MAJ SU21 Cover 3psd copy
 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Summer 2021 issue of the Maine Arts Journal!

We hope you will read, explore, and enjoy all the many essays. Share the issue with friends and family, consider submitting your work, subscribing (it’s free), and joining the Union of Maine Visual Artists. Please let us know if you have any comments or concerns about this issue or ideas for future publications. All feedback is valuable to us.

This issue includes a collaboration between the Maine Arts Journal and the L.C. Bates Museum, sharing a theme and expanding the dialogue.

–From the Editors: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Véronique Plesch, Betsy Sholl (poetry editor), with the help of Colby interns Mads McDonough, and Caroline Scarola.

Please click on cover image to go to the Introduction to the current issue. 

Lisa Kellner

Lisa Kellner

My understanding of place comes from the intricacies of every nook and cranny I discover there. Instead of a panoramic perspective, I delve into the details, get up close, and investigate beneath the surface. I see the land as an accumulation of forms and strata...

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Joël LeVasseur – Northern Vernacular

Joël LeVasseur – Northern Vernacular

Sometimes the desecration of a landscape is so ancient that we accept it as part of nature, whereas the most conscientiously designed purists can reject improvements of recent years indignantly. All serve as symbols; symbols of what we have done, that is wrong or of...

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Nancy Manter

Nancy Manter

I grew up in Veazie, Maine, a place where extreme weather and a myriad of geological variations are ever-present. My artwork has been influenced by this landscape for more than forty years. Like many Mainers, my parents shared a daily, and what at times felt hourly,...

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Jessica Tomlinson – Henry Wolyniec

Jessica Tomlinson – Henry Wolyniec

Henry Wolyniec never called himself a printmaker, though he made much of his work on a Vandercook. He used the press not as a delivery system but as a collaborator. By building up and manipulating layers of material on the print bed, he created a unique piece each...

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Christine Higgins

Christine Higgins

The materials with which I work—fiber, paper, and ink—satisfy my tactile needs and allow an unlimited range of color and light and expression. My subjects reflect abstraction in the natural world. Living in rural environs in Maine has heightened my awareness of the...

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Jeff Epstein

Jeff Epstein

Most of my paintings are a direct response to something I’ve seen. I must be aware of what I’m looking for, as my choices are fairly consistent: the common and the everyday in a context that renders them interesting or oddly beautiful. I’m not interested in painting a...

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Véronique Plesch – Marks on the Vulnerable Body

Véronique Plesch – Marks on the Vulnerable Body

For Marks and Tracks, the 2021 L.C. Bates Summer Exhibition, Natasha Mayers contributed three paintings, close-ups of faceless masculine torsos inscribed with tattoos and displaying military insignia. Tattoos, White Vest, shows a figure with an assortment of black...

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Robert Katz – Silent Witness: The Resonance of Artifacts

Robert Katz – Silent Witness: The Resonance of Artifacts

During the year of America’s bicentennial celebrations, I lived in a small, pale green house on the plains of southeastern Montana, about 60 miles south of the Yellowstone River. Just down the road from my house were the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservations....

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Tony and Pat Owen – From the Archives: Summer 2021

Tony and Pat Owen – From the Archives: Summer 2021

When we first moved to Ireland (15 years ago), Pat and I did a great deal of exploration. This mostly had to do with history, ancient history. We bought topographical maps and sought out everything from old burial grounds to prehistoric sites. We were intrigued by...

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Carl Little – Poetry

Carl Little – Poetry

We can think of marks and tracks as remnants, visual echoes from distant times, or we can think of them as our own ways of responding to our current situation in various shapes and forms. But there are other, daily, incidental marks—the indentation left by our...

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Gary Lawless – Poetry

Gary Lawless – Poetry

Gary Lawless has traveled widely and often traces his journey through marks and tracks, through a history of icons and stones. How does culture move through space and time, from ancient Turkey and Greece, and on to us, if not by leaving texts in various scripts, and...

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Stuart Kestenbaum – Marks

Stuart Kestenbaum – Marks

“Make a simple gesture and follow it.” That’s what dancer and potter Paulus Berensohn told me years ago when I took a one-day workshop with him. I was an aspiring potter, drawn to clay as both material and metaphor. I loved Paulus’s bowls made of pinched clay. They...

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Marcie Jan Bronstein – Marks and Tracks of Love and Loss

Marcie Jan Bronstein – Marks and Tracks of Love and Loss

These paintings are part of a larger series I’ve been working on to try to come to terms with loss after loss of so many people who were important and dear to me. I had a lot of false starts, searching for a way to make images that might evoke the complexity of...

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Gianne Conard – Mid Coast Salon: Art Matters

Gianne Conard – Mid Coast Salon: Art Matters

From the paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux to Kenny Cole’s 2019 series on the death of Jamal Khashoggi, artists have portrayed the world around them. While the medium, the focus, and the formal approach may differ, the need for personal expression remains—and it...

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ARRT! Summer 2021 Update

ARRT! Summer 2021 Update

As a project of the UMVA, ARRT! creates images for progressive non-profits throughout the state. ARRT! provides a visual voice for groups that need assistance getting their messages out. Much of ARRT!’s work consists of large original hand-painted banners, but new...

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LumenARRT! – Summer 2021 Update

LumenARRT! – Summer 2021 Update

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...

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Maine Masters – Natasha Mayers: An Un-Still Life

Maine Masters – Natasha Mayers: An Un-Still Life

The Maine Masters documentary short film, Natasha Mayers: An Un-Still Life, released in 2021, reached new audiences across the globe this month. After winning the Vermont PBS Award for Best Documentary at the 2021 Made Here Film Festival, filmmakers Anita Clearfield...

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UMVA Portland Chapter Update: Summer 2021

UMVA Portland Chapter Update: Summer 2021

UMVA Portland continues to post its monthly gallery exhibitions online. The June show is an Open Member one including work from 22 UMVA members. It is already online, curated by Amy Bellezza. You can see this June show and all the earlier 2021 exhibitions by visiting...

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Invitation and Theme – Fall 2021: Freedom & Captivity

Invitation and Theme – Fall 2021: Freedom & Captivity

The Maine Arts Journal is partnering with Freedom & Captivity, a statewide, collaborative, public humanities initiative that enlists the power of art to envision an alternative abolitionist future in Maine. We invite all artists and makers to contribute to this...

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