Welcome to the Winter 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.
–From the Editors: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Kathy Weinberg, Véronique Plesch, Betsy Sholl (poetry editor), with the help of Colby interns Andrew MacDonald and Mads McDonough.
Please click on cover image to go to the Introduction of the current issue.
Irene Hardwicke Olivieri – A Thousand Wild Creatures
My vagabond heart has led me to live in a variety of habitats; each one finds its way into my artwork. I’m painting about love and relationships, obsessions, and parts of life which are often subterranean. An ongoing theme in my work is rewilding the heart, to inspire...
Katherine Porter
TIME. Upended, fast forwarded, knocked about, arrested, turned backwards, dormant, quick-silvered, never comprehended. From Assyrian reliefs depicting war at sea, medieval manuscripts, Renaissance painting—Paolo Uccello, Hieronymus Bosch, Jacopo...
Joe Haroutunian
He attracted some attention when he found the fourth dimension But he ain’t got rhythm So no one is with him The loneliest man in town —from "He Ain’t Got Rhythm" by Irving Berlin These lyrics often run through my head. They remind me that the core of my...
Amy Ray
The chaos of the pandemic sent me immediately into my studio. I felt an intense pull to make marks, to create order, to identify my place in space and time on paper. The early works in March, when things first went...
Kelly Morgen Christopher and Carl Berrien Smith: Collaborative artists
In our collaborative works, Kelly Christopher and I craft multilayered narratives. Each work starts with a blueprint created in an intuitive manner—each of us draws with oil sticks while keeping our eyes closed. The paintings evolve during our work sessions, which we...
Véronique Plesch – A Conversation with James Fangbone
In this conversation with James Fangbone, we talk about his “Shrine”—a building filled to the gills with objects lovingly collected and assembled—a true maximalist monument. Fang evokes the pleasure he takes in rescuing discarded objects, of gathering and assembling...
Kathy Weinberg – The Overview Effect
We have methods of managing complexity, of sorting and organizing objects and information into categories, in order to prevent ourselves from experiencing the totality of things that taken all together can become overwhelming. An Illuminated book of hours like the...
Carl Little – Joanna Logue: An Australian in Acadia
Joanna Logue’s landscapes take up every inch of the surface, from edge to edge, corner to corner—and depth-wise, too, as she layers the pigment on linen or birch board. From a foot or so away, Water Meadow 1 is a dynamic accumulation of marks, scrapes, and scars, some...
Edgar Allen Beem – The Saga of Sarah Sze’s “Shattered Sphere”
Given the four years that have passed since New York art star Sarah Sze was selected to create a work of public art for Portland’s Congress Square Park, it’s easy to forget that this major art commission has not yet materialized. This column, then, is both a reminder...
Veronica Cross – Letter from New Orleans: The Importance of Taking up Space
Some of you may understand the city of New Orleans to be a perpetual center of exuberance, fecundity, and celebration. While there is some truth to this, my objective here will be to provide a deliberate overview of our art and visual culture as they reflect our...
Sarah Bouchard – A Conversation with Browne Goodwin
I initially connected with Browne Goodwin to help him acquire two charcoal drawings by Dozier Bell. Before visiting Bell's studio together, Goodwin invited me to tour his art collection. It was an honor to walk through his home, receiving anecdotes and insight on the...
Jane Bianco – Living with Maximalism
Ruth Kohler, a true woman of vision who recognized that in Maximalism one might dive in to enlightenment tinged with the spirit of overlooked artists, died in November, 2020. For more than forty years she made it her mission to find, document and preserve the works of...
Gianne Conard – Salon!
Modernism. Classicism. Mannerism. Abstract Expressionism. Minimalism. Maximalism. Less is More. Less is a Bore. So many categorizations; so many architects, visual artists, writers, musicians cross the lines, read or draw between the lines, and yet these movements—and...
Véronique Plesch – When More is Better: Horror Vacui in History
The Grove Dictionary of Art’s entry for “Horror vacui” tersely states: “Term applied to a composition that is overcrowded.” In the printout my research assistant made for me—she was not expecting this pithy result—most of the page is, very ironically, empty. The Latin...
Susan C. Larsen – Leo Rabkin’s WHIMS: An Embrace of the U.S. Postal Service
Isolated and rail-thin, ninety-three-year-old Leo Rabkin found his last artistic project in a box of old postcards and piles of decorative trinkets deployed over decades as signal elements in his work. Leo’s Chelsea studio, the scene of frequent dinners, community...
Lee Sharkey – Poetry
These six poems by the late Lee Sharkey are part of a series in response to the paintings of Samuel Bak, and will appear in her new book due out from Tupelo next spring. The paintings we are including here, with the generous permission of the Pucker Gallery, are not...
Stuart Kestenbaum – One Thing
I am sitting in the late autumn sun, sheltered from a relentless wind. Moving into this quiet space makes it feel as if time has stopped. Like the wind, time has been swirling around me: pandemic time, presidential time, social media time, even the headlines from the...
Robert Katz
Robert Katz is a sculptor whose studio is located in Hallowell. His sculptural installations have been exhibited in museums throughout the country. Most recently, his sculpture entitled, The Five Books of Moses has been permanently installed at MIT in Cambridge,...
Open Art Teachers Studio: Quarantine Edition
“It is nice to spend time creating and the ‘social contract’ of committing to this group ensures I have this small window of time where I can allow myself to be an artist.” —Participant During the sudden closure of schools during late March of 2020, many visual...
Members’ Showcase: Martha Miller, Elaine McMichael, Leslie Woods
Martha Miller Religion, astrology, and myths are all rich vehicles for storytelling and are an inspiration for my drawings. I believe that in human history, a function of these belief systems has been to make order out of chaos, and to find patterns and meaning in the...
Members’ Showcase: Alan Clark, Joanne Tarlin, Brian David Downs
Alan Clark The first three are from my “Mexico period.” A time, almost 18 years, when I was spending at least half a year (sometimes more) in that great and generous country. The drawing is earlier than that. ...
Members’ Showcase: Dave Wade, Stephanie Berry, Julia Baugh
Dave Wade They say the Devil’s in the details, and that art is an attempt to bring Order out of Chaos. Every Chaos hides an Order within. I generally try to distill an image down to its bare elements and thus make it clearer. But on occasion, I feel a...
Members’ Showcase: Gail Skudera, Mildred Bachrach, Lin White
Gail Skudera The presence of a loom in the home was once a symbol of domesticity and industry. These works are woven on an upright two-harness tapestry loom that occupies a good portion of my sunroom studio. Tapestry means to make a woven picture. In making a...
Members’ Showcase: Robin Brooks, Ann Tracy, Del Cain
Robin Brooks I am not a fan of labels, but I know one thing for certain—I am not a minimalist. I think and work in layers and thrive in complexity. The layers I create are both tactile and metaphoric. Each piece gets transformed over time with the addition of...
Members’ Showcase: Stephen St. John, John Ripton
Stephen St. John I start with a few shapes. The process of painting with rollers and brushes makes textures and patterns inside the shapes. Those accidental marks lead to other shapes and other...
ARRT! – Winter 2021 Update
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! – Winter 2021 Update
LumenARRT! was founded five years ago as a project of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA) to artistically amplify the work of progressive non-profits in the state of Maine. Our large-scale video projections create a visual experience and like electronic...
Maine Masters – The Raw Essence of Carlo Pittore
A film-in-progress by Richard Kane and Robert Shetterly The Maine Masters upcoming film on Carlo Pittore, one of a passionate group of artists who founded the Union of Maine Visual Artists in 1975, opens a window on the perception of experience and the...
Pat and Tony Owen – From the UMVA Archives
We are living in complicated times, yet for the artist it is simplicity that moves us forward. Simplicity in the act of making. To create something that is distilled from the complications of the greater world. The very first Union of Maine Visual Artists exhibition...
UMVA Portland Chapter Report – Winter 2021
UMVA Portland has continued with its 2020 calendar of online gallery exhibitions. These shows—from the spring through November—can be accessed via links posted on the UMVA website. The December Holiday show is also accessible via the website. 28 member artists...
Union of Maine Visual Artists Board of Directors Letter of Support
The Union of Maine Visual Artists statewide board supports the employees at the Portland Museum of Art in their desire and efforts to unionize and collectively bargain with PMA's management The statewide board of the Union of Maine Visual Artists supports the...
Theme and Invitation for Spring 2021: The New Normal—A Dialogue
The Maine Arts Journal recognizes that we are living in historic times that should be documented by sharing our work and observations about being artists in this changed and changing world. We want to explore what has shaped your day-to-day lives during this time....