art current: Thoughtful Connections at Asymmetrick

This column considers the relationships established between individual works of art through a sensitive layout.

 

http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=23654&TM=50937.48
 

Portland Phoenix: In the Rearview Mirror

This column looks back at Maine's most memorable art shows of the year.
http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/149341-recalling-the-years-most-notable-shows/

image: Greta Bank's unsettlingly perfect and outrageous Cashmere Roadkill.

art current: Dialogue with Roger Dell

This is an e-mail exchange with Roger Dell, director of education at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?ArticleID=23444&SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72

Portland Phoenix: Luc Demers

In my opinion Luc Demers is one of the most interesting photographers working today, in Maine, and beyond.

http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/147923-luc-demers-on-the-edge-of-light-and-darkness/

art current: Extravaganza at Aarhus

Aarhus Gallery in Belfast, Maine, has a great selection of art and craft items affordably priced.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=23258&TM=54468.63

art current: Katherine Bradford Talk Part II

This is the second half of my attempt to capture what painter Katherine Bradford shared about her work in front of an enthusiastic audience at Bowdoin College.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=23015&TM=56090.39

Portland Phoenix: Reese Inman's Hybrid Translations

Reese Inman is a young artist who explores the intersection between analog and digital image capture and production in a variety of media.

http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/146449-exploring-a-state-between-analog-and-digital/

art current: Katherine Bradford Talk Part I

On October 15, 2012, painter Katherine Bradford gave an inspiring talk about her work at the art department of Bowdoin College. This is the first part of an account of it.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=22723&TM=60627.51

Portland Phoenix: Amy Stacey Curtis' SPACE

Every two years, Amy Stacey Curtis stages a multi-part installation in an unused mill in Maine. This year's over-arching theme is space.
http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/146028-occupy-perceive-manipulate-and-experience/?page=1#TOPCONTENT

art current: See Touch Hear at Asymmetrick Arts

 

 

Conceptual art of the participatory kind to be experienced at Rockland's Asymmetrick Arts.
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=22444
above: Bethany Engstrom's Into the Woods/The Bodies Brush Together

art current: Holly Meade at Jonathan Frost Gallery

Holly Meade is a wonderful observer of animal and human nature, capturing both in intricate woodcut and linoleum prints.

http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?ArticleID=22135&SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72

art current: David Graeme Baker at Dowling Walsh

One of Maine's best contemporary figurative painters is currently showing at the Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=21798&TM=39440.55

Portland Phoenix: Three shows at CMCA

Anne Neely, Tom Chapin. Samantha Appleton, and Ken Greenleaf are all currently showing at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport.

http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/143454-roster-of-excellent-shows-at-cmca/

above: Tom Chapin
below: Anne Neely

art current: Harold Garde at the Harbor Square Gallery

Maine- and Florida-based artist Harold Garde is having a small retrospective at his gallery in Rockland.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=21477&TM=39777

art current: Megan Chase at Perimeter Gallery

Megan's vibrant and colorful paintings seem comprised of snatches of time.

http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?ArticleID=21232&SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72

art current: K. Min at Caldbeck Gallery

This is a small, quiet, and intensely beautiful, yet also slightly unsettling show of mostly still lifes.
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=268&ArticleID=20918

art current: Charles Wilder Oakes at Asymmetrick Arts

This is about the visionary and narrative paintings by Charles Wilder Oakes, a mid-coast Maine native.
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=61&SubSectionID=172&ArticleID=20647&TM=56795.1

Portland Phoenix: William Wegman at Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Wegman's World is upon us: http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/141562-wegmans-world-of-lateral-and-literal-logic/

interjections

What invariably and indisputably makes things art are the meanings we give them, which can turn a little nothing into a significant something, and give a potential liability a touch of poetry. 

– Holland Cotter

Portland Phoenix: Isabelle Pelissier

A review of Isabelle Pelissier's sensitive installation at Coleman Burke Gallery in Brunswick, Maine.

http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/140916-lines-of-steel-and-graphite/

art current: Jesse Gillespie at Pascal Hall

Jesse Gillespie is a young artist working with found objects. His art successfully walks the line between abstraction and representation, forcing us to remain in a state of not-knowing.
 
http://freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=20349&TM=39978.46

art current: Robert Pollien at Dowling Walsh

Robert Pollien creates Maine landscapes of a different kind - searching for a beauty that may not be pretty.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?ArticleID=20046&SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72

Portland Phoenix: Martha Groome at ICON

Martha Groome creates quiet geometric abstractions, which impart their stillness and balance to the viewer.
http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/140154-extreme-reduction-yields-to-openness/?page=1#TOPCONTENT

art current: Checking in with Christopher Brownawell at the Farnsworth

The man at the helm of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. (...on the left)
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=19750&TM=39782.01

art current: Andrea Sulzer at Perimeter

Great show of drawings, prints, and installations by Andrea Sulzer at Chase's Daily's Perimeter Gallery in Belfast, Maine. http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=19480&TM=62653.89

Portland Phoenix: Pickwick at Rose

Rose Contemporary in Portland currently shows work from the flatfiles of Pickwick Independent Press, proving that traditional printmaking continues to matter.
http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/138721-printmaking-continues-to-matter/

above: Kyle Bryant
right: Dominca Coulson
below: Clint Fulkerson

art current: Henry Isaacs at Archipelago

Henry Isaacs: Lessons from an Island is currently on view at Archipelago Fine Arts Gallery in Rockland, Maine.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?ArticleID=19184&SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72

Just Seen and Dashed Off: Duncan Hewitt at ICON

There are only a few more days left to see Duncan Hewitt’s show of new sculptures at ICON Contemporary Art in Brunswick. Hewitt is an artist whose work continues to puzzle me, in a good way though. Carving out of wood ordinary objects whose new materiality appears awkward and undermines their original essence, the sculptures gain a metaphorical depth that is sometimes challenging to confront.

At ICON Hewitt is showing several thinly carved sculptures based on the shape of car windshields. They are displayed on old, rather mundane chairs. The obvious interpretation sees the chairs as driver’s seats and the windshields as screens through which we see much of our surroundings, shielded from direct contact. In fact several of the sculptures have the silhouettes of islands or lakes painted on them. As Duane Paluska pointed out to me, these specific locales carry autobiographical and deeply emotional weight for the artist. Paluska also sees the irregularly shaped, black forms that rest on chairs as well as pietas, and I have to agree with him on that point. They too are geographical outlines, but they also evoke the outlines traced around a found body, definitely have bodily implications.

The windshields include marks of their making, of their being gouged out of wood, as if all insects that ever came to a sudden violent death there had left their mark, or as if every sight of significance, every event in our lives, had made an impression. This memorial function is crystallized in three small sculptures in the shape of rearview mirrors, made of wood and steel, my favorite pieces in the show. The metal surface is marred by blots and discolorations, those instances of life that remain with us when looking back, leaving indelible traces. These are intensely evocative and emotional pieces in spite of their unassuming form.

Two additional sculptures whose formal origin remains unknown to me, manage to function as memento mori, somehow reminding of automotive components as well as funerary urns. The show includes what is for me Hewitt’s most thought-provoking work yet, conceived from deep within and touching us in tender spots.

art current: Sharon Yates and Janet C. Manyan

Some really good traditional painting at Frost Gully Gallery in Thomaston, Maine.
http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=18894&TM=42529.79

Portland Phoenix: Lesley Vance at Bowdoin

Lesley Vance may be on to something important with her luscious abstract paintings that are deeply informed by centuries of art before her.
http://portland.thephoenix.com/arts/137158-contemporary-artist-shows-one-way-forward/

art current: Corrugation Nation at Waterfall Arts

An open call to artists of all ages and abilities to create art out of carboard has resulted in a fun show at Belfast's Waterfall Arts.

http://www.freepressonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=50&SubSectionID=72&ArticleID=18611&TM=37733.63