Maine Arts Journal Fall 2016

MAINE ARTS JOURNAL UMVA QUARTERLY

MONSTERS FALL 2016

Maine Arts Journal

DAVID ESTEY

Maine Arts Journal

David Estey, Political Dialogue (detail), acrylic on panel, 27x53, 2013

DAVID ESTEY

MAINE ARTS JOURNAL Union of Maine Visual Artists QUARTERLY FALL 2016

MONSTERS

Front Cover Kenny Cole, The Surface to Air Octopolitics of Uncle Billy’s Exploded Viewpoints, gouache on paper, 24x18, 2012

VISUAL ESSAYS 15

Alan Magee

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Natasha Mayers

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Gil Corral

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James Quigley

Inside front cover: David Estey, Political Dialogue

Back Cover The Blanchard Weather Report

by Todd Watts

FEATURES AND ESSAYS 8

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From the Belly of the Beast

by Jeffrey Ackerman Fred Lynch’s Bible

by Edgar Allen Beem

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Poetry: Dragon, by Marita O’Neill Introduction by Betsy Sholl

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MONSTERS: Election Season 2016 Stephen Koharian Michael Lewis Cheryl Lichwell Dan Mills Jim Fangboner Suzanna Lasker Anne Strout Todd Watts William Hessian Brian Reeves David Estey Toni Jo Coppa Scott Minzy Kristen Malin Robert Riemann Bill Paarlberg David Berrang

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MONSTERS!: UMVA / CTN Gallery Exhibit Preview Curated by Jessica McCarthy

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Working People’s Parade and All Hands On Banner Project

by Ellen Babcock

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Art Education: Local is International

by Dan Kany

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Insight/Incite Narratives on Art Education: Art Department and Publication Studio

by Shawn Brewer and Lindsay W Book

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MEMBER SUBMISSIONS 7

Richard Wilson

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Emmaline Birtolo

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Mark Barnette

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Ann Tracy

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Mary Becker Weiss

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Jay York

Jim Kelly

UMVA IN THIS ISSUE 6

Welcome From the Editors

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Whitefield Parade Independence Day

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Artists Rapid Response Team Quarterly Report

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UMVA Chapter Report L/A Chapter

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UMVA Chapter Report Portland Area Chapter

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Call for Submissions for Winter 2017 MAJ Issue Lines of Thought

Maine Arts Journal

FROM THE EDITORS:

WELCOME TO THIS MONSTER-THEMED ISSUE OF MAJ Halloween is coming and we are in the thick of the election season. Monsters are afoot.

Monsters are standing front and center. They are lurking at the peripheries. They are always amongst us. We welcome many, laugh at some and fear others.

They are our creators, destroyers, protectors, tormentors and toys. The masks of leaders can disguise beasts, though beasts can be true messengers. They stand at our boundaries, express our dualities, haunt our dreams, feed our anxieties, embody our insecurities, desires and deformities.

Monsters are our dragons both good and bad, our demons new and old, our covert deviants, our morbid fascinations, our myths, politics, religions -- both real and imagined. Monsters can be hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, meltdowns, incoming comets. They are viruses, ticks, cancers, disease, plagues. They can be ideas: hidebound radicalisms, ideologies, dogmas. They can be our deadly sins: avarice, bigotry or cruelty.

For artists, monsters can be our muses. Sometimes, they are part of us. Sometimes, they are us.

From the well-intentioned sophistication of our exploits in genetics can come life saving food growable in desolate places or extinctions and dangerous mutations. The good can go bad.

Medicines become poison. Defensive tools become weapons. Light can become darkness.

Art plays an important role in helping us see, be strong enough to ask the tough questions, and move us to act. Art helps us reflect on who we are, where we are going, and what we are doing as members of society, captains of culture, curators of a planet.

Art can be the moral vessel we sail to challenge selfish institutions. Art can help us turn our shapeless fears into poignant questions.

Art opens our hearts to courage and compassion, and it slips into people’s souls to change them.

Monsters can be our spirit guides, our familiars, our totems. Fear, after all, can bring us together for the right reasons. It can help us find the heroic in ourselves. It can be humbling, and with humility, we can more easily laugh at ourselves. Monsters remind us that we are both the good guys and the bad guys.

We thank all the artists who submitted their art on this theme.

Jeff Ackerman Alan Crichton Dan Kany Natasha Mayers Nora Tryon

We're pleased to have received a record number of submissions and a diversity of responses to the Monster theme. Thank you for taking part.

Special thanks to Jessica McCarthy for curating the exciting exhibit at CTN gallery in Portland, opening October 7.

Please share the Fall Journal with other artists, friends, and family, and go see the Monsters! Exhibit. In order to keep publishing this journal freely to the arts community and mounting art exhibits, we're dependent on Union of Maine Visual Artists membership dues (sliding scale). If you haven't already, we hope you'll join the UMVA and encourage fellow artists to join. (go to umvaonline.org).

We hope readers will be inspired to come up with their own visual essays, interviews and other ideas on future journal themes. (see submission guidelines for the next theme, "Lines of Thought")

FROM THE EDITORS

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Maine Arts Journal

Richard Wilson, Night on Bald Mountain, Gouache on board, 24" x 27", 1962, Jay York Photo

RICHARD WILSON

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Maine Arts Journal

From the Belly of the Beast: Political Art and Propaganda

by Jeffrey Ackerman

In Antoni Gaudi’s church, Sagrada Familia, lining the elaborately carved walls of the Rosary chapel, serpent-like monsters support an intricate vaulting. This imagery of grotesques and demons is well within the Gothic and Romanesque decorative traditions, but there is also an inconspicuous intrusion of the modern era.

One demon is handing an Orsini bomb to a terrorist. The demon-monsters in Gaudi’s motif, like their Romanesque models, represent temptations; the monsters of the imagination that lure the human heart to transgress and commit acts of evil. To Gaudi’s contemporaries, this terrorist would refer to the anarchists that were rocking Barcelona, and much of Europe, at the turn of the last century. To us the message may seem universal but to a contemporary of Gaudi, especially a partisan, this might appear to be propaganda. The Church was in fact bombed by anarchists in 1936, but the stone terrorist survived.

Terrorist from La Sagrada Familia, architect: Antoni Gaudi, circa 1899

If there is a distinction between political art and propaganda, they are certainly bound together in a knot that is often difficult to untangle. Political art is usually well regarded yet few people claim to have sympathy for propaganda. Works tend to be described as propaganda when the viewer disagrees with the politics. Blatant propaganda is often ignored, or unnoticed, by the extreme partisan who sympathizes with the message. The most highly regarded political art, Picasso’s Guernica or Goya’s Disasters of War, had their propaganda component, anti-Franco and anti-Napoleon, but the human emotion of the message operates at a universal level and these works manage to outlive their political moment. Picasso turned the brutality of modern war into idealized symbols with no reference to Spanish Fascism, and Goya depicted war’s brutality as an equal opportunity observer, removing insignias from uniforms and highlighting vicious acts common to soldier and peasant, mob and ruler.

We tend to view political art as a challenge to power, but Goya’s famous execution scene, Third of May, 1808, was painted in 1814, long after the villains of the drama, the occupying French army, had left town. It was commissioned by the reactionary Spanish king, then restored to power. The soldier executioners are again without insignia, and are reduced to an almost singular entity—the inhuman machinery of war.

In the companion piece, Second of May, 1808, we lose our sympathy for the revolting peasants as they are shown to be another kind of inhuman monster—the mob. Goya does not present us with cardboard villains to boo at or unblemished heroes to cheer. It is the honesty and truth of the sentiments portrayed that distinguish such art Francisco Goya, The Second of May, 1808, oil on canvas, 1814, from what we commonly consider propaganda, Museo del Prado and they also distinguish art from kitsch.

JEFFREY ACKERMAN

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Maine Arts Journal It is this profusion of false sentiments that is the dominant feature of propaganda and kitsch. Politicians kissing babies, farmers loading a hay truck, muscled laborers, Olympic athletes, all in slow motion and smiling; these are all images common to propaganda kitsch. The phrase “for the sake of our children” can introduce the most vile political ideas as well as the best ones. Kitsch has a shelf life that is easy to spot in retrospect, but much tougher to see in contemporary work using the visual language of the times.

The murals of Thomas Hart Benton look to our eyes now like billboard advertisements for the New Deal era, full of sentimental populism. A recent show at the New York’s Metropolitan Museum featured his great mural, America Today, painted for the lobby of an insurance office building. The exhibition presented the mural alongside works that influenced Benton (e.g., Tintoretto) and works he influenced (such as Jackson Pollack’s Passiphae). The mural has several passages of truly great painting. Benton had chops, but his stylizations are clearly past their sell-by date.

Thomas Hart Benton, America Today, (detail), oil on canvas, 1931, Metropolitan Museum of Art

But what seems obvious to any viewer about Benton can be much harder to detect in work closer to us in both time and cultural attitude. We no longer share Benton’s optimism about America or his idealized attitude toward the common folk, which to his credit includes the common businessman and secretary, as well as the manual laborer and farmers (he was no Bolshevik)—it is a democratic slice of the whole work force. Artists like Benton do not set out to make propaganda but merely channel the sentiments of their day, often quite innocently. Benton is still a great painter and deserves to be looked at, but the dated aspects of his work do compromise the pleasure we take in its finer accomplishments. That is not to say we need to purge our museums, in fact the dated qualities shed light on contemporary cultural biases.

The decade of the 1960’s, now half a century in the past, is under reevaluation in our historical perspective. The landmark movements of the 60’s, pop and minimalism, exemplify a sentiment that is more evident as it wanes in the culture, and many of these works may someday look as dated as Benton is now beginning to look to us.

Though the artists of these movements mostly leaned left politically, or as in the case of Warhol, wished to be seen that way, they shared with the broad culture a sense of American exceptionalism and had attitudes that were fed by American global hegemony. Warhol’s public persona was apolitical, but in the 80’s he palled around with some powerful figures connected to Reagan as well as the Shah of Iran, lived in a luxurious townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and admitted to an aversion to paying taxes. Pop is typically represented as a critique of consumer culture but its ambivalence toward its subject reveals celebration as often as grievance. It is capitalist realism, by effect and even, arguably, by design.

Thomas Hart Benton, America Today, (detail) oil on canvas, 1931, Metropolitan Museum of Art

JEFFREY ACKERMAN

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Maine Arts Journal Minimalism seems to be without the kind of content that can be read as a political sentiment, but it was easily adapted to decorate the architectural symbols of American power, the sleek glass office building. This corporate jewelry exemplified the Spartan tastes of the new global ruling class. It showed they were fiscally prudent and would not spend fortunes on sumptuous luxury, yet they would spend fortunes on these signifiers of Zen simplicity. Sculptors like Richard Serra represent the power of American industry almost literally, in great slabs of steel, a grand scale trophy for the victors of World War II. How might future generations view this work? Will Warhol’s icons be as effective when Marilyn and Jackie O are as remote to audiences as Mary Pickford and Mary Todd Lincoln are to us? When global climate issues are a palpable reality will Serra’s works appear to be worth the bang for the energy buck? Future art audiences will be exposed to generations of great artists, long dead and re-discovered, and many yet to be born. Might they want to replace the Serra colossi, in the energy-hogging, climate controlled museum atriums, with a hundred or so great works on a more modest scale?

In the nineteen-sixties, the era of huge, cheap artist-lofts, the American economy was about 40 percent of global GDP; it is now about 20 percent. We have exported our art-on-steroids aesthetic to other economic superpowers, and our own propaganda is now reflected back on us. Enter the Chinese model.

This may come as news to some, but an artist like Ai Weiwei, the Chinese art superstar, represents the new look of Chinese propaganda. His fame rests on his status as a dissident, yet might a Chinese dissident be likely to disappear completely from sight, to be tortured and killed, unseen and unreported. While under house arrest Ai was visited by artist Sean Scully, a friend and former teacher of Ai. Scully reported after the visit, that his house arrest was bogus and they went out to eat in a fancy restaurant. Ai’s house/prison is a huge art complex. Ai’s political art that “infuriated” the government was a protest of shoddy school construction causing the deaths of schoolchildren in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (this was due to local corruption; Beijing had nothing to do with it). In the modern era, the whole world is guilty of local corruption and shoddy construction. Now Ai has his passport back to travel to Europe and protest about Syrian refugees, raising no objections from the Chinese government. What power is he even taking to task?

I do not know if Ai Weiwei is completely complicit in his propaganda. Certainly, we should wonder—who bankrolls his expensive installations? Or, is he used the way Voice of America used jazz music, without his complicity? But this is far more sophisticated culture politics than the kitschy social realism of the Mao era. It is a perfectly calibrated message to Chinese citizens and the world, that China does not tolerate dissent and criticism, but removes the focus from any human rights abuses toward dissenters. The other message is that China, a rising economic power, also has a world-class artist. This subtle propaganda is the most unnerving.

Ai Weiwei learned this form of public relations in his years in New York, in the 1980’s, under the tutelage of artists like Warhol. He has crafted a public image of himself as a brave dissident fighting the powerful. He appears to be losing the battle but making a good show of it, giving them hell; and because they tolerate him, they are not so bad. But there is no battle; it is a sham skirmish.

And as musician and poet, Leonard Cohen once said; “Everybody knows the war is over, Everybody knows, the good guys lost.”

JEFFREY ACKERMAN

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Maine Arts Journal

Fred Lynch’s Bible A record of 42 years of creation

By Edgar Allen Beem When Frederick Lynch died on July 3 at the age of 80, the Maine art world lost an artist’s artist and many of us lost a dear friend. Fred and I had been friends since the 1970s, so I had the privilege of seeing his work evolving over the course of some 40 years. The careful, thoughtful and methodical way in which he pursued his vision from figuration through abstraction and back again was an inspiration to many.

As a writer, my entire life’s work would fit on a flashdrive the size of a Bic lighter, but an artist’s oeuvre takes up considerably more space in the world. Fred was greatly concerned during his final illness about leaving a burden of paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures and notebooks for his wife Janice and his stepdaughter Alyssa. So he devoted a lot of his time to organizing his work and to familiarizing his family with his “bible” – the ledger book in which he recorded every major work of art he created from 1974 until 2015.

I thumbed through Fred Lynch’s bible a few days after his death when I went to Saco to help Janice and Alyssa prepare Fred’s obituary. When Maine Arts Journal asked me to write something about Fred, the first thing I thought of was Fred’s bible, so I asked permission to read through it more carefully. It is a wonderfully human document and very much like the man himself – focused, consistent and no-nonsense.

Fred Lynch’s bible is an intimate, hand-made, shorthand record of his life’s work. It takes the form of a hardcover government-issue log book, possibly from Fred’s service in the U.S. Army between 1955 and 1957.

The spine is broken and taped and the cover reads “Record 7530-222-3524 Federal Supply Service (GPO).”

Apparently it was once an interesting shade of pale lime green, but 50 years on it has lost its color entirely, fading,as so many things do, to a colorless grey with a few ink and paint stains.

Fred was left-handed which may explain the fact that his bible begins at the back of the book. Or it may just have been that he started the record book with a timeline – quickly abandoned – and an address book of his dealers and collectors. In any event, this informal catalogue raisonné begins on the last page and makes progress toward the present with six to 10 individual works recorded on a page. In most cases, the entry begins with a brief description and then includes title, price if sold, and size, but oddly enough not the medium. Each work of art is recorded with a small pen or pencil drawing in the beginning. As time and technology change, Fred used images from photo contact sheets and then thumbnail digital images to keep track of his creations.

In 2009, when I wrote a catalogue essay for Fred’s Form & Counterform exhibition at the Farnsworth Art Museum, I noted that there were 1,295 entries in his bible. He seems to have stopped the sequence of numbering later that same year, at 1,436, after which he simply numbered individual works within series.

The earliest entry in the log book is Suitscape, a blue and tan landscape composed of fabric patterns. It was shown at the Talent Tree Gallery in Augusta in November of 1974. In some cases, Fred recorded who purchased or was given a painting, but mostly he noted which gallery sold it: over the years, Frost Gully, Barridoff, Thomas Veilleux and Dean Velentgas in Maine, McGowan Fine Art in Concord, New Hampshire, and Allport, Genovese/Sullivan and Miller Yezerski in Boston.

FRED LYNCH

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Maine Arts Journal As I thumbed through the book I came across a Fred Lynch painting I had completely forgotten about or, perhaps, blocked from my memory. Road Suit depicted a reclining couple in what Fred described as Etruscan reds, blues, tans and orange. It was shown at Barridoff in 1977 and there is note beside it, “Sold, Ed Beem.”

I own close to a dozen works by Fred in a variety of mediums, but I do not own Road Suit. When I mentioned the painting to my lovely wife Carolyn, she reminded me that another artist friend of ours had taken it in trade for one of his own watercolors, not a deal I wanted to make but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to say no.

Our friend then took Road Suit back to Fred, told him I didn’t like it and traded it for something he liked better.

Fred forgave us both.

What first attracted me to Fred Lynch’s art in the mid-1970s were colorful figure paintings that used fabric and shirt patterns to evoke a sense of playful society, odd since Fred was such a private man. His early work reminded me of the erotic figures of Richard Lindner, a German-American painter who worked somewhat in a Pop Art manner, though he rejected the label just as Fred did.

“Mostly done in the transparent watercolor medium,” Fred wrote on his website, “these paintings reflect an interest in the kinds of clothing prevalent in the 70’s and 80’s that seemed to signal a breakout from the customs and mores of preceding decades. Pattern, for its own sake as well as for its ability to present a variety of facades, was the main motivation for these paintings.”

During the 1970s and 1980s, Fred worked his way through figuration and socialized landscapes to paintings with complex illusionary space based on figure and landscape and then to cutout and constructed paintings of the same colorful, patterned aesthetic. In his bible there are a few pages of newspaper and magazine clippings that served as source material for some of his paintings.

Around 1990 there was major shift in Fred’s work, one in which fabric prints and shirt striping went from decorative element to the subject itself. The pure stripe paintings of the early 1990s are among my favorite Lynch works. He had reduced the content of his art to formal elements and the stripe paintings are gorgeous chromatic explorations of form.

FRED LYNCH

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Maine Arts Journal In the bible, Fred was able to record 30 to 40 stripe paintings per page, simply noting without a schematic just the number of the painting, the color scheme and the sequence of horizontal stripes. For instance, this entry from 1991: “831 – 10/11 red blueish white, Donated, Farnsworth.”

The geometry and structure of art and nature dominated Fred’s art of the 1990s and early 21st century. His formal series, each documented in the ledger book, included the deiforms, counterforms and segments that led up to his long-running Division paintings of 2001-2009.

In these exceedingly complex abstractions, Fred lost himself in intricate branching patterns that were at once based in nature and mathematics. To me, they always seemed like a semi-scientific investigation of aesthetic form, a search for Platonic ideals in thousands of Y-shaped glyphs animated by color.

Where the Division paintings led was a surprise to many of us. The Divided Man series that began in the winter of 2014-15 would bring Fred Lynch full circle, closing the loop of his life’s work by merging geometry and humanity. His last paintings evoke the human form but seemingly at a molecular level, outlines of male figures contained within complex networks of marks like gene maps and mosaics.

Fred Lynch, Collected Drawings

Fred, dying of cancer, must have felt these paintings in the very marrow of his bones.

“These ‘Divided Man’ paintings,” he wrote, “attempt to assimilate characteristics of both abstract and representational elements. The organic or cellular nature of forms, the subtle resemblance to more subjective, personal content and the obvious Fred Lynch, Divided Man Drawing #12, Ink on Somerset Paper metaphorical possibilities have emerged in this new work because of changes in my own medical history.

This has renewed my interest in the figure and how it might reflect on my current condition. Suffice it to say, that to initially divide a formal visual ground for aesthetic pleasure or purpose and then turn around and draw on these elements for a more intimate means of expression and introspection, is to generate something of a full artistic circle. The figurative depictions, many of them autobiographical, help satisfy an always present urge to combine my art and my life.”

FRED LYNCH

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Maine Arts Journal Fred prepared his Divided Man paintings for an exhibition at Miller Yezerski Gallery in Boston that he did not live to see. He died five days before it opened.

Along with his Divided Man gouaches, Fred also created a series he called Collected Drawings in which he cut up his drawing notebooks and composed groupings of them such that his art seems to be talking to itself.

There will no doubt be a great exhibition of these framed drawing groups, close to 300 in all, in the unknowable future. There should also be an exhibition of Fred’s early watercolors: They are as fresh and vibrant as the days in the 1970s and 1980s when they were painted.

Fred Lynch’s last works, however, are a series of pen and ink drawings he did in his final days. The very last thing he created is a drawing of the silhouette of a man in repose, his body and the ground beneath him composed of a filigree of foliage forms as though he is returning to the earth.

This dark, dense drawing is not recorded in Fred Lynch’s bible. It is recorded in his soul.

(Edgar Allen Beem is a freelance writer and art critic who lives in Brunswick. He has written about the cultural life of Maine since 1978.)

Fred Lynch, Divided Man 32 (Earthly only), oil on canvas, 68 x 48 inches

FRED LYNCH

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Maine Arts Journal

ALAN MAGEE

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Maine Arts Journal

ALAN MAGEE

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Maine Arts Journal

Idée Fixe, ©2007 Alan Magee, digital collage

ALAN MAGEE

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Maine Arts Journal

ALAN MAGEE

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Maine Arts Journal

Natasha Mayers, Roulette, or Everybody Knows the Game Is Rigged, acrylic, 14 x 11, 2015

NATASHA MAYERS

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Maine Arts Journal

Natasha Mayers, Hooded Figures/Red Target, 30x24, 2016 Natasha Mayers, Dictator, 24 x 18, 2016

NATASHA MAYERS

Natasha Mayers, Dark Hoods, 20x16, 2015 Natasha Mayers, Brotherhood, 12x9, 2014 20

Maine Arts Journal

Natasha Mayers Weapons Dealer 18 x24 2014

Natasha Mayers, Two Figures With Masks, 24x18, 2016

Natasha Mayers, Blue Uniform, 20x16, 2016

NATASHA MAYERS

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Maine Arts Journal

Natasha Mayers, Secret Society/Cabal, 18x18, 2014

NATASHA MAYERS

top; Natasha Mayers, Crime Syndicate, 13x16, 2014 botttom: Natasha Mayers, Peaks, 16x20, 2016

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Maine Arts Journal

Natasha Mayers, Arrowheads and Carnival, 16x20, 2015

NATASHA MAYERS

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Maine Arts Journal

EL PASO This is an older body of work that is an exploration of borders, lines drawn in the sand and the foggy view of "us" and “them." This topic is so vast and complex, a few words written here seems almost futile, but here goes a fingertip poke at the gargantuan vapor. It is a recollection of thoughts and images growing up in a Southwestern border town. I was born in the United States but my cultural heritage/DNA/tribe/cultural influence spans a geography that predates the border. I happened to be born out of the womb a few miles on this side of the border rather than on that side of the border. Reflecting on this happenstance is a mind-bending abstraction. I like my country, and I am grateful for plopping out in this particular spot on this vey large planet. Of course I don't know any other experience, but I do feel fortunate to have been born in this country where most make the effort as a people to be free and just and good.

Gil Corral, El Payso, oil on canvas, 24in x 24in

GIL CORRAL

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Maine Arts Journal

Gil Corral, So Simple Then, oil on panel, 30in x 40in.

We have declarations, charters, articles, laws and great documents written as testament to what we as a country represent.

I particularly love the poem, "The New Colossus" inscribed on the plaque of the pedestal where the Statue of Liberty stands.

It partially reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I was moved to paint these images after the mass immigration raid in New Bedford Mass, 2007. It was a terrible, sloppy event.

Families were swiftly torn apart, children's parents never returned home from work one day....oh well. Like so many other stories, this one was quickly swept under the rug. So that is that.

Gil Corral, Magic Onion Balloon, oil on canvas, 36in x 48in.

GIL CORRAL

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Maine Arts Journal Almost ten years later, there is a larger looming threat facing our Nation with the upcoming election. There will be so much more of this and that. There are manipulative words used to sow divisiveness, as though the citizenry easily buys into the fickleness of the definition of a spewed word rather than the display of actual behavior.

There is so much made of us and them -- and on some level, especially egoic, I suppose there is. There is no utopia or ideal, only different interpretations of what that shining city upon the hill looks like - this leading to different means to a fictitious end. Strive on.

Gil Corral, Tumbleweed, oil on canvas, 30in x 40in Gil Corral, Motor Oil For Suntan Oil, oil and bondo on canvas, 30in x 40in.

So much talk about this "wall" to keep "them� out. Keep "that" out. El Cucuy is taking our jobs, raping our women, just making our lives miserable.

Once "we" keep "them" out, "we" will be great again, all fixed. A beautiful gated community!

GIL CORRAL

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Maine Arts Journal

Gil Corral, Allegory Of Machismo, Displaced, oil on canvas, 30in x 40in.

I am not a fearful citizen living in this country, I am not afraid. I am more recently, however, concerned.

Although aware of the complexity, I am not fearful of "them" (out there), but am growing in concern about what it could be like to be Walled In with a hateful, privileged, vocal minority that somehow garnered power between these four lines.

Monsters.

Gil Corral, Canutillo, oil on canvas, 30in x 40in.

Gil Corral, Loteria, oil on canvas, 30in x 40in.

GIL CORRAL

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Maine Arts Journal

POETRY FEATURE Marita O’Neill We have monsters within and without. Myths are full of our projections.

Here is a monster--maybe we have created--but now it turns and shows us the monsters of greed within ourselves.

Betsy Sholl

Dragon So you come seeking my gold, my goblets and torques? Step closer to my heat, touch my feathers metallic, my drinking cups tumbled, my flagons jumbled and glimmering, my mail-shirts, my howe heaps of buckle and brazen. Come lick the bones and suck the marrow molten of the skeletons left behind. Your eyes prowl, fondle my trove, gluttonous for just one burnished sheath, gem laden and silver-smithed for a Celtic king. You blame my legless firetongue, my yellowed wrath and slithering logic for my glut and hoard, but I know a fellow snake when I see one. You tell me, I love you, dear viper, ophidian of my dreams, hoping I’ll lift a blood-veined nail from my piles resplendent, my filigreed harrows, giant-garnered and gleaming, hoping I’ll say, O I’m flattered, I falter, worthy human, my diminutive drop.

But I know you’ve hidden your gem-studded swords, your long-bows and fangs. So come closer, blithering biped, to my sword hilts and swag, my plethora and pillage, listen to my tongue fire-cloven and whet as I tell you: I am dawn-scorcher, home-burner, ash-maker and it is mine, mine, mine.

MARITA O’NEILL

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Maine Arts Journal

MONSTERS:

ELECTION SEASON 2016 We asked some artists to create or submit a piece for this election season special section with this invitation written by Alan Crichton: We’d like to see some truly unsettling images that challenge status quos and quids. That leave the viewer awakened as if from a bad dream, with acid stomach, an eye that won’t uncross.

We’d like viewers and artists to throw down the mess. The brutal mess where we currently live. Little or no light-hearted “little bad monsters” to titter about while eating, but all out insane nightmares that churn your gorge. That may make you choke.

That is where we are today! Let us see it!

We would also like to see a spread devoted to election art. Typically, this might be in the satirical cartoon mode, but political art could also be savage in another way - a subterfuge of conventional expectations, with “monsters” in the guise of Uncle Sam, perhaps with snaking striped Plastic Man arms, whose fingers make hackneyed, hypocritical mudras of peace. Like headless monsters in black suits and ties, faceless beasts who could care less about the lives they crush. Real, live monsters who live in Augusta, Washington, Albany, Hackensack. And just down the road...Political monsters in the mode of Goya, Daumier, Grosz, Beckmann, that are not only satirical but chilling in their reality.

Though Godzilla and the Black Lagoon and the Blob and the Game of Thrones or the Hogwarts dragons are totally fair game for our Monsters issue, our initial thought was not so much the frisson of Halloween as the real bloodthirst threat of 9/11 or Bashir Al Assad, ISIS, or Vlad Putin, DJTrump, Ted Cruz, the neo-nazis, the random shooters, the NRA. Our real down-to-earth, daily threats to existence. Political, social, religious…

Stephen Koharian, Megalomania, oil, 48x36

MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

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Maine Arts Journal

C. Michael Lewis, Abandon Reason, All Ye Who Enter Here digital image 11/11/2014

Cheryl Lichwell, Arrogance, ceramic, oil paint, wax, cigar; 24x8x8, 2015

MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

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Maine Arts Journal

Farce, the 2015-16 Republican Primaries

A movie by Dan Mills https://youtu.be/jadrvO3DqAk

Jim Fangboner, Koolaid (Hillary and Trump)

MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

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Maine Arts Journal

Suzanna Lasker, Trump, digital collage, 10.2x7.43, 2016

Anne Strout, Trapped Like a Rat, encaustic and mixed media, 22x16, 2014

MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

Todd Watts , Methane Breather, silver gelatin print and dye transfer, 39x30, 1989 32

Maine Arts Journal

William Hessian, Politics of Plants: Three, acrylic on canvas, 2010

Brian Reeves, The Sleep of Reason Produces Navelgazers (after Goya), digital image, 2391x 3510 pixels, 2016

David Estey, Uck Rump, acrylic on panel, 16x18, 2016

MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

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Toni Jo Coppa, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, prosthetic eye, polyurethane foam, wax, paper maché, plaster and paint on “sexy” mannequin, 2015, photo Toni Jo Coppa

Toni Jo Coppa, Not Ready for a Relationship, plaster, paint, porcupine quills and nails embedded in foam mannequin, 72” x 20” x 16”, 2013, photo Toni Jo Coppa

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Maine Arts Journal

Scott Minzy, The Committee, linocut, 9x12

Kristen Malin, Coat Hanger 1.0 No One Ever Tells You, charcoal, pencil, conte crayon on paper, 24x18, 2016

Kristen Malin, Coat Hanger 4.0 Doubled Over, charcoal, pencil, conte crayon on paper, 18x24, 2016

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Maine Arts Journal

Bill Paarlberg, It’s Going To Be Huge!, watercolor on paper mounted on toilet seat, 17.5x14x3

Robert Riemann, GOP 2016, ink jet print on archival paper, 16x28, 2016

David Berrang, Justice, oil on linen, 24x36, 2015

MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

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ARRT!

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MONSTERS: Election Season 2016

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Maine Arts Journal

ARRT!

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MONSTERS!

UMVA EXHIBITION PREVIEW Selected images from the October exhibit at the UMVA/CTN Gallery 516 Congress St Portland Monsters are in our subconscious. They are in our nightmares, our reality, on our television sets and in the news. Monsters are broadcast across our minds on a regular basis. This show is about what haunts us. As curator for this show I wanted to select pieces of art that were evocative of the feelings that come with these restless themes.

It was important for the group as a whole to be varied and dynamic, and that the overall mood would be darkly "monstrous". However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel in all this, and humor must be injected where necessary. I hope this exhibition makes the viewer feel fearful, nervous, angry, thoughtful, but finally and most importantly I hope it has the ability to make people laugh.

Jessica McCarthy completed her MFA in 2013 at the Academy of Art University and began working at Greenhut Galleries in the fall of 2012.

She has been curating Vestibule 594 for the past Chris Dingwell, Forever In The Wind, acrylic on canvas, 2016 year and a half, a small showcase-style gallery located in the Arts District on Congress Street in Portland. Her own illustrations have been displayed at North Yarmouth Academy, Vestibule 594, Greenhut Galleries and numerous publications. She has been an active UMVA member for the past year and is excited to have the opportunity to curate the Monsters! show at Community Television Network galleries in October.

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Petrea Noyes, Things That Go Bump In the Night, digital collage, pigment inkjet on canvas, 38x38

Kathy Weinberg, Gryphon, mahogany, 22x8x8

Ron Crusan, Your Dream, found objects, wood, fabric, 54x18

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal Matt Blackwell, I Alone, oil on canvas, 20x32

below: Katherine Bradford, Large Ocean Painting, acrylic on canvas, 72x78

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal

Mike Libby, Cold Cardio, collaged used coffee filters, sepia ink, , 22x29

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Jeffrey Ackerman, Argus, painted Basswood, 10�, 2013

Nathaniel Meyer, Nathaniel vs. the Vile Sea Beast, oil on canvas, 54x30, 2015

Roger Prince, Standing Ovation, bronze, 16x20x4

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Rich Entel, Gator, cardboard piano and violin fragments, 30x30x24

Nancy Morgan Barnes, Eating Lobster, oil on linen on board, 12x15

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Greg Bullard, Dad #4, acrylic, pencil, collage with Xray, 8.5x11, 1994

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

Ruth Sylmor, Untitled, silver print, 10x8

Stacey Howe, Prunes, charcoal, ink,acrylic on paper, 43x34

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Maine Arts Journal

Toni Jo Coppa, Confused, plaster, paint, clay, cheesecloth, mink, wire, wood, 9x10x5

Scott Minzy, Unrequited, woodcut, 26x40

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal

Gil Corral, Free Trade Unannounced Raids, acrylic on panel, 21.5x28

Stephen Burt, Sea Monster Skirmish

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal

Adrienne Beacham, Neurological Fusions, lithography, 15.5x19.5, 2013

Susan Bennet, Rose, steel, fabric, plaster, paint, lacquer, 5’3�

Mike Gorman, Wheeler Dealer, Naked Woman Steeler, gouache and paint sick on wood panel, 12x12

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Bessie Moulton, The Dark Side of Venus, collage and acrylic on board, 14.5x9.5

Dan Mills Farce, The 2015-16 Republican Primaries Movie video compilation https://youtu.be/jadrvO3DqAk

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal

Alan Bray, Plan For Smokers Park, casein on panel, 20x24, 1986

Andrew Abbott, Something Tacky, acrylic, collage on paper

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal

Roland Salazar, Divorced I, mixed media on stonehenge, 50x25, 2007

Abbeth Russell, Fevers Are What Happen When Knocks Cold Up, acrylic on wood panel, 20x24

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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Maine Arts Journal

Ryan Kohler, Talky Squatter, acrylic, 24x36

MONSTERS! EXHIBIT

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James Quigley, Bael, 5-color screen print

JAMES QUIGLEY

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Maine Arts Journal

James Quigley, Valefor, 5-color screen print

"The Ars Goetia is the first section of the Lesser Key of Solomon, containing descriptions of the seventy-two demons that Solomon is said to have evoked and confined in a bronze vessel sealed by magic symbols, and that he obliged to work for him. The Ars Goetia assigns a rank and a title of nobility to each member of the infernal hierarchy, and gives the demons "signs they have to pay allegiance to", or “seals." –Wikipedia.

Since 2006 I have worked on and off interpreting the 72 demons of the Goetia. Each illustration is reproduced as an 18 x 24" 5-color screen-print in a run of 150.

The work with the Goetia evolved from a year-long meditative exercise using automatic drawing techniques developed by the late occult artist, Austen Osman Spare,that resulted in hundreds of pen and ink cartoon drawings.

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Maine Arts Journal

James Quigley, Amon, 5-color screen print

James Quigley, Sitri, 5-color screen print

James Quigley, Eligos, 5-color screen print

James Quigley, Sallos, 5-color screen print

JAMES QUIGLEY

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Maine Arts Journal

James Quigley, Automatic Drawings, pen and ink

JAMES QUIGLEY

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Maine Arts Journal ARRT! Painting banner for Immigrant Resource Center in Lewisto and a puzzle cube for Brunswick Peace Works (“Children Ask the World of Us”)

ARRT!

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Maine Arts Journal

top: Bring Our War $$$ Home banner for a walk across Maine, with Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and other groups. bottom: People United Against Racism group in the Damariscotta area has been holding vigils every Monday from 4:30 to 5:30 in Newcastle by the UCC church.

ARRT!

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Maine Arts Journal

Feeding the 5000 Banner painted for an event on Oct 7 in Portland, in which a coalition of local non-profit organizations will host a feast in Monument Square made from rescued foods that would otherwise not have made it to our plates. It was made for a coalition of groups: Cumberland County Food Security Council, Healthy Acadia, Natural Resource Council of Maine, Maine Farmland Trust, Portland Food Co-op, University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, and the Locker Project.

Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, made for upcoming rallies

ARRT!

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LumenARRT! is a project of the Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT!) and the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA). We use large-scale video projections to call attention to the work of progressive non-profits in Maine. Our video projections create a visual voice for these organizations and like electronic graffiti, bring awareness to issues of social, political and environmental justice.

See lumenARRT.org

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Maine Arts Journal

Welcome to Maine Welcome to Maine is LumenARRT!’s most recent video projection, performed in Monument Square, Portland, ME on September 2, 2016. In conjunction with the Immigrant Resource Center (IRC), Lewiston, LumenARRT! created projections that appeared on the facade of the Portland Public Library, the Monument in the square, and two 15′ tall shapes installed by Transformit.

ARRT!

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ELLEN BABCOCK

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ELLEN BABCOCK

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Art Education: Local is International llllllllllllll

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DAN KANY

Thl storlls of Amlrlcll lrt, Abstrlct Exprlsslollsm, thl Iltlrlltlolll Studlo Gllss Movlmllt, thl Amlrlcll Crlft Movlmllt lld lrt lducltlol ll Amlrlcl colvlrgl ll ll lltllsl momllt for lrt culturl ll thl wlkl of World Wlr II. I wls rlclltll llvltld to llld l slmlllr lbout thls colvlrgllcl lt Nlmsloul Ullvlr sltl ll South lorll.

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Artlsts workllg wlth mltlrllls trldltlolllll colsldlrld crlft mldlums, wlrl llflullcld bl Abstrlct Exprlsslollsm to crlltl lrt, lsslltlllll sculpturl, rlthlr thll utllltlrlll or dlcorltlvl objlcts. Ilsplrld bl lrtlsts, llkl clrlmlclst Pltlr Voulkos, thl Amlrlcll modll blslcllll mlllt lll mltlrlll wls sufficlllt for sllflxprlsslol, llcludllg thl firl lrts: clrlmlcs, mltll lld gllss. Mlll clrlmlc lrtlsts of thl Amlrlcll Crlft Coulcll sought l wll to mlkl gllss lrt. Thl posltlvl lld llgltlvl sldls of thls wlrl thl slml: Thlrl wls lo hlstorl of gllss lrt ll Amlrlcl, so thl lrtlsts would hlvl to figurl lt out ol thllr owl. Ald thll dld.

Oll of thl vlrl first studlo-slzld gllss furllcls lvlr crlltld ll Amlrlcl for thl mlkllg of gllss lrt (posslbll thl first succlssful oll) would up lt thl Hllstlck Moultlll School of Crlfts ol lllr Isll, Mllll. Yllrs lltlr, Hllstlck lttlldll llll Chlhull fouldld thl Pllchuck Gllss School ll 1971 ll Stllwood, Wlshllgtol. Pllchuck blclml thl glthlrllg lld llulchllg pollt for thl Iltlrlltlolll Studlo Gllss Movlmllt: Gllssmlklrs from lrould thl world go to Pllchuck blclusl,66

Maine Arts Journal

llrlctor Slolg Hll loh wlth thl luthor lld plrtlclpllts lt Nlmsloul Ullvlrsltl’s 18th Allull Gllss Flstlvll

thlrl, gllss ls lrt - lld thl mlklrs, lrtlsts. Chlhull proudll lotls hl blsld thl Pllchuck Gllss School ol Mllll’s Hllstlck.

Llkl thl Skowhlgll School of Pllltllg lld Sculpturl, Hllstlck kllps l low profill locllll.

Thlrl ls lo rlsldllcl ll Amlrlcl, howlvlr, thlt ls morl promllllt thll Skowhlgll. Ald Hllstlck ls ll rlrlfild complll, llolg wlth Pllllld (NC), Archll lrll (MT) lld Pllchuck.

Thl llrlctor of thl Gllss & Pllstlc Art Rlsllrch Clltlr, Slolg Hll loh, llvltld ml to plrtlclpltl ll Nlmsloul Ullvlrsltl’s 18th Iltlrlltlolll Gllss Art Flstlvll. As l gllss lrt dllllr ll Sllttll, I hld l grllt dlll of lxplrlllcl wlth Pllchuck, just ls ll Mllll, ls ll lrt crltlc, I hlvl hld olgollg lltlrlctlols wlth thl Mllll Col llgl of Art lld thl lrtlsts of Hllstlck. Whlt I slw lt Nlmsloul wls lmprlsslvl lld lxcltllg; lld lt llsplrld mlll thoughts lbout Amlrlcll (lllow) MECA pllltllg cllss wlth proflssor Rob Sulllvll

(Abovl) Lllo lt Hllstlck, photo bl Chlrlll Glllls, 2007

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INSIGHT/INCITE

by Shawn Brewer and Lindsay W Book Publication Studio/ Art Department My name is Shawn Brewer and I am the founder, staff and artist mentor of Publication Studio. I want to share my experience working in public art at The Art Department and now here.. I have worked with this population for 5 years, and I find this opportunity, as an alum of a small arts school., a great place to grow as an artist. The Art Department and its affiliate program Publication Studio is a creative haven, where the artists can arrive with any idea, any aspiration, and the staff are there to support them to create their projects. The staff are all engaged, active artists themselves and work to run the space as an informal educational environment where curriculum and structure are replaced with one-on-one attention that allows everyone to focus their energy and passion on one or two grand schemes of art projects.

Publication Studio is designed to be a day program for adults with intellectual uniqueness. It is set up as a print shop and graphic design studio that sets itself apart from other print shops in Maine because it is run by individuals with disabilities who use publishing techniques and fine art printing to disseminate their work out further into our community. The program officially launched August 15th in Portland in the State Theater Building. The space provides printmaking equipment for screen printing and bookmaking, and will soon have an etching press to create fine print editions. Publication Studio first began in the rooms of The Art Department, the affiliated arts program that works with artists in a fine art context through developing professional gallery experiences and provides the opportunity to show their work in a public art gallery.

Before we launched this summer I led a 3 week long intensive public art project to produce and publish one of our most demanding projects and one with the largest scope: Sunny All Day Newspaper. This project is a selfpublished newspaper that the artists of The Art Department produce that includes artist creations showcasing local happenings, fictional classified ads, and even Dear Abby. Every issue is created with a different theme selected by the artists. And now with the Publication Studio launch, this publication will be the responsibility of the 12 artists that attend this program weekly and me. The previous edition of Sunny All Day Newswas developed in a collaborative public art project with the Cape Elizabeth Middle School. This is what makes my job interesting; bringing a diversity of artists and people together to be collaborators in a creative undertaking that is valuable for everyone involved.

I had each artist from Publication Studio brainstorm 1 or 2 newspaper article themes, and they spent two weeks interviewing, quizzing, playing or creating with the

SHAWN BREWER

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Maine Arts Journal students to produce and develop every bit of content that was submitted in our newspaper. The final product of this collaborative project was a cohesive newspaper that explored the interests and talents of both artists at Publication Studio and Cape Elizabeth Middle School. Some of the artists that came with me were even alumni from the school, so they felt a certain amount of responsibility and ownership of this project that I don't think they had ever experienced in their adulthood.

Now that we have launched the program, we have obtained our own space as a print shop to create T-shirts, self- publish comics, or even create a home- brewed board game that is hand-drawn and screen printed..

We hope to produce more work like Sunny All Day News and engage the public in the work these artists do through the diverse mediums of Publication Studio. These two significant art centers of the Portland arts community, will become models for other people to see how creativity grows in unique places.

Shawn Brewer Team Leader and Artist Mentor

The Art Department was established in

2011 as an outsider art studio, contemporary gallery, retail store, screening space, and film production studio, to provide unique opportunities to local Maine artists with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

We provide a safe place for our artists to explore their creativity while also encouraging them to grow in terms of leadership skills. It is important for our artists to realize their own capabilities, and that they too can contribute to the community creatively.

Artists here work on projects that showcase a huge variety of mediums and skills, including animation (clay, fabric, and paper), autobiographical memoirs, fictional movies, news casting and journalism, costume and prop creation, green screen experimentation, silk screening, printmaking, painting, drawing, book making, and lots more. From the art they create here, they receive 75% of the sale price, with 25% returning to the program to purchase supplies.

We provide art supplies, cameras, computers, studio space, and instruction to over 30 local artists in our storefront location in downtown Portland, making room for any and all artistic interests. Through public access to all parts of our workspace and galleries, we hope to encourage community conversations about the talent and inspiring work coming from our artists, and collaborate with local galleries, artists, and community organizations.

We have developed great collaborative relationships with Space Gallery, MECA, Pickwick, Portland Children’s Museum, and the Ferdinand Print Shop, to name a few. We treasure these connections and our incredibly grateful for their support.

Coming up we have our collaborative film festival with “bomb diggity arts” titled “Watch This” which will be held in Congress Square Park September 16th, 2016 from 5:00 – 8:00pm. There, we will have local vendors such as “Coffee by Design” and “B Good burger” as well as music and art vendor tables. This festival was created to provide a chance for our artists to display their work in a setting that promotes artistic equality. It was open to the public for submissions so that our artists could present their films with other filmmakers from all walks of life. We wanted this film festival draw attention to the creativity of our talented filmmakers while also promoting equality and community inclusion.

Since becoming manager, I have been continually blown away and inspired daily by the work of our artists.

Through the diversity and challenges they have faced, they have still persevered and are looking to be enriched by new experiences. Our goal is to provide that space for the artists to reach their full potential, in an environment that encourages each individual to increase technical skill, make community connections, collaborate with local artists and galleries, and establish their work in the greater Portland area and beyond.

Lindsay W Book Program Manager

LINDSAY W BOOK

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MONSTERS

UMVA MEMBER SUBMISSION

Emmaline Birtolo, Don't Take Advice From A Cookie, acrylic and oil on wood, 7.5 x 33, 2016

Emmaline Birtolo, No One Will Take You Seriously If You Swing Your Feet, Oil on wood panel, 6x6, 2016

EMMALINE BIRTOLO

Emmaline Birtolo, I Forgot The Safe Word, acrylic and oil on wood, 2.5x24, 2016

Emmaline Birtolo, You're Not Fooling Anyone, acrylic and oil on wood, 5.5x48, 2016 72

Maine Arts Journal

MONSTERS

UMVA MEMBER SUBMISSION

Mark Barnette, Duck pond (Chinese mystery snails), Evergreen-Cemetery, Portland, ME, 8x10 digital color photograph, 2016

Mark Barnette, Duck pond (frogs), Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, ME, 8x10 digital color photograph, 2016

The wonderfully-named Chinese mystery snail is an interloper, invasive, but also said to be edible and, I think, very beautiful. Although not welcome on our pristine shores, no wall can keep them out.

And, of course, a frog is never ever more or less than a frog and therefore always a pleasure.

MARK BARNETTE

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MONSTERS

UMVA MEMBER SUBMISSIONS

"Your silence is your consent".

Laurie Anderson

Ann Tracy

Mary Becker Weiss, Monsters: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid, mixed media, 7”x8”, 2016

ANN TRACY / MARY BECKER WEISS

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MONSTERS

UMVA MEMBER SUBMISSIONS

Rotate the Head Reverse the Coin Innocence or Depravity Horror or Joy The Thin Veneer Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly, Junior, mixed media, 45” x 30”, 2015

Jay York, Sidewalk Find, archival pigment print, 5.5”x 6”, 2012

JIM KELLY / JAY YORK

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Maine Arts Journal

UMVA Lewiston/Auburn Chapter Report It has been a wonderful inspiring summer for UMVA-LA. Through the spring we decided to reformat our meetings. We now have a one hour meeting, a one hour artist talk,and an events planning committee to keep our meetings more inspirational. We have had an incredible artist talk with Waterville painter, Ryan Kohler, who shared process, pricing and so much more! We had an informative tour of St. Louis Church in New Auburn,from the members of Pilotage a possible future artists’ space, with a talk by Ryan Rhodes, an artist, carpenter, master woodworker who does restoration work in historic buildings. We also had a wonderful presentation by installation artist, Amy Stacey Curtis, on her upcoming 9th and final Solo Biennial show "Memory" September 17-October 28, 2016 Bates Mill Complex, Lewiston, Maine FMI http://www.amystaceycurtis.com/memory.html We are excited and honored to have Amy's talent and energy in our community! We hope to see many of you come and participate!

Our last artist talk was with Gerald Walsh who recently received a Maine Grain Alliance grant to pursue the intersection of Art, baking, and community building. One of his first projects will be the re-creation of a Jean Francois Millet’s Historical Painting “Woman Baking Bread” (1854) out of breadcrumbs!

We have had a wonderful Art Walk Lewiston-Auburn season We are starting the planning process of our fall/winter arts events, including the Harvest Masquerade Arts Crawl and Ball in October, The Festival of Art and Lights in November, and For The Love of Art in February!

With the success and positive response of our first creative crosswalks we have been asked by the City of Lewiston to create public art on some of our fire hydrants! Seven artists will donate their time and talent to create public art for people to enjoy. A growing downtown in the midst of revitalization, full of creative people, can't just have everyday fire hydrants. The tentative date to paint them was Sept 10. We have also been asked to paint the electrical boxes in Simard Payne Park in Lewiston with the paint left over from the fire hydrants!

Three members of UMVA-LA took a trip to New York, visited MOMA and the Guggenheim, explored much of the city, and enjoyed art that reminded us of home, such as the HOPE and LOVE installations by Robert Indiana. We also saw amazing murals, and graffiti in Brooklyn and have been inspired to continue to create more public art to share with our community! We plan to do more artist field trips as part of our organizing.

"Lewburn" is an independent magazine dedicated to documenting life in Lewiston and Auburn through the lens of art and music. The release party will be at Quiet City Books from 6pm-8pm on September 17th. Extended content will then be available on the tumblr page: http://lewburn.tumblr.com/ Our Artist Development Group meets the second Tuesday of every month, at various locations. Attendees discuss a wide variety of topics including what it means to identify as a creative person at this point in time, share readings on various topics, and have the opportunity to ask for feedback on completed works and works in progress. FMI lis.janes@gmail.com The monthly artist gatherings have brought so much to our own lives and we have Susan Bennett to thank for getting us together as in the words of Edwig Charlotte, "Create our own Wu-Tang Clan of Artists, a community of artists supporting one another!"

Union of Maine Visual Artists Lewiston Auburn UMVAlewistonauburn@gmail.com

UMVA NEWS

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UMVA Portland Area Chapter Report This has been a summer for eulogies for Portland’s arts scene. As one gallery after another closes, mostly due to rapid gentrification and and inflated real-estate market, the city’s glory days of cheap rent and a close-knit community of artists might appear to be over.

But amidst all the bad news, the UMVA Gallery offers artists reason to hope, not only in Portland but throughout the state.

I attended the Portland chapter’s June meeting at the Congress Street gallery space UMVA rents from CTN-5, the local cable access channel. As a new Union member, I was welcomed by an engaged and visionary group of artists who recognize how their own successes and those of the larger arts community are tied.

Among the topics under discussion at that meeting were how best to draw more attention to the Portland exhibit space, help make the Portland chapter self-sustaining, and raise UMVA’s profile locally and statewide.

Members also explored ways to work with CTN-5 to increase public awareness of both organizations. The channel’s website, www.ctn5.org, already features videos of UMVA shows and events. In addition to gallery space, CTN-5 boasts performance space and video production facilities, both with potential benefits for UMVA. For most of late summer, gallery space was dedicated to a show of photographs curated

by Bruce Brown, the noted Maine collector with deep roots in the state’s arts community. Currently, Abbeth Russell’s fiber arts are on display. In October the MONSTERS! Exhibit will open with a reception on the first Friday during Artwalk, and John Ripton’s street photography exhibit will follow. UMVA members will want to watch for calls for group and holiday shows later this year.

Galleries may be closing elsewhere in the city, but UMVA’s Congress Steet gallery — and the local chapter that sustains it — are clearly thriving.

Submitted by UMVA Member, Mark Barnette UMVA Member Dave Wade adds the following report and photos from the gallery reception of Branching Out. UMVA Gallery at CTN (516 Congress St) hosted the exhibit Branching Out, curated by Bruce Brown. The exhibit, from July7-Aug. 27th, featured photography by 39 Maine artists, many of whom were UMVA members, including Jay York, Larry Hayden, Tom Hibschman, Diane Hudson, Jim Kelly, Lesley MacVane,Jane Page-Conway, Skye Priestly, Jon Ripton, Dianna Rust, and David Wade. The exhibit was well attended, well liked, reviewed in the press, sparked curiosity about the UMVA and increased membership.

Artists interested in joining the Portland Chapter should check out the UMVA Portland Area Facebook page for meeting times and information.

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Maine Arts Journal

INVITATION TO SUBMIT

THEME FOR WINTER 2017 JOURNAL: Lines of Thought Drawing has a history of being a way of thinking on paper. For that reason, much art that presents itself as drawing is seen as brainier or more verbal.

That verbal connotation moves in two directions, however. Because of its literalness, illustration has long been taken as a “lower form of art” than the complex metaphors of painting. Yet, we can look to iconic - and radical - moments of Western philosophy to find illustrative drawings becoming powerful symbols, like da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man, where the human body becomes an analogy for the workings of the universe. Likewise, Darwin’s simple branch-like drawing postulated the evolution of all life forms, and Ben Franklin’s rough but powerful drawing of a chopped-up snake imploring colonies to "Join or Die," became a symbol of colonial freedom during the American Revolution.

The engineering and architecture of the tallest skyscrapers often start with the simplest sketch, as do the greatest of paintings. A film starts with a drawn storyboard, and scientists draw to demonstrate and test many of their ideas visually. Art reserves the freedom to draw from all of these sources and converse in many directions with other disciplines, as well.

When it comes to making a powerful, visual case, drawing takes the back seat to nothing. If you cannot express an idea with lines in two-dimensions, then you might not truly understand it in three or more.

So we ask you to show us: Where does drawing fit in with your thought process? What role does drawing play in your art?

The editorial board of The UMVA Quarterly Maine Arts Journal (The MAJ) invites members and would-be members to submit your images and ideas for our upcoming Winter Issue: Lines of Thought. We certainly don’t have to tell you this, but do feel free to be outrageously creative!

We invite UMVA members to submit up to 4 works. Word limit is 150 words. Please submit images as jpgs: high-resolution images, 150-300 dpi; the format should be at least 1000 pixels on the shortest side. Please label work and supply us with an image list which includes artist, title, year, medium, dimension, and if required, the photo credit. Put “Lines of Thought” in the subject line and submit to umvalistings@gmail.com by December 1st deadline. MAJ will limit the “Members Submit” section to UMVA members who have not been published in the past year.

MAJ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

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Maine Arts Journal

THE MAJ is a project of the UNION OF MAINE VISUAL ARTISTS. Please share it with friends online, click here to subscribe to the MAJ, click here to join the UMVA. We rely on the support of our readers to continue publishing and advocating for Maine arts and artists.

You can read past issues through our website archives at

http://umvaonline.org/index.php?page=archives

If you would like to own a printed version just click on the issue cover to order it from peecho.com. Thanks for your continued interest and support.

Fall 2016 Monsters

Summer 2016 Muses

Spring 2016 Neurotica

Winter 2016 Impermanence

Fall 2015 Working In Series

Summer 2015 A Sense of Place

Spring 2015 In Defense of Painting

Winter 2015 Interview/Innerview

Fall 2014 Then and Now

Summer 2014 Art You Do/Don’t Show

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