Water - November Member show at UMVA Portland Gallery

Over 20 artists are involved in “Water”, the current membership show at the UMVA Art gallery inside the Portland Media Center, 516 Congress St. in Portland until November 24^th. Gallery hours with artists there are: Friday 5pm - 8pm; Saturday 1pm - 4pm; Sunday 2pm - 5pm. The artists were asked to think about all the complexities of water in that it can be cleansing but also can carry contaminates and micro-plastics. Water is life-giving, but can also cause destruction.

UMVA member, Dr. Susan Smith, curated the show. She is the coordinator/faculty for the Intermedia MFA program at the University of Maine, Orono, and a practicing artist. Smith was also the former director for the Orono campus Lord Hall Gallery. The participating artists are from Portland, Biddeford, Cumberland, Falmouth, Westbrook, Bowdoinham, Belfast, Northport, Orrs Island and Kennebunkport.

UMVA, founded in 1975, is a non-profit organization that promotes and advocates for the visual arts, artists, and all arts supporters. As artist advocates, the UMVA initiated and saw enacted into state law the Maine Percent for Art Program (requiring a percentage of funds for state buildings to include art) and the Artist’s Estate Tax Law (allowing art work to be used to pay artists estate taxes).

Other programs and projects supported by UMVA include: The Maine Arts Journal, an online, quarterly publication The Journal features essays by and about artists, interviews, UMVA member submissions, poetry, UMVA updates about its current projects, local chapters, and more; ARRT! Artists’ Rapid Response Team, a collaboration of artists & progressive groups making art to create positive change; Lumen ARRT!!, a group creating large-scale video projections in public spaces to give a visual voice to progressive non-profits; and the New England Emmy Award-nominated Maine Masters Project, a video series of 19 compelling profiles of some of Maine’s most distinguished and often less recognized artists. There are currently two chapters: Portland and Midcoast. For more information, please visit www.theumva.org.

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