The Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly presents Interview/Inner View Winter 2022.
This issue delves in to the process, whims, and intimacies shared through conversations and questions posed by friends, other artists, and writers. Join us in welcoming the new year with art, poetry, and updates on the Maine arts community.
From the Editors: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Véronique Plesch, Betsy Sholl (poetry editor), with the help of Colby interns Mads McDonough and Caroline Scarola.
The MAJ is supported by the UMVA and by the generous contributions from the Rabkin Foundation and other donors. You can support us by becoming a UMVA member here.
Introduction Winter 2022 – Véronique Plesch – Interview/Inner View
For this issue we encouraged our contributors to “interview a Maine visual artist and ask the questions you’ve been dying to ask” or even to conduct what we called an “inner view,” a self-interview in which one could answer “the questions you’ve always wanted and/or...
Stuart Kestenbaum – Asking the Questions
In The Commitments, the 1991 movie based on Roddy Doyle’s novel, Jimmy Rabbitte (played by Robert Arkins) interviews himself while taking a bubble bath. Jimmy has envisioned, assembled, and managed a soul band in Dublin, Ireland. It’s a ragtag crew of unlikely...
Sondra Bogdonoff and George Mason – A Conversation
SB: I know we would both say COVID impacted our art. We’ve been talking twice a month for more than a year now. George, do you remember how our conversations started and why? GM: These last two years have changed most every aspect of how I interact with people, and...
Harold Garde in Conversation with Janice L. Moore
Based on a FaceTime chat in November 2021, with reference to earlier studio visits between artists Harold Garde and Janice L. Moore. JM: Good morning Harold, and just as a reminder, we’re doing this for the Maine Arts Journal, where UMVA board members (I’m...
Sally Stanton in Conversation with Nora Tryon
Soaring views of hills and sky dominate every room of Sally Stanton’s home and studio. The house reflects the love of color, pattern, and texture that is evident in her work which fills many walls, along with children’s drawings and items of interest. NT: Your use of...
Artfellows – Gianne Conard and Alan Crichton
How many reading this article came to Mid-coast Maine in the 1970s as part of the "Back to the Land" migration? How many are the children of those travelers? Or young artists today looking for inspiration and guidance from the past? In the 1970s, Richard Norton and...
Martha Miller – Portraits: Women of Color
I dreamt that I was nursing a tiny, dark newborn baby. The baby latched right on. (Excerpt from my Dream Journal, February 2021) George Floyd’s murder and the rise of the BLM movement ignited in me a deep desire to contribute somehow to this crucial cause. What could...
Joan Braun Interviewed by Claire Millikin – Moths, Absences, and Returns
Interviewing Joan Braun for this article became a conversation, a two-way reflection because Joan listens even when she is talking. So, the notes I’ve written up gather Joan’s words interspersed with my reflections, a doubly reflective verbal form somewhat like the...
Betsy Sholl – Poetry
I wrote this poem probably a decade ago, if not actually on the date mentioned in the epigraph. When Natasha asked me to include a poem of my own, this came to mind because clearly, it’s an argument between two parts of myself, one projected outward onto the crows....
Julia Bouwsma and Asata Radcliffe – Poetry and Art
Julia Bouwsma is an off-the-grid homesteader, poet, librarian, and editor and was recently appointed the sixth Poet Laureate of Maine. Bouwsma is the author of two poetry collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review,...
Ian Trask – Interviewed by Greg Mason Burns
GB: What is your intention with your art? Is it just aesthetic? Are you trying to make a statement? Does this change, depending on the project? A little bit of everything? IT: My art practice emerged as a response to certain feelings I was having about the declining...
Jeane Cohen – Interviewed by Emilie Stark-Menneg
Jeane Cohen is an artist based in Brunswick, Maine. As a painter, teacher, and community organizer, Jeane creates pictorial and psychological dreamscapes, where patterns crackle, data disintegrates, and spirits unfold. After this conversation, I can see that her...
Kristin Malin Interviewed by Veronica Cross – Painter of Moons
Kristin Malin makes landscape paintings that chart experience beyond the physical peripheries of seeing. She has lived in Utah, Louisiana, New York City, and Maine—all states with unique relationships to the natural elements that surround them. In response, Kristin...
Cynthia Winings – Interviewed by Kenny Cole
Cynthia Winings is an artist who also owns a gallery called Cynthia Winings Gallery in Blue Hill, Maine. Her work explores timeless and sometimes melancholy figures or places that seem to offer solace and respite. The female figure is a strong component of her...
Cynthia Hyde, Gallerist – Inner View
As a gallerist, do you feel that there is a dialogue between you and the artist? Yes. There is also a dialogue with everyone who walks through the door, looks at social media, or reads a press release, and so forth. Once the artwork is installed, the gallery can act...
Josh Ferry – Inner View
Does your work aim at hiding or revealing? Discovering. What are your main sources of inspiration? Do you steal images? From whom? From where? I’ve been thinking about making stripe paintings for a long time, and I am drawn to many artists who have painted them (too...
Rosalie Paul – Inner View: All At Once
Herbie beloved child mostly invisible no longer 15 Looks to me just as he did Blonde, healthy, handsome, mischievous and Had he lived soon would have a 60th birthday Magically, mysteriously stepped into this room where I’m dreaming Wanting to ask how I’ve managed...
Sarah Shepley, Artist and Healer – Interviewed by Nikki Millonzi
Sarah Shepley lives in South Paris, Maine, and has been a significant force in the arts community here for many years. In March of 2020, she and her husband Mark Brandhorst, and their dog Cora, went on a hike near their home. On the way back, they decided to walk...
Pat Owen Interviewed by Tony Owen – They Changed Their Sky
The whole of the above should read, “They Changed Their Sky, But Not Their Souls, Those Who Travel Across The Sea.” It’s a quote from the Roman Poet Horace, who looked at the idea of what we leave behind and what we might gain by changing the sky above us. We once...
Judy LaBrasca and Stephen St. John
Stephen St. John and Judy LaBrasca have been working together since 2014. Here they interview each other and make some introductory remarks about their collaboration. SSJ: Judy is an excellent person and teacher. She is knowledgeable, and it’s seldom that she doesn’t...
Gillyin Gatto, Printmaker and Homesteader – Interviewed by Carl Little
Raised in suburban Boston (Needham), Gillyin Gatto attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, after which she taught in public schools for a while. Interested in the back-to-the-land movement, she decided “to live an artist/farmer/gatherer lifestyle.” As she...
Elizabeth Starr – Interviewed by Katherine Porter
KP: What are you about? ES: What am I about? I’m about my conscious contact with wild Maine. I connect with the powerful energy of the natural forces around me—water, wind, stone, light. I have a constant awareness of the changing weather; the dramatic extremes are...
David Dupree – Interviewed by David Estey
David Dupree’s bold, colorful, stylized landscapes are hard to categorize. The patterns and textures are too dominant to be pointillism or even impressionism; the colorful palette, too literal for expressionism or fauvism and too sensible for outsider art; and the...
Andre Benoit – Inner View
What is the essence of your art form? My focus over the past six years has been creating three-dimensional abstract representations. Certain shapes of wood given to me, salvaged, or found stimulate a conceptual image and serve as a foundation for the gathering of...
Susan deGrandpre – Interviewed by Titi de Baccarat
TdeB: Good evening. Can you introduce yourself to those who don't know you? SdeG: I discover with every cut. I’m a direct carver. I shape towards a sculpture that is not so clear at the beginning. I love the feeling of freely moving and pounding towards an emerging...
Jon Moro – Interviewed by Teresa Piccari
TP: How has your craftsmanship evolved over the twenty years you have been sculpting? JM: One of my goals is to constantly improve the craftsmanship of the pieces, working with the wood in such a way that not only is the finished product smooth and visually appealing...
Véronique Plesch – Of Dead Artists and Time Travel
I often joke that I prefer the artists I study to be dead, because when you discover that you don’t quite like the person, your appreciation for their work can be seriously lessened: it is hard to separate the person from the work. Take Caravaggio, an artist whose...
Insight/Incite – Argy Nestor
Glassblowing is magic—ask anyone who has done it! Waterfall Arts in Belfast realized that they had a unique opportunity offered to them during the pandemic. But they faced many challenges just trying to get the idea off the ground. With a positive attitude...
Elm City Small Press Fest – Julia Arredondo and Fannie Ouyang
The Elm City Small Press Fest was a community event that focused on independent publishing in Maine. The event took place on 19 and 20 November 2021 in the new Greene Block + Studios in downtown Waterville. The event highlighted contemporary print and publishing...
ARRT! Update – Winter 2022
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! Update – Winter 2022
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...
UMVA Portland Chapter – Winter 2022 Update
The Kneeling Art Photography exhibition in August was a success and a show that demonstrated how ordinary Maine people from various communities took-a-knee in supporting the struggle to end systemic racism and to promote social justice. A panel presentation took place...
Maine Masters Update — Winter 2022
In October, Vermont progressives came together for a dose of creativity and inspiration at a special screening of Natasha Mayers: an Un-Still Life, hosted by the Rutland County Democrats and Castleton Indivisble. On display were activism pieces by local artists and...
Invitation and Theme – Spring – As Things Fall Apart: Dystopia or Utopia?
In a time when democracy (in the US and worldwide) is under tremendous threat and when our present becomes always more dystopian, how do you see your role as an artist as things fall apart? Does your art serve as a cathartic outlet to express the anxiety produced by...