Edgar Allen Beem — Maine in the Abstract

Edgar Allen Beem — Maine in the Abstract

Maine Arts Journal Introduction: This essay was originally commissioned to appear in Maine Art New, a selection of essays and artist profiles edited by Edgar Allen Beem and Andres Verzosa and to have been published by the University of Maine Press. After a long,...

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An Interview with Heather Chontos — Sarah Bouchard

An Interview with Heather Chontos — Sarah Bouchard

Heather Chontos is an internationally recognized abstract painter and newly minted sculptor currently living and working in Berlin. I first met Heather in my role as Director of the Corey Daniels gallery in Wells, Maine. Soon after, we became fast friends. Heather’s...

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Michael H. Lewis: Balancing Life and Landscape — Carl Little

Michael H. Lewis: Balancing Life and Landscape — Carl Little

“I have lived in Maine since 1966, but it wasn’t until 1984 that I began to work seriously from the landscape.” In his statement for the landmark exhibition “On the Edge: 40 Years of Maine Painting 1952-1992” at Maine Coast Artists, Michael H. Lewis also noted that he...

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Duane Paluska and Ellen Golden — Art In Balance

Duane Paluska and Ellen Golden — Art In Balance

Duane Paluska and Ellen Golden live in Woolwich and work in Brunswick in the building that houses ICON Contemporary Art, the gallery that Duane has owned and operated for the past thirty years.   Ellen: One of your first presents to me was the last painting that...

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Kate Cheney Chappell — Art in Balance

Kate Cheney Chappell — Art in Balance

“Nibbled at by ducks“ is a phrase my mother coined to gently complain of the demands of small children, minor tasks, and major responsibilities. She was an artist who gave up her studio, whose time was pecked away at until there was nothing left over for art. As a...

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Balance: Kathy Weinberg’s Tile Paintings —  Daniel Kany

Balance: Kathy Weinberg’s Tile Paintings — Daniel Kany

I knew Kathy Weinberg’s faux tile paintings from seeing them in her studio before they were exhibited in public. They seemed to achieve a particularly complete synthesis of what she had been working towards. They combined scenes of her daily life which were infused...

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Richard Brown Lethem — The Visionary Motive

Richard Brown Lethem — The Visionary Motive

Most artists worth their salt, sane or demented, aspire to be a visionary artist.  To nail a universal truth made manifest in a grain of sand, and to innovate an iconic image, tempts all us ambitious souls. The subversive and challenging factor in art is its desire to...

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Jared Haug —  On Image Fatigue

Jared Haug — On Image Fatigue

It's both a holy and a homely site Slowlier perused than eye can see (Whenever the stones blink a century Blacks out) by this vague track Of brick and thatch and birdsong any June Galactic pollen will have overstrewn. From Mirabell: Books of Number, by James Merrill....

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UMF Water Bear Confabulum — Sarah Maline

UMF Water Bear Confabulum — Sarah Maline

Since 2015 on the last Saturday in October, UMF students, artists, and performers take over the unloved alleys (and sometimes the splendid woods) of Farmington for the Water Bear Confabulum.  Students in drawing classes create a huge mural on the wall of the Homestead...

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Southern Maine Community College — Jeff Badger

Southern Maine Community College — Jeff Badger

IN FOCUS: Southern Maine Community College, South Portland Southern Maine Community College is Maine's largest, oldest, and most diverse community college. Its art program is designed to prepare students for a career in the arts. Working in scenic studio facilities...

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Poetry — Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Poetry — Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

In his poem “A Supermarket in Portland,”  Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is echoing the Allen Ginsberg poem, “A Supermarket in California,” in which Ginsberg imagines finding Walt Whitman in an all-night grocery.  Here the poet finds Ginsberg and draws him into the busy life of a...

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Poetry — Colin Cheney

Poetry — Colin Cheney

In Colin Cheney’s  “Ars Poetic with Vulture” we see at work a different kind of struggle for balance—between life and death, witness and trusting the word of another, the hard facts of environmental degradation in tension with the beauty still in the world.  The poem...

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Members’ Showcase: Val Porter, Susan Read Guthrie

Members’ Showcase: Val Porter, Susan Read Guthrie

Val Porter I see myself as a complex person, made up of many different parts. I call these my "inner family" and much of my healing has come through learning to accept, listen to, and respect all aspects of Self. I am a full time artist, a sculptor and painter.  Art...

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UMVA Portland Update (and some UMVA Board News)

UMVA Portland Update (and some UMVA Board News)

The UMVA Gallery @ Portland Media Center is well into its 2019 schedule of engaging exhibitions. The April show “Portland City: Re-Imagined” was  a successful exhibit organized by artists Bob Riemann and Rabee Kiwan featuring Bob's striking, colorful photographs and...

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UMVA  Lewiston/Auburn Chapter Update

UMVA Lewiston/Auburn Chapter Update

Gritty’s Art and Ale Window Last month's window featured works from the Annual Student Show at Wicked Illustrations Studio and Gallery with artists from local area schools and studios. Best in Show by Charlotte Woodson, Grade 7, "Simple Song," acrylic and ink on...

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ARRT! Update

ARRT! Update

The Artists' Rapid Response Team! 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 be used to...

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UMVA Archives — Pat and Tony Owen

UMVA Archives — Pat and Tony Owen

There is a ledge on the side of Mt. Megunticook in Camden Hills State Park. It can be seen from Camden's Main Street, a sheer granite face that drops and disappears into the woods below. A face of rock that people forget about; after all it has been there forever. It...

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Artist Fees?  UMVA History

Artist Fees? UMVA History

Charging artists to enter shows has been a hot button issue since the UMVA was founded. We urge artists to continue to confront this challenge. Here are some pieces of UMVA history on the topic:  

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Maine Masters — Update

Maine Masters — Update

ROBERT SHETTERLY: AN AMERICAN WHO TELLS THE TRUTH By Richard Kane Robert Shetterly, former president of the UMVA, has become the subject of the latest episode in the Maine Masters film series I am directing. Since 2001 I’ve been following Rob’s passionate adventure...

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Restore Tax Equity For Artists

Restore Tax Equity For Artists

Please join the UMVA in advocating for this important piece of legislation: Please let Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree know that Maine artists would like them to co-sponsor this proposal!

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