UMVA-LA has had a wonderful summer season starting with our annual exhibit “Pride: What brings pride to your life?” at Kimball Street Studio. This exhibit included works from artists who take pride in what they do.
We also enjoyed sharing works with our community, through heading up and assisting Build Maine in having Internationally-recognized artist, Arlin Graff, create an amazingly beautiful huge mural of a zebra on the side of the Centerville Parking lot. The meaning behind the Zebra is “Community”. Zebras are rarely alone and live and work in community. It represents the coming together of the growing immigrant community with a community of mostly white natives. It is the beginning of our hopes to have more large-scale displays of public art.
Arlin Graff, Zebra Mural
Our recent UMVA-LA meetings have had inspiring artist talks, Kate Katomski spoke about her current projects around historic mining, and Sheri Withers Hollenbeck about her community arts projects. Grayling Cunningham hosted the last talk with an interactive discussion about balancing art, work, home, family, and life. It was wonderful sharing with one another and all who attended benefited from the open discussion. We will be changing our meeting format to include important topics and conversation on a bi-monthly basis. Our next meeting will be held at The Studio located at 291 Lisbon street where guest speaker Alex Hood will share her journey as an artist and programming and opportunities at Bates College’s Olin Arts Center.
The Sunday Indie Market, sponsored by the Downtown Lewiston Arts District and UMVA-LA., has been gathering artists, artisans, culinarians, musicians, and vintage dealers for the only market of its kind in the Lewiston-Auburn area. On the 3rd Sunday of every month, we are outdoors in Lewiston’s Dufresne Plaza, on downtown Lisbon Street across from the courthouse. November through April, we are indoors at The Curio Art & Alehouse, 110 Lisbon Street. https://www.facebook
Upcoming Events: 3rd Annual Harvest Masquerade Ball is scheduled for Saturday October 20th 8pm-12am at the Agora Grand Event Center, formerly St. Patrick’s Church. This is our biggest fundraiser of the year that continues to grow and become something special. We have DJ Alex Merrill again playing amazing tunes and we are hoping to add some live music, Halloween inspired art, tours of the crypt, a photo booth, costume contests (costume contest details are below) and a silent horror film on the giant projection screen.
FB Event Page https://www.facebook.com/events/2221760614734719/
