Where Are We? You Are Here/Now

This is a time of sweeping changes on every front. Many pressing issues confront us and our institutions: justice, human rights, economic systems, employment, health and healthcare, climate change, elections, and more.
Our schools, businesses, and governments probably won’t be fully functioning for the foreseeable future.
Our idea or vision of who we are as Americans and what we want our country to be, to stand for, are at stake.
Uncertainty, fear, despair, and anxiety are natural responses to the everyday realities we are now confronted with. We are navigating a delicate balance of mythological proportions, between Scylla and Charybdis.

grosz

George Grosz, The Funeral (dedicated to Oskar Panizza), oil on canvas, 55 x 43 in., 1917, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany.

How are you? Are you keeping it together or flowing into the chaos?  Are you holding on by your fingernails, or holding out a hand to others?  Is your art leading you with deeply thoughtful reflections about “where do we go from here?”  Does your art contain humor, dark humor or joy?  Is art your refuge or are you called into action?

How does your art reflect your life right now? How do we move forward into an uncertain future?

We invite Union of Maine Visual Artists members to share your images showing how you are taking stock of the present situation and responding to it.

 

 

Submission guidelines for Maine Arts Journal on Where are We?You are Here/Now

Deadline: September 1st, 2020

  • We invite all UMVA members (not a member? JOIN by clicking here.) to submit up to 4 JPEG or png images (NO TIFF files), approximately 2800 pixels in width, resolution 72dpi.
  • Include an image list and (optional) brief statement in Word doc. format, NOT a PDF.
  • Label each image file as follows: your last name_Number of Image_Title (with no spaces in the title). Please DO NOT put whole caption/credit in image file label, see image list/caption format below (if you are submitting for a group put your own last name in first).
  • Label your document file names: Last Name_Title
  • Image list/caption format: create a list that is numbered to match the number in your image file label that includes the following: Artist’s Name, Title of Work, medium, size (example: 9 x 12 in.), date (optional), photo credit (example: photo: Ansel Adams) if not included we assume it is courtesy of the artist. Example: Unknown Artist, Untitled, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 in., 2000 (photo: Ansel Adams).
  • Please wait until all of your material is compiled to submit.

PutWhere are We? in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the September 1st deadline.

We are no longer able to accommodate artists’ preformatted visual essays. Our editors will lay-out text and images submitted using the new guidelines above.

It is the MAJ’s policy to request and then publish image credits. We will not publish images the submitter does not have the right to publish. However, it is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are the author’s/submitter’s own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.

Thank you,

MAJ Editorial Board

Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Kathy Weinberg, Véronique Plesch, and Betsy Sholl (poetry editor)

Image at top: Grant Wood, Death on the Ridge Road, oil on composition board, 39 x 46 1/16 in., 1935, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts.