MAJ Theme and Call for Submissions – Winter 2027: Looking at the Past

We are continuously shaped by the past and encounter it throughout our personal, emotional, and creative lives. Whether through personal recollection, familial heritage, or the broader currents of history with a capital H, the past is never fully behind us—we are in perpetual search of it, constantly seeking ways to bring what was lost back into our present.

As we engage with what came before, we experience a complex spectrum of emotions: nostalgia, wistfulness, yearning, or regret. As Marcel Proust so famously captured, unexpected mnemonic triggers—a scent, a sound, or a madeleine dipped in tea—can bring forgotten worlds rushing back in an instant, evoking the acute realization that time itself cannot be undone or physically regained. Yet art offers a singular space where lost time can be retrieved, processed, and transformed. Looking back is not about wallowing in complaints or trauma; rather, it is an active and vital effort of reflection and creative discovery.

For this issue of the Maine Arts Journal, we invite our contributors to share how they look at the past, process it, and reflect it within their practice. We invite you to consider the following prompts:

• Inspiration & Lineage: How do you turn to earlier art, artists, or techniques to develop your own voice? How do you locate yourself within an artistic lineage, channeling those who came before or reviving past styles, subjects, and traditions to make them new and your own?
• Personal & Shared History: What role does history—whether personal, familial, ancestral, or cultural—play in your work? How do you use physical objects, heirlooms, or archives from the past to bridge then and now?

• Mnemonic Triggers & Emotion: How do sensory memories or unexpected triggers inform your creative process? How do you visually or textually capture recollections and feelings of longing and nostalgia? How do you, in turn, use your creative work to crystalize and secure memories?

• Creative Trajectory: How do you view your own past body of work? How does looking back at your work help you better understand your present path and project your practice into the future?

Deadline: 1 December 2026.

Guidelines for the UMVA Members’ Showcase:

We invite members of the Union of Maine Visual Artists to participate in the Showcase (to become a member, click here).

• For the Looking at the Past issue, submit up to four JPEG or png images (NO TIFF files), approximately 2500 pixels on longest side, resolution 72dpi.
• Label each image file as follows: your last name_Number of Image_Title (with no spaces in the title). Please DO NOT put whole caption/credit in image file label, see image list/caption format below (if you are submitting for a group put your own last name in first).
• Include a numbered image list at the end of your statement or brief essay (600 words or less) in Word doc. format, NOT a PDF.
• Image list/caption format: create a list that is numbered to match the number in your image file label that includes the following in this order: Artist’s Name, Title of Work, medium, size (example: 9 x 12 in.), date (optional), photo credit (example: photo: Ansel Adams) if not included we assume it is courtesy of the artist. Example: Unknown Artist, Untitled, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 in., 2000 (photo: Ansel Adams).
• Label your document file names: Last Name_Title.
• Please wait until all of your material is compiled to submit.

Put “Looking at the Past ” in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the 1 December 2026 deadline. MAJ will limit the Members’ Showcase section to UMVA members who have not been published in the past year.

Do not send preformatted visual essays. Our editors will lay out text and images submitted using the guidelines above.

It is the MAJ’s policy to request and publish image credits. We will not publish images for which the contributor does not have the right to publish. However, it is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are contributing artists’ own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.