Group show November 7, 2024 - January 19, 2025
The Peale Museum, 225 Holliday St, Baltimore, MD 21202
Exhibited my most recent painting (mixed media 2024) from my East Village memory series
Artscape B 24 Exhibition...Best of Baltimore
2024 Juried Exhibition, August 1 – 5, 2024
Sheila and Richard Riggs Gallery (Lazarus Center) 131 W North Ave, Baltimore, MD
(Jurors – Kilolo Luckett, Carol Rhodes-Dyson, Sheena M. Morrison; Curator – Kirk Shannon-Butts). Exhibited 3 photos from
my Baltimore City People and Delirious Baltimore Series.
Gamescape
(video games and game-inspired artwork & music, Juried exhibition)
August 2 – 4, 2024
The Fitzgerald, 1201 W Mt Royal Avenue Baltimore, MD
Exhibited a recording of my musical composition
Rapture, composed, performed and recorded by me.
Oodles of Doodles Juried multimedia exhibition July 12 – 27, 2024
Zo Gallery 3510 Ash Street, Baltimore, MD.
(Juror, Liz Faust) Exhibited
The Dream and Lie of Tompkins Square,
gouache and ink on watercolor paper, with decoupage,
calligraphic text from My East Village Memory Series
Previous Venues
His visual art including the Modern Venus series has been shown at numerous galleries in New York, and on the Art or Something Like it TV program, as well as Consolidated Works and Town Hall in Seattle, where they were featured in the 1st and 2nd Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. Activity in the greater Baltimore area, over the past few years, has included participating in exhibitions (works on paper) at Gallery CA and (street photography) at the Gateway Arts Center, as well as music gigs at Sidebar and Reverb.
