⌘Untitled Document
Tom Weis will open his studio for a behind-the-scenes
tour on October 18
Behind-the-Scenes Artists’ Studio Tours with the
Farnsworth
On Saturday, October 18, the Farnsworth Art Museum in
Rockland will present a behind-the-scenes tour of the studios of three
artists: Gideon Bok, Tom Weis and George Pearlman. The tour, which is free
of charge, will take place from 12:45 to 3 p.m. and will depart from the
museum’s main entrance at 16 Museum Street.
This event, in conjunction with the Artists on Art
lecture series at the Farnsworth, will give participants a rare opportunity
to get a first-hand look at how the creative process unfolds in an
artist’s studio. Through dialogue with the artists themselves and
tour facilitator Kelly Jackson, attendees will learn about the materials,
methods and labor involved in the artistic pursuits of these three
individuals.
Bok was born and raised in midcoast Maine. A
Camden-Rockport High School graduate, he received his BA from Hampshire
College and his MFA from the Yale School of Art. Bok is a painter, organic
farmer, photographer, musician, printmaker and teacher.
Weis moved to Rockland in 1997 to pursue an interest in
wooden boatbuilding. He has since worked as an artist, builder and a custom
furniture maker. In the spring of 2008, he received a masters’ in
industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Pearlman has shown his work for 25 years nationally and
internationally, and has received numerous teaching appointments,
fellowships and grants for his unique ceramics. He lives in St. George,
where, in 1998, he established, designed and built St. George Pottery,
which is his home, studio and ceramics gallery.
The Artists on Art lecture series at the Farnsworth is
a four-part forum devoted to issues of concern to Maine artists. Launched
in late September and running through late October, the series features
four evening gatherings where three early/mid-career artists are invited to
enter into dialogue concerning ideas such as community, identity, support,
tradition, motivation, materials and meaning. Audience participation is an
integral component of these gatherings and each forum is presided over by
an art world moderator who has a particular background in each
evening’s topic.
As the tour only has 10 spaces left, reservations are
required. For more information or to make a reservation, call the Education
Department at 596-0949.
Barbara Ernst Prey Fall Print Show Oct. 11-12
“September 26” (part of the 9/11 series
painted in Maine September 26 after 9/11), watercolor, by
Barbara Ernst
Prey
Blue Water Fine Arts, on Main Street (Route 131) in Port Clyde, will present “Barbara Ernst Prey: The Fall Print Show” on Saturday and Sunday, October 11 and 12. The event showcases a selection of limited
edition prints of Maine scenes by the renowned artist as well as her signature originals.
Prey collaborated with the well-known printmaker
U.L.A.E. to offer a detailed selection of her painting series. Featured is “Columbia Tribute,” a new print of her NASA-commissioned painting that is currently part
of a Smithsonian Museum travelling
exhibit, “50 Years/NASA Art,” celebrating NASA’s 50th anniversary. Prints from Prey’s recent Paris retrospective are included as well. “Patriot,” perhaps her best-known print and recently selected for the permanent collections of many U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, is available.
Prey is considered one of the foremost landscape
painters active in the U.S. today. This year she was honored with a major
retrospective in Paris curated by Sarah Cash, Corcoran Gallery of Art
curator.
Her paintings are in the collections of museums
including the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the
Farnsworth Art Museum. Prey’s work is currently on display in the
White House and is included in its permanent collection.
Blue Water Fine Arts is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and
by appointment; call 372-8087.
Pre-Symposium Events at Waterfall Arts
Two events related to Waterfall Arts’ CONFLUX
Symposium are scheduled for October 9 and 10. On Thursday, October 9, at 7
p.m., Joe Ascrizzi and Diana Cherbuliez will talk about their work at the
Clifford Gallery, 256 High Street, Belfast. Ascrizzi and Cherbuliez are the
featured artists in the current CONFLUX-related “Resonance and
Response” exhibit at the gallery. Belfast artist Ted LaFage will
moderate the talk. Cocurators Dudley Zopp and Alan Crichton selected
Ascrizzi and Cherbuliez for the show because their work exemplifies the
concept of Deep Craft; the subject of this year’s symposium. Deep
Craft is an initiative of CONFLUX keynote speakers Scott and Ene Constable
of Wowhaus, who say, “When people engage in using their hands and
being present in a way familiar to craft-makers, they have creative
breakthroughs and make interesting leaps and connections. Deep Craft is a
paradigm for creative problem-solving as much as a strategy for actually
making things.” The talk is free and open to the public.
For directions, more information about the events and
the CONFLUX Symposium, call 338-2222 or visit www.waterfallarts.org.
From the field to the picture frame
Adult Painting Class at the Farnsworth
Don Demers during a workshop
The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland will present a
three-day workshop entitled “From the Field to the Picture Frame in
Oil” with Don Demers Friday, October 17 through Sunday, October 19,
at the Gamble Center on the corner of Union and High streets in Rockland.
This class, which is for intermediate to advanced adult painters, will take
place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. all three days.
Under the tutelage of Demers, participants will explore
the concepts and methods of observing the landscape and capturing it in
field studies and sketches, and developing those studies into finished
paintings in the studio. Keen observation, accurate drawing and developing
the visual memory will be emphasized. The group will work on location in
midcoast Maine at least two days, with the remainder of the time being
spent working in the studio at the Gamble Center.
Demers, who currently lives in Eliot, is a Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists, an elected member of the Guild of Boston Artists and the Copley Society of Boston and a signature member of PAPA (Plein Air Painters of America). He has been creating maritime art for over
25 years. Over the last
few years his body
of work has expanded to include the study and creation of landscape painting. His landscape work has garnered him two awards at the Laguna Plein Air Invitational in Laguna Beach, California
in 2001 and 2002. He has also received an award for his painting at the 2007
Crystal Cove Invitational sponsored by the Irvine Museum in Orange County, California.
Demers’ paintings have been featured in a number
of publications including the magazines American Artist, Artist, Plein Air,
Fine Art Connoisseur, Art and Antiques, Yachting, Nautical Quarterly,
Nautical World, Offshore and Maine Boats and Harbors. His work has also
been featured and discussed in a number of texts including Concordia Yawls, The First Fifty Years, by Elizabeth Meyer, Marine Painting and Yachts on Canvas, both authored by James Taylor of Greenwich, England, Yacht Portraits, published by
Sheridan House, A Gallery of Marine Art, Rockport Publishers, an instructional textbook titled Marine Painting: Techniques of Modern Masters published by Watson Guptill, and Bound
for Blue Water, written by J. Russell
Jinishian and published by Greenwich Workshop.
During the workshop, Demers will work in oils and he
invites participants to work in oil or acrylic. The fee for this workshop
is $300 for members and $350 for nonmembers. As the class size is limited
to 15 participants, reservations are required. For more information or to
make a reservation, call the Education Department at 596-0949.
Artists Reception at Harbor Square Gallery
Harbor Square Gallery, 374 Main Street, Rockland, will host an artist reception for Mexican
rug weaver and natural dyer Demetrio Bautista Lazo on Saturday, October 11, from 3 to 5 p.m.
Lazo is a fifth-generation weaver who now serves the
economic needs of his extended family through occasional targeted trips to
the States. On this trip he came to participate with Nan Kennedy
in the New York Sheep and Wool Festival and Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair.
While in Maine they will offer plant dye workshops in Deere Isle and
Washington; from Maine they will travel to New York and North
Carolina.
Lazo is considered by Mexican and international weavers
to be one of the best rug weavers of his generation. He began weaving at
age 7 at his grandfather’s side. Now in his 30s, he has held solo
exhibits in both Mexico and the United States and has been featured in the
book Zapotec Weavers (Museum
of New Mexico Press) as well as the Oaxacan Times (an English language
publication for visitors to Oaxaca). He is known for his natural dye colors
and innovative designs based on tradition. His family has woven and sold
rugs for three generations. Over 80 people in the family are weavers, with
35 of them supplying rugs designed by and made with wool naturally dyed by
Lazo for the family gallery.
Inspirations for his designs come from local ruins, but
as an artist he applies his own touch. For example, his tree of life
includes colorful birds, influenced by a day of helping a local tour guide
who did not speak English. Other complex designs in the gallery reflect
similar inspirations: all are grounded in ancient traditions, but show the
soul of an artist reviving the local art of natural dying and weaving.
For more information about Lazo’s visit and
workshops, visit www.getwool.com. For more information on Harbor Square
Gallery, visit www.harborsquaregallery.com.
Fall Exhibition at Art Space
“The Cook House,” watercolor by Nat Lewis
The fall season at Art Space will feature three artists who work in three different mediums. The exhibition will run from October 15 through mid-November. The public is invited to an opening reception and to meet the artists on Friday, October 17, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Camden artist Amy Cornell works primarily in oils and
is inspired by the French and American Impressionist “plein
air” landscape painters. “I set up my easel outdoors whenever
possible. There is something about being immersed in a beautiful setting
that transfers directly to the canvas.”
Port Clyde artist Nat Lewis will be exhibiting watercolors. She says, “My favorite subjects are what I call yesterday’s houses. I am attracted to them not only for their sagging roofs and weathered wood, but more importantly, the way they reflect the hardworking families they sheltered, the simpler lives they lived.”
Monroe clay artist Marjorie Walsh creates hand-built
and -thrown stoneware pottery. “I am inspired by forms and colors of
the natural world.” Walsh has exhibited in, among other places,
Colorado, Ohio and New England, and has taught pottery and advanced clay
techniques.
Art Space Gallery is a Maine artist cooperative,
located at 342 Main Street in Rockland. Call 594-8784 for more information.
Buehner and Vaughan to Exhibit at Kramer Gallery
“View from Campobello,” acrylic by Kate
Buehner
As a participant in the fourth annual
Belfast Poetry Festival, the Kramer Gallery of the Belfast Free Library will exhibit the works of two artists and two poets for the month of October. Artists Kate Buehner of Gardiner and Joy Vaughan of South Bristol will pair their art with the poetry of Dave Moreau of Wayne and Andrea
Read of Brooks respectively. On Saturday, October 18, as part of the Poetry and Art Walk, the poets will read in the Kramer Gallery at 2:30 p.m. For more information, visit http:
//illuminatedseapress.com/poetryfest08.html#poets&artists.
The Art of Saving Lighthouses
Alan Claude, an award-winning graphic artist from
Farmingdale, has donated a 36" by 53" glicée print,
“Grand View,” of the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse to the
Maine Lighthouse Museum. Raffle tickets for the print are available for $5
as part of a fund-raising initiative to benefit the museum and the
restoration of the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse’s boathouse.
Claude’s Maine Lighthouse Collection series
evokes nostalgia and a classic elegance reminiscent of 1920s European
travel posters. He captures the splendor of Maine’s iconic treasures
and, like the Maine Lighthouse Museum, helps honor and perpetuate their
history, beauty and importance.
On Saturday, October 11, at 11 a.m. in the lobby of the
Maine Lighthouse Museum, Claude will be present for the drawing of the
raffle ticket for “Grand View” as well as the second and third
place gift certificates for 18" by 24" signed prints.
Raffle tickets can still be purchased on the
museum’s Web site, www.mainelighthousemuseum.org, or in the shop at
the museum. Claude has provided signed postcards of his Rockland Breakwater
Lighthouse image to be distributed. He will be at the museum on October 11
from 10:30 a.m. to noon signing prints and unveiling his latest lighthouse
portrait, of the Curtis Island Light in Camden’s harbor. Light
refreshments will be served.
Print, Woodcut Exhibit at Thomaston Cafe
The hand-pulled etchings, woodcuts and lithographs of Frances Hodsdon and manualy printed woodcuts of William Barriss Martin are showing at the Thomaston Cafe
on Main Street in Thomaston through the end of October.
Both artists draw their artistic insights from natural
phenomena, such as the contours of the land, its color, or the hard-cut
forms of the river and rocks, the sky, reflections off water.
Martin’s work relates to two metaphors; the
landscape, as in “Southwest Tapestry” and “The Way thru
Coeur d’Alene”; and conceptual and abstract, as in “River
Mirror” and “Who Is the Fairest of Them All.”
Both artists were represented in the Maine Printmakers 1980- 2005 exhibit at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and in the “Innovative Technique and Alternative Surfaces in Print Making” exhibit at University of Maine Augusta, which also traveled nationally.
Hodsdon is director and principal instructor at the Midcoast Printmakers Inc. Print Shop at Round Top Farm in Damariscotta. It is the only
open atelier for printmaking in the midcoast area
where professional printmakers and artists can hire facilities for printmaking. In addition, artists and the general public can learn the printmaking processes from qualified instructors. Special children’s classes can be arranged.
For Midcoast Printmakers Inc. information, call Hodsdon
at 549-7087.
Lee Winslow Court Exhibit at Coastal Maine Botanical
Gardens
“Winter Silo” by Lee Winslow Court
Lee Winslow Court (1903-1992) has been called the
“dean” of Monhegan Island’s painters. During his long and
productive artistic career he garnered numerous honors, and his paintings
are in prestigious collections. A select group of his oil paintings —
mostly of New England fall and winter scenes — currently grace the
walls of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens’ Visitor Center in Boothbay.
The exhibit will be on view through Friday, December 19.
On Saturday, October 18, beginning at 3 p.m., Rusty
Court, the artist’s son, will present a talk and answer questions
about his father’s work and life. Court is very knowledgeable about
his father’s art and has recollections of summers on Monhegan with
his family and the artistic community there. His presentation will be
followed by a reception with wine and hors d’oeuvres.
The Visitor Center is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
and the art exhibit is free with regular Gardens admission. The talk and
reception are also free with no Gardens admission charge. Most of the
paintings will be for sale, although a few are part of permanent private
collections.
Court’s career spanned more than seven decades
from the time he entered art school in 1921. The artist had his first
one-man show in 1931. The list of exhibits and collections in which
Court’s work was featured is long and varied. He has paintings in the
Farnsworth Museum in Rockland as well as Washington’s National
Archives, Harvard University, and the Frye Museum in Seattle, among others.
He was only the fourth artist in a century to be awarded the John Singleton
Copley Medal, in 1981.
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, on Barters Island Road
in Boothbay, is open year-round. For more information, visit
www.MaineGardens.org, or call 633-4333.
Coastal Quilters Feature Floorcloths
Coastal Quilters will meet
Saturday, October 11, at 10 a.m. at the Lions Club on Lion’s Lane
in Camden. Rhea Daiute of Alewives Quilt Shop in Newcastle will demonstrate making traditional floorcloths and the technique for place mats will
be demonstrated as well.
Daiute, a recent graduate of Butera School of Art in Boston, completed a three-year course of study in graphic design. During that
time, she commuted back
and forth to work
and teach classes at Alewives Fabrics in Damariscotta Mills. She has worked at Alewives Fabrics for the last 10 years and four years ago her mother, Barbara Neeson, bought the business.
According to Daiute, “Floorcloths have been
around for hundreds of years and there are many different techniques to
making them. My mother does not like to sew. She loves fabric, hates to
sew. Making floorcloths with fabric came naturally to her, creating a
technique of using fabric in a very nontraditional way. No sewing involved,
just cutting and pasting.”
Over the past four years, floorcloth workshops at Alewives Fabrics have exploded in popularity and floorcloth materials sell out as soon as they arrive in the store. Now Daiute and Neeson sell kits they developed, including their own instruction booklet illustrating their particular floorcloth technique. The team now leads workshops both locally and at the Cambridge Quilt Shop in Massachusetts. They demonstrate their technique at many local quilt groups as well as at the annual Maine State Quilt Show, and sell patterns to retailers across the country.
Following the program, after a short refreshment break,
there will be a business meeing. Drawings and a show-and-tell round robin
conclude the activities. All meetings are free and open to all. For more
information about the meeting or Coastal
Quilters, call Barb
Melchiskey, 236-9665.
“From Sheep to Shawl” to Be Presented Oct.
15
Cushing residents Katharine Cobey, fiber artist, and photographer George Hoyt will give a slide show on their Friendship Village School project, “From Sheep to Shawl.” Their presentation will
take place at the meeting of the Midcoast Maine branch of the American Association of University Women on Wednesday, October 15, at 1 p.m. in the Community Room of the Rockland Public Library. The meeting is free and open to the public.
The success of this six-month school project in which
students saw how raw wool becomes a knitted shawl prospered not only
because of the talents of Cobey and Hoyt, but with the wide support from
the school, farm and community volunteers.
Cobey is a self-taught artist, knitter and sculptor.
Working, exhibiting and teaching in a studio at the Torpedo Factory art
center in Alexandria, Virginia for seven years, she now teaches in her
Maine studio. Her hand- spun, handknit installations and plastic pieces
have been shown in galleries and museums across the U.S. and abroad,
including her iconic 30-foot installation “Boat with Four
Figures,” first exhibited in 1999 at Maine’s Portland Museum of
Art.
One of an innovative group of contemporary knitters who
use their skills for art as well as craft, Cobey as a feminist encourages
the study and use of knitting as a serious creative discipline. Her pieces
and teaching demonstrate that the discipline can be used to express and
honor the craft traditions of the past by developing them anew.
Hoyt, a photo hobbyist and neighbor to Cobey, accepted
her challenge to document the Sheep to Shawl project using digital
photography. He has a bachelor of arts degree from Grinnell College, a
master of arts from the State University of Iowa and an Ed.D. from Ball
State University.
The Midcoast Maine branch of the American Association
of University Women meets monthly and supports student scholarships through
its Maine Literary Festival held at the Camden Opera House each November.
For details, visit www:maineliteraryfestival.org.
Monsell Is Brush & Easel’s Artist of the
Month
“Wading Boy,” oil by Ruth Monsell
The Brush & Easel, located at 7 Theater Street in
downtown Damariscotta, features Ruth Monsell as artist of the month for
October.
Drawing from an early age, Monsell studied at Round Top
Center for the Arts with several instructors and later became one herself.
In 2002, she created Artful Heirlooms, which specializes in portrait
commissions and traditional silhouettes. Monsell paints most in soft
pastels and oils.
Other artists who have
work displayed at The Brush & Easel in October are Pam Cabanas, Jane
Murdoch, Jen Casad, Penny Moodey, Nan Justice, David Higgins, Kat Farrin, Valerie Greene, Cheryl Blaydon, Kay Miller, Jen Litchfield, Wally and Delly Schweighauser and Abbie Williams.
Olive Metcalf Exhibits Work at Lincoln Home
Olive Metcalf painting “Boats at New
Harbor”
Olive Metcalf of Bristol Mills will exhibit her work at
the Lincoln Home in Newcastle through Wednesday, November 19. The
most recent in a series of local artists showing their work at the Lincoln
Home, her work includes renditions of Maine scenes familiar to area
residents and visitors.
Visitors to the exhibit are asked to vote on which of
the artist’s works on display is their favorite. Metcalf will donate
the work with the most votes to become a part of the Lincoln Home’s
permanent collection.
Metcalf, a Connecticut native, has lived in Maine for
over 30 years. She began painting as a child at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in
Hartford and later participated in informal
classes at the University of Rochester Museum School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in the
Philippine Islands.
Her work was in the traveling Maine Artists shows
originating at the University of Maine at Orono as well as other exhbits.
They may be found in numerous private collections.
She is the illustrator of Recommended Country Inns of New England, as
well as Recommended Country Inns of the Mid Atlantic and Recommended Country Inns of the West Coast.
