They meld individual family stories with those of popular culture myths and cliches of happy homes. A pile up of toy police cars re-enacts a movie chase gone wrong, a whole collection of Hummel Figures sweetens the turmoil. The bodies of the three mannequins in this arrangement are covered with bandaids, symbolizing the fragility of the individual in such surroundings. The side representing the exterior thematizes nature and nurture, and sickness and health, mediated through video screens, mirrors, and artificiality.
We Are All Mainers
implicitly challenge our everyday logic. The images remind strongly of the Theatre of the Absurd of the late 1940s to '60s which grew out of the realization that the certainties and unassailable beliefs of earlier times had been eroded. Vague moments of suspense reveal the foolishness of mankind when placed in the vastness of nature or when following its basest instincts. It is not surprising then that Nadeau lists among his literary influences Carolyn Chute's The Beans of Egypt, Maine, Stieg Larsson's thrillers, as well as Stephen King. His artistic style could be called faux-naive, revealing the deep influence cartoons have had on him (especially Bugs Bunny). However, his skillfull compositions and handling of paint give him away as a very accomplished painter who is drawn to the work of Anselm Kiefer, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and his teacher Jerome Witkin.
Nadeau walks a difficult line between reinforcing stereotypes about Mainers, possibly even angering viewers, and creating enough distance for us to be able to experience the humor in his scenarios. He succeeds by maintaining an authorial distance, always presenting his characters and dramas from afar, thereby dwarfing the figures and avoiding an obvious point of entry for identification. This emotional distance, however, allows the viewer to relate to Nadeau's images in a more open, humorous manner. Although the incidents may originate in remoteness, poverty, lawlessness, and insufficient education, they are rooted in simply being human; thus Nadeau's stories transcend the particular and become universal. We all can recognize a part of ourselves and situations which we sometimes find ourselves in.
The artists are based on Peaks Island and have made that geographic locale the focus of several of their Geographic Observatory projects from 2007 to 2009. As an island it provides the site for the artists' shared interest in boundaries and edges and ways to deal with them. Their engagement with land is always site-specific, based on observations from various angles and changing priorities, and results in multiple layers of representation and understanding. For the Canine Tracking 
Project, their dog was outfitted with a GPS marker and her perambulations across the island tracked. The resulting linear pattern is reproduced as a cyanotype and represents the island's surface with a totally different set of parameters along non-human points of interest. More traditional Plein-air Paintings record the artists' direct response to the landscape in a conventional way. A second set of paintings aims for a more 
contemporary feel and is executed from memory of a place or event. These small paintings are more abstract and can be hung in configurations that make sense to the viewer.
kind of scrutiny is the basis of a series of Botanical Sketches of wildflowers, each outfitted with a label of identifying information. Invertebrates shifts the focus to the animal world and consists of scanned images of insects found in the artists' house. Finally, exploring the physical edge of the island where it meets with the surrounding water, a complete circumnavigation yielded two sets of photographs collected in a duo of books. Detritus: 
Views documents a continuous view of the island, and Detritus: Objects what human trash and traces were found at predetermined intervals. Together, the two series establish a firm interaction between time and space.
Susan Camp grows gourds in constraining molds whereby she completely alters their natural shapes. Some of them become beautiful vessels, hardly recognizable as lowly gourds anymore. Others were grown within molds made of doll parts. Are we looking at a doll's head that has turned vegetable or a gourd that has taken on human form? The push and pull between form and pattern is somewhat unsettling. These doll-shaped gourds open up many avenues of interpretation, from not so subtle sublimation of baby urges to god-like aspirations of new creation. They also remind of mandrake roots' humanoid shape and its magical qualities, however, these days the topic of genetic engineering is more likely to come to our minds.
graphical and cathartic dimensions.
Here is proof that something really good can come of unfortunate decisions made by others. Barbara Michelena was a board member at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) from 2000 until the end of 2009. During that time she also developed the highly regarded annual Work of the Hand Crafts Show and Sale as well as CMCA's gallery shop, both of which she is no longer involved in. Now Barbara will do her own thing: on May 28 her gallery of high quality craft will open in the carriage house of the Caldbeck Gallery on Elm Street in Rockland. Simply called “CRAFT” the enterpise has a more sophisticated, descriptive tag line: “A curated collection of fine contemporary craft.” When i expressed my concern about the use of the word “to curate” Michelena explained, “it means that I personally selected the works in the gallery during studio visits with the artists, keeping in mind how their work would complement each others'.” Some of the artists she has selected so far include Susan Atwater, Morris David Dorenfeld, Jan Muddle, George Pearlman, Daphne Taylor, and Simon van der Ven. Many of them are familiars from the Work of the Hand shows and all have a connection to Maine. In opening this commercial gallery for high end craft Michelena wants to do her part in treasuring hand-made beautiful objects in a world dominated by mass production. Cynthia Hyde, co-owner of the Caldbeck Gallery, says she is thrilled to have Barbara as their new neighbor, allowing her and partner Jim Kinnealey to focus their time and energy on the main gallery spaces.
us an unsettling feeling of a rift in the world. The location of the installation at an old mill building perfectly parallels this shift in reality. What we see is of this world yet it isn't. The gray atmosphere created by the robots and spaceships, their boxes and even the store's mundane implements like the tape dispenser, remind me of a black-and-white horror movie. Only here the set itself has lost all its color, its participation in our life. Some artists' creations of parallel worlds can seem escapist; not Regier's. His creations manage to hark back in time while at the same time alluding to a cold future in much more shocking ways than the sci-fi influences from his childhood that serve as his inspiration. Even our language has ceased to function in this world, instead we need to use a decoder to decipher the teletype writing on boxes and labels.