Invitation and Theme – Spring 2025:  In Times Like These

We find ourselves in a time of upheaval on all levels, from the global ruptures of climate change and wars to the erosion of democracy, national division, despair, anger, and fear, to very personal assaults on our rights, identities, and our own bodies.

The Maine Arts Journal provides a space for Maine artists to share, not only the culmination of projects over time, but also the messy, often gut-wrenching process of getting there. Many of us are in shock or hibernation mode, gathering our supports and energies, healing.

Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808 in Madrid, oil on canvas, 106 x 137 in. (268 x 347 cm), Museo del Prado, Madrid (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

We ask you, what does this look like? What does it feel like? How does your work reflect what you are experiencing? Do you feel like you’re bearing witness to the events of the day?

How do you envision and experience your role as artist in the face of such uncertainty?

Are you poised on the brink of a new direction?

Are you mapping a way forward?

Whether you are looking in the mirror and exposing your own turmoil or holding a mirror up, revealing the perils, ugliness, chaos, and joy of the world for others to see, the MAJ is interested.

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–19, oil on canvas, 16 ft. 1 in. x 23 ft. 6 in. (490 x 716 cm), Musée du Louvre, Paris (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

Ernst Ludwig Kircher, Self-Portrait as a Soldier, 1915, oil on canvas, 27 x 24 in. (69 x 61 cm), Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

Deadline: 1 March 2025.

Guidelines for UMVA Members’ Showcase:

We invite MAJ member artists to participate in the Showcase (become a UMVA member).

• For the In Times Like These 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 “In These Times” in the subject line and submit by email to umvalistings@gmail.com by the 1 March 2025 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 then publish image credits. We will not publish images the submitter does not have the right to publish. However, it is to be assumed that any uncredited or unlabeled images are the author’s/submitter’s own images. By submitting to the MAJ, you are acknowledging respect for these policies.