This November 2020 the UMVA
presents its Members Show online due to the continuing pandemic. Included are artistic works that range from
photography to mixed-media to digital to painting and sculpture. We have a spectacular turnout this month,
with 30 artists participating in this exhibit, each with submissions that
showcases their marvelous creativity and talent. The art pieces range from abstract to surreal to historical
documentation. This exhibited has been
curated by UMVA Member, Amy Bellezza.
Note: If you are interested in purchasing any of this art, please email UMVAPortland@gmail.com
It all started during the winter of 2019.
I learned about the food from Earle Grey, who left his home atop the Elm Tree on Mellen Street when construction on the Mellen Street Market happened. I live in the Crabapple tree behind the Market.
There was a bountiful amount of peanuts all winter and then in June I started receiving walnuts. I thought they were big but good for my teeth because of the hard shells. Peanuts I can rip apart in a matter of seconds. So I started carving the walnuts with my teeth to get at the nut-meat. Little did I realize I was making sculptures with the walnut shells. Amy collects them when I leave them on her balcony.
I want to thank Amy for this opportunity to show that we, squirrels, are more than just pests, nuisances and prey, we are intelligent, thoughtful and talented individuals.
Galileo - Andrew Chulyk - painted wood –16 x 6 x 24 – 2019 - $350
Rasputin - Andrew Chulyk– painted wood - 13 x 4 x 18 – 2019 - $350
Night River - Anne Strout - encaustic - 12”x24”- 2020 - 375.00
Anne Strout is a mixed media artist working with encaustic and metals in her barn studio in rural West Falmouth.Strout was born and raised in the Boston suburbs and has lived in Maine since 1978.She has been taking yearly art classes since her first oils class when she was eleven.
Her work has been shown primarily in shows and galleries throughout New England. Anne is a participating member of the Union of Maine Visual Artists, The Kennebec Valley Art Association, Maine Crafts Association, International Encaustic Artists and the Ogunquit Art Association. https://www.annestrout.com/
My Country Tis of Thee is a
digital photographic collage featuring a photo of a ripped and torn flag caught
on a branch. Kinda reminds me of our
country in October of 2020.
Elphaba at Kiamo Ko - Arthur Nichols - 22” x 30”
A wickedly creative tale connecting to a life study session!
I want to reveal, imagine, or at least express, existence beyond the five senses. Silly, really, so I try to imagine your last Tuesday afternoon as a being in the universe. My lifelong struggle as an artist has been to integrate the mundane with the extra ordinary. My deepest heart does not want to paint something that you've seen before, but I seek acceptance on a level that the clerk can understand alongside the astrophysicist.
I try to maintain a state of interbeing, but that is very
complicated, so sometimes I do feel alone, maybe because that is easier, here
in the world. And I enjoy the solitude. It is the edges of things and
not-things that I look for. I am also deeply fortunate and grateful to have
companions on my journey. I like to think of painting as using mud to express
the miraculous.
”The Silence” 2020 -
Acrylic on Canvas - $200
https://www.cemorsephoto.com/
Burnished & smoke-fired fiber-clay with lusters, stains, acrylic & wax - $2,020.00
Here is a video the artist sent us https://vimeo.com/472777918
"I make hand-built sculptural vessels, beginning with a concept that I want to explore in clay. As I build, my internal narrative/dialogue with the clay develops and the form grows. “Sea Change” was a long time in the making this year because I did not know where it was going, being so anxious about the virus and the state of our divided, alienated nation. Finally, I let it take the lead. It is an expression of my hope for change and harmony.
Stains, slips and burnishing were applied to “Sea Change” prior to the initial firing to cone 06. More stains and smoke-firing next. Then lusters were then applied directly to the burnished unglazed surfaces and re-fired to cone 018."
Milkweed - Christine Sullivan - Photograph, 16” 20” - Print - $150
During this strange time, nature’s our
ally. My focus has become much more
contemplative. I decided to take a break
from my usual collage work and use photography as my medium.
Boy, alone - Dave Berang - oil on canvas - 20”x24” - 2020 - $450
The painting Boy, alone was inspired by the early weeks of the pandemic and the sense of aloneness these weeks provoked in me. As a boy, I spent much of my time alone both by choice and circumstance. From the memories of the past came this image of myself as a boy. Then like now, I felt a sense of vulnerability, but not sadness or despair. The essence of this painting is the vulnerability of aloneness across time and place in one’s life.
https://daveberrang.com/
Maple Syrup - Dave Wade - archival pigment print - 15 x 20" - 2020 - $400
You never know what you will find when you go out with a camera…. Sometimes you get surprised when all of a sudden, a sun rise pops out of the clouds, or a spectacular leaf pops up on the pavement.. and you get this sudden feeling of gratitude as if you had received an unexpected gift.
https://www.davewadephoto.com/
beyond one's self - Joanne Tarlin - Oil on Linen - 48”x36” - 2019 - $3500
Two
doors stand before you; one is opaque and the other translucent, revealing
something bright. Or, there’s a dark passage from which an owl emerges. Which threshold
would you choose to cross?
Tarlin
plays with the idea of transitioning and enigmas in these paintings which are
part of a series of works that are densely populated with flowers and birds in
mysterious settings. The secretive feeling of the works represents the
undisclosed writings and passions her father kept hidden until his death and
were revealed with the posthumous discovery of a novel, The Artist’s Life,
written by her father in 1948 before he met her mother. Many elements in the
story eerily parallel Tarlin’s life. Her shock of the discovery and its content
sparked this series. The botanicals and birds are part of the Vanitas tradition
in painting where they signify mortality, death, and regeneration.
https://www.joannetarlin.com/
face mask - John Ripton - b/w photography - 12”x18” - 2020 - $100
The images face mask and together refer to two of the most critical challenges that confront humanity today. The first image was taken in Cape Porpoise, Maine. A combination of warming waters from global warming and overfishing has dramatic impact on the quality of water in the Gulf of Maine and the North Atlantic. In the case of lobstering, warming waters are reportedly pushing lobsters steadily northward to colder waters. In 2019, Maine's lobster haul was 38 percent below the previous 5-year average. Scientists predict that the Maine lobster industry is sliding into economic decline. Of course overfishing brought about the collapse of North Atlantic cod populations in the 1990s.
face mask also exemplifies how ecosystem degradation is an existential threat. The young woman wears a surgical mask. It indicates that we, as well as marine life, cannot escape the damage we have done to the global ecosystem. Indeed some researchers believe that humanity's destruction of biodiversity creates the conditions for “new” viruses and diseases like COVID-19 (Scientific American, March 18, 2020).
together was taken in a New York City park a
decade ago. Children of various skin tones swinging and laughing on a thin
“rope” is a beautiful scene. Without the lenses of adults, children embrace
people of all skin tones. With a little help the children are even able to
balance on a thin “rope.” It is a metaphor that suggests that we should be as
agile, that we should address racism and xenophobia for our children's lives.
Jump -
In a general sense I find my inspiration in the personal and emotional as well as the interaction developed through self, family and community. In a general sense my works are concerned with the understanding of the human condition. They do not sentimentalize but speak of the human measure and the human condition. I ask the question "who am I and where am I going?"
https://www.joyceellenweinstein.com/
Teddy - James Kelly - Mixed Media - 50”x38” - 2019 - $1000
Smoke King - Kristin Onuf
Mixed media monotype - 11” x 12” - 2018 - nfs
This image was inspired by a poem by W.E.B. DuBois, The Song of the smoke, 1907.
Since the events of August,
2017 in Charlottesville, a city I lived in for nearly 25 years, I have been
attempting to better understand the resurgence of white supremacists and
neo-Nazis in our communities.
My research has taken me to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts where I had the opportunity to view primary sources and images dealing with the slave trade. I have studied the racial terrorism and violence of lynching, the horrific oppression of Jim Crow laws and our continuing struggle for equal justice.
Observation, research
and experience fuel the content of my monotypes. Artists from Goya to Golub inspire my
efforts to create work that may move viewers to thoughtfully consider the
legacies of slavery and to consider what it means for the future of our
society.
https://kkonuf.wordpress.com/
Green - Lesley MacVane - digital photography - 12x18 - 2017 - $175
Hold On - Lesley MacVane - digital photography - 12x18 - 2018 - $175
I enjoy taking documentary portraits of, not only people, but also of things and life situations.
Hold On seems like a battle of strength, which one will win? Which one will give way first. We seem to be watching that battle daily in the news, as our world is struggling to hold on to something real and sane and worth believing in.
Green was taken in Cuba. I love all the green colors in the space and the potted plant in the middle of it all to remind us of our environment and how it needs to be protected.
http://lesley.macvane.com/
Staccato Rhythms - Liz Prescott - acrylic on panel - 16” x 16” - 2020 - $525
A Planet Worth Saving - Lori Austill
Encaustic on birch panel - 24”x36”x1” - 2020 - $1,400
Soft Stone - Lori Austill
Encaustic on birch panel - 36”x24”x1” - 2019 - $1,400
https://www.loriaustill.com/home
In an era of fake news - the actual problem is that real news, especially climate related news, is being suppressed by major media companies (verified by Public Citizen's report Storm of Silence).
We are living through a new type of battle - attacked by misinformation and the omission of information. This is a new kind of propaganda, that I have labelled, inverse propaganda. What we don't know can hurt us. We are in the fight of our lives.
There is an ongoing ferocious war on science and scientists, not seen since the inquisition of Galileo. In this sense, Annenberg’s installations and paintings fall into the genre of anti-war art.
Annenberg's activism lies in combining art and journalism - comparing the importance of climate studies by major scientific organizations - and how they are or are not reported. Her mixed media and conceptual artworks ironically employ the tools of investigative journalism to critique the absence of the presence of critically important news stories.
Fortunes Rocks, Kennebunk, ME -
Digital B&W photograph - 11”x14” - 2020 - $170 unframed
Crescent Beach, Cape Elizabeth, ME - Mark Barnette
Digital color photograph - 11”x14” - 2020 - $170 unframed
I was brought up to revere the pre-revisionist history and 19th
and 20th century landscape art that formed American notions of the character of
my native New England, and how it ought to look — including all those untold
thousands of paintings and photographs of Maine’s “rugged coast.” I now work to
synthesize those stories and influences with the effects of time, economic
violence, and the human longing for order and beauty. Mostly, though, I make
the pictures I want to see.
mark-barnette.com - Instagram: @markbarnette1
acrylic on canvas - 30”x 30” $1125
Titles have become important to each piece and come from many different sources; a concept, current events, a dream or emotion. Often as the painting develops it names itself y not to get in the way.
I have been working on the largest painting Gnosis off and on for over nine months The idea of the painting is based around the connections we make when we experience higher levels of consciousness. We see more than our egos and experience our interconnectedness to all humankind and all living things.
Possibility of Harmony expresses my longing for harmony in this country and the world.
Covid #10 - 2020 - Roland Salazar - Mixed media on Stonehenge paper
18 x 26" image 22 X 30" paper - Unframed $850; Framed $1,200
I work in two distinct countries with different cultures. Mexico and the USA and more particularly Maine create a distinct artistic challenge for me. To live and work in these two places is a privilege and a challenge. It resulted in two diverse bodies of work: the Maine Years and the México Years. While each body of work illustrates how the artistic atmosphere has come to be represented in my paintings and drawings, they equally show what inner value both places mean to me.
COVID is a body of work from early 2020 until now. Five paintings in the series seek to express Maine's true essence. For I paint 'Maine' as unforgiving, the land, sea and sky as uncompromising, demanding your daily awareness, and testing your ability to live with nature as a constant in your life. But as the deadly virus spread, these mostly representative paintings changed; I came to express my feelings on this crisis in five (5) abstract paintings.
Hands on contacts with artist friends and showing art were impossible, because most art venues closed and others were only showing online. I reviewed my previous work, some I repainted. I was lucky to have one painting selected for a brick & mortar show at the Susquehanna Art Museum, PA, another displayed Online, at Dover, NH, and others at OAA & UMVA shows. Artist show 'calls' seemed to be fee making shows for the venues; most venues were very inexperienced in presenting online shows.
http://www.salazargallery.com/
I can't breathe - Titi deBaccarat - Photography - 2020 - NFS
I don't do politics, but I do practice art. My artistic creation is both poetic and social. I create because I dream. I believe things move only if we dream. But it is not just works of art that create change; change is created by the reflections, questions and emotions that art arouse. Dedicated to justice in a hostile political context, I was forced to flee my country, Gabon, with only the wealth of my artistic ability. I have lived in Portland since February 2015, and I'm working through my African identity and my experiences as an asylum seeker in the United States.
A very eclectic collection of many fascinating drawings/paintings and installations. So much talent around.
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