Right Now! Processing the Moment

I think the outrageous dishonesty—lies being screamed out to us constantly and then used as a pretext for abhorrent policies and behavior—is at the root of everything.

There are many more lying mouths in this administration I could depict, but it started to get painful!

—Sally Stanton

We are introducing a new feature in the Maine Arts Journal: Right Now!: Processing the Moment. At a time when many of us feel despair over the erosion of our rights and the integrity of our democratic process, we believe there is power in witnessing how our community reacts.

This section presents your creative responses to these difficult times: what is happening in your studio, what you are posting or sketching, and what you are doing and seeing on your streets as you process current events. It is increasingly difficult to focus on other issues when the threats to our daily lives feel both immediate and globally exponential.

“Right Now!” is intended as a primarily visual feature, interspersed with brief reflections from contributors. We invite you to be part of the Summer 2026 issue; please follow our submission guidelines here.

 

Anger is the emotion that has been driving my art-making since 6 January 2020. Flag Figures are made from unserviceable flags; they speak to this moment.

—Peter Buotte

And symbols, always symbols, because symbols organize people’s emotions and reactions. Symbols can organize and unify, but they often are the gut punch of rationality and heart.

Flags are such symbols. I’m still the Cub Scout at heart, still believing in American ideals while knowing in my core our vast hypocrisy.

I see this in the way good ol’ Old Glory gets used these days. O say, can I see . . . Two flags out stiff and straight in the furious slipstream of a dinged-up but proud pickup that tells me the driver is ready to fight for his America. Droopy Post Office flags awaiting a breeze. Flags proclaiming Right, flags proclaiming Left, but the flags that catch my eye are the desecrated ones, hung out to proclaim, then forgotten and neglected, abandoned to wind, sun, rain, night, gravity, the furious slipstream of the seasons. Frayed and grayed, threadbare and tangled around themselves, transparent and transformed grids of red and white, stars wrapped invisibly tight. Indivisible, says the Pledge, but each day along the highway, I see the bliss of forgetting, the devastation of ideals, our new Old Glory.

—Alan Crichton

In September 2025, I showed paintings critiquing the 47th president in Zero Station’s American Grotesque exhibition.

—Michel Torlen

In November 2025, Zero Station hosted a ROTTEN THROW HAPPENING where participants threw tomatoes at the paintings. In January 2026, we burned the paintings in Buxton, Maine.

—Michael Torlen

As long as you are standing,

give a hand to those who have fallen.

(Quote from a street mural by Herakut in Berlin Germany)

—Mary Becker Weiss

Exquisite Corpse-like collaborations between Michael Torlen and Kenny Cole who exchanged some of Michael’s unfinished monoprints, both artists painting and collaging until both agreed that they were finished. They called the series Cowboys, Fisherman, and Thieves. Michael’s monoprints started as reflections on his immigrant parents, in particular his father’s life as a fisherman in California and Michael’s experiences growing up in the post-war American West. Together, Kenny and Michael added to that narrative late last fall, in response to the ongoing daily upheavals caused by the current administration, pulling into it a critical eye of MAGA America.

Michael and Kenny met for the first time as participating artists in Zero Station’s group show American Grotesque, an impassioned gathering of political art, as a swan song for the end run of Zero Station as a gallery space. Owners Keith Fitzgerald and Jeanne Paterak, appalled at the highly militarized programs of the current administration, decided that a two-part protest show of art should be the capstone to their long cherished twenty-year presence in Portland, Maine. American Grotesque began in the fall of 2025 with part one: Kassandra and will continue through the spring of 2026 with part two: Katharsis. Upon meeting during the opening of part one, Kenny and Michael decided to collaborate in Exquisite Corpse fashion.

A piece inspired by a Purimspiel (Purim play) I was in on Zoom during COVID. The piece took on a life of its own due to current circumstances.

—Gail Wartell

This piece involved the destruction of two teapots and a cup and saucer, as well as a wing of the White House, and our democracy.

—Gail Wartell

In times like these, how can one not have something to say about the leadership (or lack of it), in our nation?

—Matt Blackwell

We’re all shell shocked. Every day a new assault.

The times we’re in light up all our Trauma whether it be Personal, Collective, or Ancestral.

We are called heal patterns so we don’t keep repeating it all over and over again.

—Eva Goetz

In a world gone wild, an escape to the world of sports gives reprieve.

—Laura Waller

Processing Craziness is better with a friend.

—Charlotte Agell

I very often send cards to people. This was one. I am so THANKFUL to live in Maine.

—Charlotte Agell