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Different Lenses : Divergence in the Passion to Create


Artists Mildred Bachrach and Andre Benoit show how two artists convey their personal messages to an audience in completely different styles.  Mildred’s show  It is Not So Simple  deals with generational trauma caused by the history of the Cherokee Nation of which she is a member.

Andre restores a life to wood remote from its previous use in warship construction as a backdrop for whimsical and interpretative paintings and assemblages.  His part of the show is Sandblast, Distressed Wooden Assemblage.

Please join us Saturday Jan 1 2022 from 1 to 4pm and on each Friday, Saturday and Sunday in January from 1 to 4pm , except on Jan 7th for our formal opening during the First Friday Art

Here is a peak at Bachrach's work in the show.  Be sure to see it in person as well at the UMVA Gallery inside the Portland Media Center (PMA), 516 Congress St., Portland ME.

For more timely details, please visit the UMVA website:  www.theumva.org



Trail of Tears, 30 x 40", mixed media on wood, NFS

Heritage, 80 x 30" acrylic on wood, NFS


Shelter 11, mixed media

Mildred Bachrach lives and works in the West End of Portland, Maine. She shows her current works at the Brackett Street Show Case in Portland, Maine. All current work is rotated monthly for viewing to the community. Bachrach is a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her direct descendent Little Turtle died on the Trail of Tears.

***********************************************************************************Andre Benoit has been involved in art as an avocation since his college years when he was an art minor. He has moved sequentially from watercolor to plein air oil painting and now to assemblage work using weather and saltwater exposed repurposed furniture remnants and driftwood. Although he has retired from 35 years of work as a family practitioner, he now dedicates almost the same amount of time to his present pursuits with this medium.   

"The opportunity to exhibit at the gallery of the Union of Maine Visual Artists has allowed me to present,  in a single venue,  a portion of my assemblage work of the past seven years," Benoit said.  "The work is staged on high quality three-quarter inch Douglas fir plywood discarded by Bath Ironworks, after it was used to shield painted surfaces from the scouring of sandblast being directed at a joining steel surfaces being prepped to receive final protective coatings.

Because of the variability in what portion of the tree the individual laminations of the plywood have been harvested and the directness and intensity of sand blast exposure, the unintended sculpting of the wood is quite variable and often lends itself to further definition by paint or attachment of small pieces of wood ,working off artist perceived representations that the silhouettes in the wood provide.  Much of the work is whimsical and certainly a departure from it’s earlier purposed use."


Waiting to Turn Her Eggs - Assemblage - 24 x 17" - $325



Woodland Menagerie - Assemblage - 22,25 x 18,25" - $500


Conjoined - Assemblage - 34 x 25" - $450




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