Maine Arts Journal Spring 2026 cover (Nick Benfey, No Man’s Land 2, oil on canvas, 34 x 32 in.).
The Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly
Original Art, Essays, and Poems from Maine
Spring 2026: The Shape of Time
This issue’s contributors evoke a myriad of times—both experienced and represented, quantifiable and ephemeral; from the primordial to the geological, the time of human presence on earth and that of history. There is the ancestral and individual time, that of a human life and that of personal memories. We hear about cyclical, iterative, accumulative, fluid, and simultaneous time. It can move slowly or fast—too slowly or too fast. Time can feel special or routine, it can be regimented and controlled, or liberated and free-flowing, the time of creation or of necessary chores. Although time is unpredictable, indomitable, and unconstruable, it is both a foe and a friend, an ally, a source of revelation and of creation.
From the Editors: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Véronique Plesch, and Betsy Sholl (poetry editor), with Colby College interns Sofía Escobar Amaya and Winnie Ulland.
For the issue’s contents, scroll down.
A journal devoted to the work of contemporary Maine visual artists and writers.
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Featured work from The Spring 2026 Issue of the Maine Arts Journal
Véronique Plesch – Introduction Spring 2026: The Shape of Time
Art not only communicates through space, but also through time. —Robert Smithson For this issue of the Maine Arts Journal, as we asked our contributors to reflect on how they handle the challenging task of giving visual shape to the immaterial and fleeting notion of...
Grace Hager: Right Place, Right Time
When I think about the greater theme of time, I am tempted, in a deeply human fashion, to think forward into the future and look backward at the past. The challenge of our time, and possibly always and forever, is staying in the present. I am reminded of the words of...
Edgar Allen Beem: Nick Benfey’s Peaceable Kingdom
Nick Benfey’s multi-dimensional landscapes play with time and space in thoughtful and amusing ways, providing bird’s-eye (or perhaps drone’s-eye) views of places all over New England and New York, in which more than one plane of existence can be seen simultaneously....
Caroline de Mauriac: Beyond the Anthropocene
Beyond The Anthropocene: In Three Parts The Anthropocene is a geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth until now. It affects Earth's geology, landscape, limnology, ecosystems, and climate. The effects of human activities on...
Claire Millikin – Time’s Doors: Duality in Gabriel Frey’s Bronze
At this winter’s Center for Maine Contemporary Art 2025 Biennial in Rockland, Maine, the Passamaquoddy artist Gabriel Frey’s bronze sculpture Ulankeyutomon (roughly translatable as He cherishes and takes good care of it) stood out as a burnished three-dimensional work...
Carl Little – Spending Time with Ellen Golden
Artist Ellen Golden is known for her intricate drawings. Working out of her studio in Fort Andross in Brunswick, Golden creates work that engages by its sheer complexity. In advance of her exhibition Strata at the Maine Jewish Museum (through 30 April), she answered a...
Véronique Plesch – The Passenger: Five Decades of Gary Green Following the Light
I have long intended to write about Gary Green’s photography. Now, as he prepares to retire from Colby College—where he single-handedly built the photography program—the timing is finally right. His tenure at Colby holds a personal resonance for me; as department...
Stuart Kestenbaum: Morning Coffee
My friend Jack Troy is a potter and a poet. A few years back, he asked me to read a manuscript of his, and as a thank you, sent me two tea bowls. While his form is related stylistically to Japanese tea bowls, for me it’s one of my go-to cups for morning coffee. I love...
Véronique Plesch – Picturing Time
The Shape of Art History, or History Moves at Different Speeds Botticelli’s Primavera offers a fitting opening as these art historical musings appear in the spring issue of the MAJ. Not only is this image often cited as a perfect illustration of the Italian...
Lynda McCann-Olson: Student Interest Leads to Passion
This quote from The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, by George Kubler captures my experiences as an artist, educator, and catalyst of cultural diplomacy: “Art engages with one’s relationship to time: being in the present, relating to the past, and...
Brian Boyd – Poetry
In Brian Boyd’s poem depicting images of and by the social realist painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, who was one of the most famous Mexican muralists, we see a man of his times becoming, in a sense, timeless—timeless because his work survives, timeless because his life...
Claire Millikin – Poetry
In this elegy by Claire Millikin, “Winter Record Store,” the image of a record keeps resonating and changing. There’s the record-breaking cold on the night of this poem. There are the written records that preserve dates and events, preserve what is passing; there are...
James McKenna – Poetry
In this poem, James McKenna gives us a moment when the past is suddenly brought close. An experience from childhood is brought back and transformed. Maybe this suggests that time itself is fluid, is a kind of puzzle whose many pieces constantly shift, break apart and...
UMVA Showcase – Spring 2026: Alice Spencer, Audrey Parker, Donald Patten
Alice Spencer – The Gift of COVID All through my lifetime has shape-shifted, ballooning for routine tasks, shrinking for the things I am passionate about, and evaporating while I’m in my studio where I am completely oblivious to its passage. I have always been...
UMVA Showcase – Spring 2026: Mark Wethli, Ann Tracy, Arthur Nichols, Holly Kidder
Mark Wethli – The Shape of Time & The Shape of Content In 1979 I was teaching drawing and painting at California State University, Long Beach. In the art office, to save paper, they would cut discarded photocopies into quarters and leave them face down on the...
UMVA Showcase – Spring 2026: Jemma Gascoine, Jennifer Lee Morrow, Ann Thompson, Betsey Foster
Jemma Gascoine – An Urn in Time It’s January 2026 and my Dad is on his deathbed in his living room in Surrey, England. He opens his eyes and forms words in a way that only a few of us understand at this point. “You never made my urn!” he utters, disappointed. It’s...
UMVA Showcase – Spring 2026: Charles Kaufmann, Amy Ray, Mildred Bachrach, Ave Melnick
Charles Kaufmann – The Never-Ending I have the feeling of the never-ending of which I am the beginning. —Paul Gauguin (1903) In 1936, Charles Ewing (1872–1954) painted a landscape, Boathouse, which shows two of his sons felting the roof of a boathouse on Timber Point,...
Right Now! Processing the Moment
I think the outrageous dishonesty—lies being screamed out to us constantly and then used as a pretext for abhorrent policies and behavior—is at the root of everything. There are many more lying mouths in this administration I could depict, but it started to get...
Edgar Allen Beem – András Szántó: The Future of the Art World
András Szántó takes the pulse of the art world. András Szántó once ran the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University and now is a sought-after advisor to museums all over the world. I know Szántó through the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the...
ARRT! Update – Spring 2026
ARRT! (The Artists’ Rapid Response Team!) works with progressive groups and organizations throughout Maine, providing images that can help to distill and clarify their important messages about issues that matter to people in Maine and the world beyond our borders....
LumenARRT! Update – Spring 2026
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...
Joanne Tarlin – UMVA President’s Letter Spring 2026
UMVA Accomplishments and Plans for the Future The UMVA officers convened a meeting of the UMVA Board of Directors (BOD) on 21 February 2026. Due to the snowfall, it was a hybrid meeting with Alan Crichton, Emily Sabino, and Barbara Sullivan attending via Zoom and the...
UMVA Midcoast Chapter Update
April Show at Zoots in Camden The Union of Maine Visual Artists presents the Bodies in Motion Art Exhibition, curated by painter Alicia Inés Ethridge of Seven Artist Collective, at Zoots Coffee, 5 Elm St. in Camden, Maine, from 1–30 April 2026. The exhibition...
Tony Owen – Time Heals All Wounds
I share the cooking responsibilities with my wife Pat, yet I find myself doing the lion's share lately solely because I enjoy it. Pat thinks I'm a kitchen control freak—probably right! When I cook, I see myself as a reincarnation of some long-forgotten French chef who...
MAJ Theme and Call for Submissions – Summer 2026: Light
It’s spring and there’s more daylight. Light is our summer theme. Indispensable to life, light is the sine qua non of vision and, by extension, of art itself. It is a physical reality that artists have chased for centuries. To represent light—to capture the...