UMVA Members John Ripton, Judy O’Donnell, Suzanna Lasker, Marguerite Lawler-Rohner and Ann Tracy on Regionalism

above: John Ripton, “Executive Meeting”, Photograph – Inkjet on Archival Paper, 12”X16”

John Ripton

A wall is a wall until it is art, or until it is torn down, as happened with this colorful street mural (above) on a wall in Portland. I gave the photograph an ironic title to express the tension that often exists between street art and commercial interests. This is a universal phenomenon and truth in our cosmopolitan world.

Rauschenberg painted brooms and goats. Duchamp exhibited a standard manufactured urinal and a bottle rack as art. Ai Weiwei suspended 886 stools at the Venice Art Biennale 2013. In this photograph an anonymous Biddeford tattoo artist uses an electric needle to paint an anonymous man’s flesh.

One of the first conscious acts in human evolution is applying our hands and minds to shape physical materials. To our existential peril we forget that artifice engages humans with their environment for survival. Here in a room in a former textile mill above the Saco River a violin-maker hears notes that will travel around the world and may one day awaken humankind to the music of forests and minerals.

This group of Portland teenage musicians on Congress Street are influenced by various strands of American and world music including American punk rock and scream-style music as well as traditional Irish ballads. The young female vocalist appropriates the winged boots of the Greek god Hermes and the drummer experiments with a towel on his snare drums as the young Ringo Starr once did.

 

Judy O’Donnell

 

Suzanna Lasker

What Maine Means to Me as an Artist

My husband and I moved here from

California to Maine twenty years ago

to be near family and to experience seasons

again.

Especially winter. We love winters in Maine,

all of winter with its storms, heaps of snow, slow

melts and, yes, the ice.

 

My husband writes dramas and I draw memory

pictures during gray winter days

Something in the soul needs something to

endure – it is winter for us.

 

Marguerite Lawler-Rohner

My focus as an artist is the Maine landscape, studying the interior woods or small islands in the midday light. On location I observe and paint the high contrast of light, the shadows and the forms it creates in nature. My work is representational but not literal. I paint with the intent is to compose form and spatial depth, combined with personal imprint.

 

Ann Tracy