Introduction to the Summer 2018 Issue
John Bisbee – State of the Studio
For the last year and a half, I have been obsessed with creating my upcoming show, American Steel, at CMCA. It is a true departure for me on many fronts: it's realist, it's text-driven, it's political, and hopefully it's funny. If it's not a little bit funny...
The Wave of Creativity by Dietlind Vander Schaaf
by Dietlind Vander Schaaf Last winter I found myself in a bit of an artistic slump. The flow of energy and ideas that had moved through me freely and guided my work for years seemed to have dried up. As winter gave way to spring, I reached beyond my studio...
Beth Wittenberg – State of the Studio
Ever since I graduated with my Bachelor of FIne Arts in 1991, I have said to myself that if I am to refer to myself as an artist, then I better be doing what artists do. Artists make art. So, I make art every day. I create. I make. I consider. I react. I respond. I...
The Privilege of Studio Visits by Edgar Allen Beem
For 40 years now (1978-2018), I have been writing about art in Maine. Over that time I have been privileged to visit several hundred artists in their studios. Not only did I learn most of what I know about contemporary art from studio visits, but I have come to regard...
Industrial Landscapes — A Curator’s Experience by Janice Moore
Industrial Maine: Our Other Landscape opened at the University of Southern Maine – Lewiston/Auburn Atrium Gallery on March 12, 2018. The exhibition included 70 works of art from 27 artists from across the State of Maine working in a broad range of media. The...
Censorship, or Safety? by Dan Kany
Statements, dialogue and conversations about censorship and USM president Glenn Cummings’ unilateral decision to remove three paintings from the Atrium Gallery’s exhibition “Industrial Maine: Our Other Landscape” By Daniel Kany “I would prefer we act in this case from...
Michael Mansfield by Sarah Bouchard
Not all artists can afford a traditional, daily studio practice. For some, the studio is a state of mind entered into on the drive home after a long day packed with professional obligations. These artists make exceptional work while maintaining an alternate identity –...
Studio and Stagecraft, James Hope’s Watkins Glen Art Gallery 1872-1892 by Jane Bianco
Perhaps Maine artists want to look back to Hope’s time when viewing art in a gallery was sometimes more of an ‘event’, like going to a theater. Linking studio practice and tourism is very much what we do here during Maine summers....
Brushes by the Bushel: In the Studio with Henry Isaacs by Daniel Kany
Henry Isaacs’ Portland studio is an open and airy place filled with tiny painted sketches, canvases, piles of tubes of Gamblin oil paints and tin after tin crammed with hundreds of paintbrushes. The walls of the studio’s front room are filled with colorful and affably...
Patricia Wheeler—Art Matters
I feel that art can be active, holding real power, not just metaphoric meaning. My painting practice has always included an element of ritual and deep listening. It serves as a space through which encounters with personal and collective energies coalesce. Living in a...
State of the Studio with Meghan Brady
Last summer I was the recipient of a six month studio residency through the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. I left my modest garage-studio behind my house, where I have been making paintings, drawings, prints and some sculpture over the last ten years, for a large...
Sara Stites in the studio: A Journey
My work has always had an organic, visceral aspect which I consider to be part of my concern with life issues, like vulnerability, passion, and the uncanny. Drawing in notebooks is my lifeline to my work whether I am in my studio in Maine or Miami or traveling on the...
James Chute — My Collaborative Drawing Projects
In the years 2012 through 2015 I conceived and executed four collaborative drawing projects. These projects provided conceptual contexts for the improvisational drawing practice I had been concentrating on for the previous several years, and also incorporated social...
Christian Barter Poetry — Introduction by Betsy Sholl
Christian Barter is an award-winning poet whose most recent book is Bye-Bye Land, winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. Besides being a poet and teacher, he works on a trail crew planning and overseeing construction and rehabilitation of hiking trails on Mount...
Dawn Potter Poetry — Introduction by Betsy Sholl
Dawn Potter’s new book, Chestnut Ridge, traces the history of her birthplace in western Pennsylvania through three centuries and various voices. The poems change in style as the age changes, beginning with formal and moving toward free verse. These poems are a...
State of the Studio: Sondra Bogdonoff
After an earlier 25 year career as a textile artist, selling nationally a line of one-of-a-kind jackets and doing commissioned wall work, I returned to school to get a masters in public policy and started working full-time at the Muskie School at USM. My studio, on...
Cannery Row—A Studio Visit with Ron Crusan by Kathy Weinberg
The crossroads where you make the turn towards Port Clyde is landmarked by the General Henry Knox Museum, a 1929 re-creation of the original 1794 Federal mansion. Its monumental façade comes into view almost simultaneously with the Dragon Cement Company, a large...
Studio Practice — Tom Flanagan 2018
The only thing I really understand about my process as an artist is that everything comes from my drawing practice. There’s something essential about drawing. It connects me to the world and to my sensibilities. Lately I’ve been drawing directly onto the canvas using...
UMVA Member Showcase: Michelle Leier, Sandy Olson, Amy Pollien, Ruth Sylmor
Michelle Leier My paintings explore visual stimuli either from direct observation or from photographs and drawings made of scenes from my daily life. Lately I have been working on a series of still lifes which are contemplations of a group of objects I have in my...
UMVA Member Showcase — Judith Allen-Efstathiou, Pamela Grumbach, Alanna Hernandez and Kenneth Kohl
Judith Allen- Efstathiou The state of my studio is always in transition – seasonally packed in a suitcase and moved from one continent to another (I have three studios in all: one in Portland, one in Athens, Greece and one on the Island of Kea). I split my year in...