Absence/Presence?
Winter 2023
Artists get this. We are all profoundly familiar with the paradox of figure/ground, these notions at once separate and indivisible. That is what is at stake in this issue, as we reflect upon this other pair, absence and presence.
From the Editors: Natasha Mayers, Nora Tryon, Véronique Plesch, Betsy Sholl (poetry editor), with the help of Colby interns Audrey Loo and Mads McDonough.
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.
Maine Arts Journal Winter 2023 cover (Suzanne Theodora White, Time Out, archival pigment print, 25 x 20 in., 2021).
Véronique Plesch – Introduction Winter 2023: Absence/Presence?
Artists get this. We are all profoundly familiar with the paradox of figure/ground, these notions at once separate and indivisible. That is what is at stake in this issue, as we reflect upon this other pair, absence and presence. Note in our title the slash between...
Suzanne Theodora White – The Weight of Memory
It was thirty-one years ago that I was sitting in a tree in Manu National Park, Peru. I was participating in a survey of birds in the lowland Amazonian forest canopy. A black hawk eagle landed on the same branch ten feet away from me. It merited only a glance before...
Shoshannah White – Setting a Pulse
Setting a Pulse pairs photographs of lightning with cameraless prints depicting magnetic force—making energy visible between the lines and distilling multiple events of a storm into a single frame. In recent years, earthen materials and weather systems have become a...
Claire Seidl
I am very interested in how we see (or don’t see) what is right in front of us, and I am also keenly interested in how the camera sees, especially over time or in the dark. My photographs show more than the unassisted eye can see. The camera can hold multiple layers...
Claire Millikin – Presence, Absence, and Francesca Woodman’s Angels
It occurs to me now, when my baby is twenty years old, that I must have had some kind of attenuated extended postpartum melancholy that whole time, the year or two after he was born. We were living in relative isolation outside of Rockland, and I’d drive us around...
Gideon Bok
I’ve been doing portraits lately using a system of scumbling opaque, high-intensity color over contrasting color to hopefully achieve neutral tertiary color worlds that are also vibrant. Before the person comes to sit for the portrait I paint the room, the chair, and...
Libby Sipe
My practice exists for the sole purpose of self-expression. It's a space of personal exploration where I process a traumatic past and, at times, debilitating anxiety. I strive for clarity in the world and the relationships that have touched my life, whether past or...
Kathleen Noyes
I have a spontaneous tendency to see recognizable images, shapes, and patterns within unrelated forms. My unconscious is aware of visual elements that appear in contrasting light and dark, color, and abstract shapes embedded in the surrounding environment; for...
Carl Little – Remembering Erasure
On a visit with family in Charlottesville, Virginia, in late October, the winter 2022–23 Maine Arts Journal writing prompt kept swirling around in my head. A question from that provocative nudge nagged me: “How do you engage with remembering and forgetting, erasing,...
Christopher Crosman – Jeffery Becton: Passages
The late, beloved American painter, Andrew Wyeth (1917–2006), once mused about his most famous work, Christina’s World (1948, collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York), that if he had been “any good” as an artist, he would have left Christina entirely out of...
Garry Mitchell
Where to begin? A shape, a notion of color? The great thing about making art is that when you reexperience something you have the chance to resolve it, to make changes based on what has gone before. Working the way I do, I build upon initial moves to influence the...
Véronique Plesch – Making Absence Visible
“L’unica presenza era l’assenza” (“The only presence was absence”). —Claudio Parmiggiani Re-Presenting Presence The dichotomy absence/presence is central to representation, which is, simply put, to re-present, that is, to present again, to allow something or...
Stuart Kestenbaum – Adrift
Some mornings the locker room feels like the anteroom to the afterlife. I’m shedding my clothes and music is playing loudly, as if to get me ready for the next step on my mortal journey—music from elementary school, high school, college, from when my children were...
Alan Crichton – What’s Here and Beyond?
When I compare what is right here, right now, to what was right there, right then, the biggest absence is the expectation of a dependable future. That’s a tough one, and I hate the thought that my granddaughter, so sweet with her bright eyes of innocent expectation...
Edgar Allen Beem – Barbara Sullivan: Retro Fresco
In his catalogue essay for her 2007 Everyday exhibition at Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, artist and Waterfall Arts founder Alan Crichton aptly described Barbara Sullivan as “Maine’s hip sister of fresco, elbowing and joking the medium out of the Middle Ages and into...
Jefferson Navicky – Poems
These three prose poems are taken from Jefferson Navicky’s upcoming book, Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands, a novel in prose poems, exploring art and artmaking, the legacy of forebears, both absent and very present. Navicky’s work is luminous,...
Claire Millikin – Burying the Moon
Claire Millikin explores loss and the aftermath of loss in “Burying the Moon,” a beautiful poem that feels a little like magical realism, giving us an utterly vivid experience we can both identify with and experience as a rich mystery. The moon here illuminates a...
Pat Ranzoni – Keeping Her We Keep Them
This poem by Pat Ranzoni uses the communal experience of quilting to help a young woman deal with the loss of her home and family while at the same time being stitched into a new family and country. The tradition of quilting often pieces together fragments of the past...
Iva Damon – Arts Gala Week
It was to be the twentieth year—the twentieth year of having visual artists, poets, dancers, jugglers, performers, and other community members working in collaboration across all content areas to celebrate the arts at Leavitt Area High School. Many hours were spent...
Connie Carter – Americans Who Tell the Truth Conference Report
Powerful! Well done and inspiring! It allowed me to access materials to use in class. Great information and ideas on how to do the Samantha Smith Challenge. These are just a few of the many positive comments shared by over one hundred Maine educators who attended the...
Martha Miller, Robin Brooks, and Pat Owen – Members’ Showcase
Martha Miller Absence Presence? I created these four large drawings of my parents using old black and white photographs from the ‘40s when they were a vibrant young couple, just dating, before they got married and raised six children together. I worked on the...
Kelly Desrosiers, Kris Lanzer, and Mildred Bachrach – Members’ Showcase
Kelly Desrosiers The Fleet In 1992, I started carving clay vessels and could not stop. This single form contained a powerful psychological potency for me. Eventually a “fleet” of thousands accumulated and I had to figure out where they belonged. Really, I was figuring...
Peter Bruun and Jean Noon – Members’ Showcase
Peter Bruun Peter Bruun is an artist, writer and curator living in Damariscotta, Maine. In this article, he introduces and shares excerpts from Bibliography, his 2022 online project tracing his emotional journey from pain to healing in the aftermath of his daughter’s...
Maggie Fehr, Joseph Miller, and Diane Dahlke – Members’ Showcase
Maggie Fehr What a wonderful theme—Absence/Presence! I believe that almost every work of art has both absence and presence, though it might not be immediately obvious. My pieces submitted for the winter theme purposefully leave out mark making at some point,...
ARRT! Update – Winter 2023
ARRT! 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. ARRT! has had an active fall....
LumenARRT! Update – Winter 2023
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 Report – Winter 2023
Quarterly Update UMVA Portland Chapter This fall the Portland Gallery hosted several shows. In September, PRESSTO, featuring work from the artists Kris Onus, Jo Ann Bianchi, and a collective exhibition from the Monotype Guild of New England. Two solo exhibitions of...
UMVA Midcoast Chapter Report – Winter 2023
The newly energized Midcoast UMVA (Union of Maine Visual Artists) Chapter* will blossom in 2023 with a show at the Camden Public Library, 55 Maine St., Camden, from 4 January 2023 to 29 January 2023. An artists’ reception is scheduled on 7 January 2023 from 1:30 p.m....
Pat and Tony Owen – What We Remember Is Not Always What We Get
My mother died on 1 June 2018. The heart attack she had didn't kill her, in fact she bounced back from it, save for one thing—she lost her appetite. Mom went off food completely. Nothing tasted good. She found the process of chewing annoying. The hospital tried to get...
Theme and Invitation to Submit Spring 2023: Truths and Lies
In this age of fake news, one might feel as if the very notion of truth has been challenged and seriously eroded, but this is not new. Well before our times, propaganda has made use of art as a means to convey ideas that, although not always accurate, are always...