Véronique Plesch – Introduction Spring 2024: The Unconscious, the Unknown, the Unsaid
Springing from our celebration of Surrealism, officially born a century ago, we called for contributors to reflect upon a concept central to the movement: the unconscious. We combined the notion with a few related ones: the unknown and the unsaid. This theme, we noted...
Dozier Bell – Macro/Micro
I’ve always been attracted to very small work, paintings or drawings that could be held in one’s hands, that are the size of the "mind’s eye." It sometimes feels as portable, intimate, and private as a passport or a photo of a family member in a wallet. Most of my...
Maggie Foskett: Pioneer – Cynthia Hyde
Maggie Foskett (American 1919–2014), with much information provided by her son and daughters, Kenneth Foskett, Kate O’Neill, and Lynn Pierson. Maggie Foskett was a pioneer, both as a photographer and as a woman. She was my dear friend and confidant. She nurtured all...
Joel Babb – Orders of Magnitude
See the iconic short film by Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 Resting on a bluff above the Missouri River in a small clearing, I watched a wasp moving about, investigating a leaf in a methodical way. Suddenly, I was...
Meg Chase and Freddy LaFage – Holistic?
I had always considered the art, and the life, of Meg Chase and Freddy LaFage to be a microcosm within a macrocosm, parts of a complex structure that contains their family-run restaurant, art gallery, and family farm. They also belong to another macrocosm, the world...
Stephen Burt
For me, the creation of art is about finding inspiration and meaning in the observed world. I convey those thoughts and feelings to others by means of aesthetic and historical references. Viewing the arc of my career, it is an indisputable fact that Nature represents...
Meg Brown Payson: Experience of Place – Carl Little
Raised in Falmouth (with three out of her four grandparents born and raised in Portland), Meg Brown Payson has spent most of her life in Maine, with a few exceptions: four years at the Boston University School of Fine Arts, three years in Santa Cruz (while her husband...
Hyman Bloom: A Second Coming – Kathy Weinberg
When an artist achieves a level of fame and success it is often considered an injustice if, and when, they experience a fall from the limelight, it is also a fall from grace. But how remarkable in the first place that an artist is recognized, shown with some of the...
An Interview with Philip Brou – Sarah Bouchard
Philip Brou is a wildly talented painter based in South Portland, Maine. He is Associate Professor of Painting and Program Chair of Foundation at the Maine College of Art. S.B. When I sit with one of your most recent paintings, Transparent Eyeball, I find myself...
The Macro and the Micro of Eliot Porter’s Worlds – Jane Bianco
The relationships that interest me are both biological and aesthetic, ecological in the broadest sense: interactions between living things and the physical environment, which includes rock, water, and ambient light. —Eliot Porter, Eliot Porter (Boston: Little, Brown,...
Amanda J. Lilleston – Véronique Plesch
“We are nothing but body so far as nature is concerned. Nature’s values are bodily values, human values are mental values” (Becker 31, quoted by Amanda Lilleston at her Colby talk). Two and a half years ago, Amanda Lilleston joined the Colby faculty to teach all...
Pat Ranzoni – Poetry
Annika Earley, Swarm, cut paper, 22 x 30 in., 2019. In this poem about honoring a friend and long time peace and justice worker, Pat Ranzoni combines the micro and macro, the immediate moment of searching for lost pinking shears with the larger issue of injustice and...
Keith Dunlap – Poetry
Keith Dunlap takes us from an eleven-year-old camping on a “primeval ledge” to the cosmos beyond and men walking on the moon. It’s almost dizzying to watch “burning flakes of ash” from the campfire drift up toward the stars in their “slow eddy.” And then time...
Edgar Allen Beem – “A punching bag for art”
The Perennial Debate over the Portland Museum of Art Biennial January 22, 2020 Prompted by artists' complaints that they were being overlooked by the Portland Museum of Art, I recently visited the museum to see how many living Maine artists had works on display....
Comments on PMA Biennial Replacement
COMMENTS ABOUT THE PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART'S DECISION TO REPLACE THE BIENNIAL FOR MAINE ARTISTS WITH AN INTERNATIONAL TRIENNIAL The Portland Museum of Art has recently announced it will be replacing its Biennial Maine art exhibition with a curated international...
Alan Crichton – We Went To NYC!!
("HiLo Art" column reprinted with permission from The Free Press) “In the Destroyer’s steps, there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven.” Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop When your niece and...
Insight/Incite: Playing On Paper – Ellen Bowman
Maybe it was that summer at Indian Point when I became aware of my mother sketching now and then, quietly absorbed in her way. (I was ten at the time.) I have yet to meet a person whose quality of listening and observing can equal that of my mother. These qualities...
Remembering Duane Paluska (1936–2020)
Mark Wethli “In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods are everywhere.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Builders There are many things I’d like to say about Duane Paluska—about his friendship, his...
Alan Fishman – Captured Moments
Alan Fishman’s show, Captured Moments, at the Maine Jewish Museum, in the Fineberg Community Room, opened on March 8th, 2020. The MJM closed to the public a week later due to new health guidelines for the pandemic virus outbreak. We offered Alan a chance to show our...
CMCA – 2020 Spring Exhibitions
The spring show at CMCA was partially opened to public viewing on March 14th, 2020, and was scheduled to fully open on March 21st. Due to the Centers for Disease Control guidelines issued concerning the COVID-19 virus global pandemic outbreak, CMCA closed to the...
Members’ Showcase – Krisanne Baker
Water is Life The ocean I grew up on courses through my veins. I’ve spent a lifetime swimming through it, pondering its vastness and all of the life it holds. One summer night about ten years ago, I swam underwater through a cove of microscopic phytoplankton. Each...
Members’ Showcase – Ragna Bruno and Donald Mallow
Ragna Bruno I work from the imagination, without a preconceived idea. Music is very often a catalyst for my painting. In my process I consider at the same time the Whole and the Particular, intertwined. I find that the Macro starting point probably defines my...
Members’ Showcase – John Ripton and C. E. Morse
John Ripton The people in these four images are in the distance. Through the Marrakesh Door a family goes about its day. In the room Haiti a man is burdened with his thoughts. The shadows of pedestrians...
UMVA Portland Chapter Update – Spring 2020
The Union of Maine Visual Artists has decided to officially close the UMVA Gallery (516 Congress Street at Portland Media Center) until at least June 5th, 2020. Ken Kohl and Amy Bellezza's current show A...
Mid-Coast Salon Says: “Art MATTERS” – David Estey
What happens when you bring together a diverse group of artists for camaraderie, peer review, critique, and a lively, free-flowing discussion of current issues? Almost two years ago, I contacted about 40 artist friends in the Belfast area to see if they were...
ARRT! – Update Spring 2020
ARRT! The Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT!) is a project of the Union of Maine Visual Artists. The ARRTists are members of the UMVA who collaborate with progressive organizations throughout Maine to create “visual soundbites,” frequently in the form of banners, to...
LumenARRT! – Update Spring 2020
LumenARRT! is a project of the Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT!). We work through the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), a members’ organization that advocates for artists and furthers the work of progressive non-profits in the state of Maine. Our video...
From the UMVA Archives – Pat and Tony Owen
From the Archives The archival material we have of UMVA newsletters and various ephemera is not very organized. We have talked about collating everything by year, month, and even making sub categories. But... it always seems that something more important comes up,...
Invitation and Theme for Summer 2020: Art in a Time of Pandemic and Quarantine
We have decided to put off the summer theme we had chosen, to address instead the crisis that is affecting us all. We assume that no descriptive prompts are needed. The Maine Arts Journal will serve as an archive of artists' responses to this historic situation....
