Three years ago, Jerry Beck took a drive with his young daughter through New Hampshire and passed a sign for Ruggles Mine in Grafton. His daughter shrugged, but Beck convinced her to check it out. Armed with a pail and hammer for rock collecting, they emerged from a tunnel into the expansive cavern of the now-defunct mica mine. “We just thought this was the coolest place we had ever seen,” he says today.

Beck, who specializes in bringing art to unique and forgotten spaces, immediately envisioned a show there. Ruggles Mine has since closed and gone up for sale. In November, Beck got permission to stage an exhibition of musicians, sculpture, light and sound installations, video, poetry-readings and performances throughout the rock-framed environment.

He now hopes The Revolving Museum, the artistic-event organization he founded in 1984, will purchase the mine and turn it into a destination—an experimental and interactive theme park of visual creations woven together “so that your imagination is exploding wherever you look,” he says. To that end, he and TRM are planning another Ruggles Mine exhibition and fundraiser in late summer or fall.

But that’s not all Beck has planned for New Hampshire. He also has partnered with City Arts Nashua to help revitalize its downtown with public art. The “Comeback Kitchen Table” show will launch in May to call attention to the vanishing custom of families gathering for meals and conversation—“what used to be the heart and soul of family life,” Beck says.

Comeback Kitchen Table | Revolving Museum Director Jerry Beck and City Arts Nashua Board President Kathy Hersh

More than 1,000 artists are working on 10 projects for the show. An alternative high school has created a Jean-Michel Basquiat-themed installation with an anti-drug message. “It will hopefully be a catalyst for people to explore the tables, sitting down, talking,” Beck says of the show.

The idea grew out of Beck’s nostalgia for his own family time spent around the kitchen table when he was a kid, laughing and telling stories. Today, trying to draw his 10-year-old daughter’s attention away from her digital screen is a challenge, he says.

An art major at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Beck spent a semester in London, charmed more by the punk rock scene than Renaissance painting. Back in Florida, he and some fellow art students launched a series of public art projects in empty buildings and other forsaken sites. They called themselves SARTists—Student Artists Reshaping Tallahassee.

In 1983, Beck started graduate school in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. He founded The Revolving Museum soon after with “The Little Train That Could .. Show” in an abandoned city rail yard. The old train cars were turned into gallery space and performance stages. On “hobo night,” homeless participants told stories. Another early TRM show took over an old Civil War fort on Georges Island in Boston harbor.

Each of Beck’s efforts seeks to connect communities with the creative work in their midst, a goal all the more relevant during this time of upheaval, he says. “We’re in a cultural revolution right now,” Beck says. “And the arts—as they always have—need to be at the forefront.”

The Revolving Museum – Jerry Beck, founder and artistic director
Fitchburg, Massachusetts
Ruggles Mine –  Grafton, New Hampshire

Comeback Kitchen Table exhibition in Nashua, New Hampshire
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Top photo Ruggles Mine Show, Revolving Museum

The post Of Abandoned Mines and Kitchen Tables appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a former lifetime in which the person inhabiting the Oval Office had an actual vision based on facts, the arts were recognized as an integral measure of our society. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, said this about the arts: “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.”

Truth, of course, has taken a hit since 45 took office. That whole “alternative facts” bit. But numbers, or so the saying goes, don’t lie. So with that in mind, we took a quick look at the potential math implications of 45’s federal budget.

First the overview:

• Number of programs and agencies due for elimination: 62
• Number of programs within the Environmental Protection Agency alone: 50

Other programs due for funding cuts—or outright elimination—focus on everything from literacy to low-income home energy improvements to investigating chemical accidents. The enormous breadth and scope of impact on those least able to manage without these programs is breathtaking.

But since we’re an arts and culture magazine, we’re going to focus our hyperventilation on the potential impact of these devastating cuts to art and culture in New England. The proposed budget calls for eliminating all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts ($152 million) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($155 million).

What NEA funding means to New England:

For fiscal year 2017, New England states received $2.591 million in NEA grants overall, according to the NEA website. Here’s who got what:

• Connecticut: 15 organizations, $310,000
• Massachusetts: 62 organizations, $1,672,000
• Maine: 11 organizations, $242,000
• New Hampshire: 6 organizations, $120,000
• Rhode Island: 9 organizations, $152,500
• Vermont: 4 organizations, $95,000

But the math adds up even less when you look beyond straight grants. Ann Wicks, communications manager for the New England Foundation on the Arts (NEFA)—one of six regional arts organizations funded by the NEA and private donations—explains. Arts organizations can potentially receive NEA dollars in three ways:

• an outright allocation of a grant the organization applies for itself
• an allocation from NEFA through NEA dollars provided to NEFA
• from NEA dollars given to state arts organizations, such as the Massachusetts Cultural Council

Wicks says about 15 percent of NEFA’s annual budget comes from NEA dollars. Beyond grants, NEFA uses those dollars to support artists in other, less direct ways, Wicks says. The Creative Ground Directory, for instance, is a free resource that lists artists and other creators around New England so that it’s easier to find appropriate collaborators for projects. In FY2016, NEFA made a total of 462 grants equaling $3.4 million. New England states received $829,947 of those NEFA grants.

In other words, the loss of funding to New England arts and humanities organizations could be even larger. “NEA support is very important to New England and the creative sector,” she says.

It’s a point that is echoed nationally. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), a national nonprofit that assists state arts agencies, offers this math about how NEA dollars improve the economy at large:

• The arts return $22.3 billion in tax revenue to federal, state, county, and municipal governments.
• Rural areas, low-income communities, and schools would feel the effects of this funding loss disproportionately from reductions. State arts agencies (using state and federal funds) award more than 25% of their grants to rural areas, 54% to low-income communities, and 45% to arts education projects.
• Every NEA dollar leverages more than $9 in matching funds, meaning that the impact of the NEA loss is just the beginning of the potential financial loss for arts organizations.

Cutting the NEA and NEH seem especially confusing given this math offered by NASAA: The NEA receives 0.004% of the total Federal budget, which is less than ½ of one hundredth of a percent.

That math also doesn’t add up when you consider the numbers presented by The Guardian. The British paper reports the following expenses incurred by taxpayers less than 50 days into 45’s residency:

• $56.6 million (or a cool $500,000 a day) to protect Trump Tower. That was through March 1. Assuming that Mrs. 45 stays until June for Mini-45 to finish school, that dollar amount could add another $46 million, bringing the total to $102 million.
• $3+million estimated cost for EACH weekend jaunt to golf work at his Mar-a-Lago Resort (a place where he doubled entry fees from $100,000 to $200,000 the day after he was elected).
• $97,380 for hotels for Secret Service to protect Eric Trump (that would be his son on those business interests 45 still hasn’t divested himself of) while he visited a condominium development in Uruguay. This is just one trip.

And finally this statistic: 45’s proposed military spending increase in his federal budget? $54 billion.

Something definitely doesn’t add up.

Does this irritate you as much as it does us? Here are a few links if you want to #TakeAction. See you on the streets.

Pen.org
artsactionfund.org
Change.org
The Official White House Petition to Save Arts Funding
Contact Your Representative
Arts Advocacy Day – Washington, DC
#SaveTheNEA

Top image courtesy Royal Talens

The post #TakeAction: Doing the NEA Defunding Math appeared first on Take Magazine.

Created on the Bay of Fundy in the tiny town of Eastport, Maine, the Tides Institute and Museum of Art (TIMA) established a wet-foot dry-foot policy early in its inception. All artists would be welcome to show their work and do residencies whether they came from the U.S., from over the border in Canada, from across the mile-wide strait from New Brunswick, or from across the Atlantic Ocean.

That was 15 years ago. Today TIMA and the town of Eastport—population 1,200—are riding high on art and innovation due to the imperative of their locale.

“We developed a Maine and New Brunswick [Canada] task force in 2010 so cultural leaders on both sides of the border could talk and meet. It’s the reason we started the institute,” says Executive Director Hugh French, who is one of TIMA’s founders. “There is too much of a tendency of stopping at the border in the U.S. and Canada while artists are crossing the border. It’s silly not to follow them.”

Interior of TIMA’s 1819 Free Will North Church Project Space with large-scale installation, “Undertow,” by artist, Anna Hepler. Project space has 23-foot high vaulted ceiling and exceptional acoustics. | Photo by Allison Osberg.

Eastport is located on Moose Island and connected to the mainland by a causeway. It sits at the entrance of Passamaquoddy Bay on the border of Canada and is at the most eastern part of the US. It’s a place you might expect to be a little sleepy, at least when it comes to the arts and innovation. But you’d be wrong.

TIMA, whose studio, museum and housing for artist residencies overlook the U.S./Canada boundary, is a beehive of artistic activity. Community renewal, an active residency program, and an aggressively diverse permanent collection are just a few of the parts that make up the institute’s game plan. That diversity is also one reason funding and artists are drawn to the space, French says.

“Early on we felt we had to operate on different interests. Architecture and history, for example,” says French. “Our collection includes painting, photography, architectural elements, a historical collection and a strong interest in contemporary work. We foster new work. That is the reason for our residency program—so contemporary work can be created here.”

Tides Institute and Museum of Art| Image courtesy TIMA

Last year’s TIMA’s residency program had nine artists—six from the U.S. and three from abroad. This year the program will host 10-12 artists. This summer a two-year collaboration between Portland, Maine photographer Shoshannah White and Halifax interdisciplinary artist Charley Young will have its premiere in an exhibition in the 1819 church now known as the Free Will North Church Project Space.

TIMA’s main building was the organization’s first regional revitalization effort, a strategy of cross disciplines that began 15 years ago when the organization began. “The long-term effort started with tackling a threatened crippled building in the center of downtown,” says French. “We put $1.2 million to bring the building back. Now we have six buildings.”

Tides Institute and Museum of Art New Year’s Eve sardine drop | Image courtesy TIMA

Although Eastport is physically isolated, TIMA and the community are not. The populace comes together every year for “Artsipelago,” an event that includes galleries, chefs, and ferries. To celebrate yet another year of tides, TIMA annually organizes the New Year’s Eve Maple Leaf and Sardine Drop. During that popular event, a giant red maple leaf is lowered at midnight Atlantic time (11pm EST) to commemorate the Canadian new year while a brass band plays “O Canada.” An hour later, when the New Year reaches the States, an 8-foot sardine is lowered as the band plays “Auld Lang Syne.”

Tides Institute and Museum of Art – museum
Eastport, Maine
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Top image: View from the top of TIMA’s main building with a view of Eastport’s downtown and waterfront – all of the islands in the distance are in Canada. | Image courtesy TIMA

The post Building Bridges, Crossing Borders Through Art appeared first on Take Magazine.

For 180 years, Lexington Farm served as a dairy farm for the village of Felchville (now known as Reading), but in the fall of 2012 the 6,000 sq. foot space reopened its doors to the public as an exhibition space through the Hall Art Foundation.

“Founded in 2007, the Hall Art Foundation makes available postwar and contemporary artworks from its own collection and that of Andrew and Christine Hall for the enjoyment and education of the public,” said Hall Art Foundation Director, Maryse Brand.

The Reading property, which was built in the early 1800’s by Elisha W. Watkins, underwent renovations starting in 2009. Upon its opening four years ago the farmhouse, cow, horse, and tractor barns, had all been transformed into individual museum-quality galleries.

“The former dairy farm was ideally suited – in terms of its structures and location – to be converted to this purpose,” Brand said.

Currently, the Foundation has two exhibitions live in Reading— “Outdoor Sculpture” by Richard Deacon, Olafur Eliasson, and Marc Quinn, and “Landscapes After Ruskin: Redefining The Sublime” curated by Joel Sternfeld. Both exhibits run through the end of the Foundation’s season, November 27th.

Landscapes after Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime | Curated by Joel Sternfeld

“The Foundation regularly welcomes groups of students from local elementary, middle school, high-school and universities,” said Brand. “We also host an annual Evening for Educators in order to introduce local teachers to the collection and exhibitions, discuss ways in which they can integrate the art and exhibitions on view into their curriculum, and inform them about the process of organizing free class visits.”

Open seasonally May through November, admission to the Foundation is free, though donations to support programming are appreciated. Three tour times are available at 11am, 1pm, and 3pm on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.

Interested in hanging around after your tour to take in the ambiance? The Foundation offers boxed lunches which can be pre-ordered 24 hours ahead. Enjoy an Organic Chicken Breast Sandwich with Vermont Goat Cheese while simultaneously consuming sights of waterfalls, pastures, hayfields and extensive woodlands.

For more information on Hall Art Foundation visit their Website or Facebook.

Top image courtesy of Hall Art Foundation

The post Got Art? appeared first on Take Magazine.

“Traditional museums are inside out,” says Suzette McAvoy. “They are great temples of art, with formal façades that sit at the top of steps. We break down the barrier and are more welcoming to the community.”

McAvoy, executive director and chief curator of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA), is framed by a backdrop of glass, cement and a jagged, light-emitting roof that mimics the ocean waves two blocks away. After more than five decades in a former firehouse and livery stable, the new CMCA opened this past June, a key component of the current wave of cultural revitalization in Rockland, Maine.

The exterior of the building is galvanized zinc with brushed stainless trim. The exterior glass walls reveal the art inside; there is a courtyard with space for art. Inside, the sightlines are wide enough to really see the art, says Mcvoy. The former space was limited by, “scale and vertical dimensions. Being a 19th Century livery stable, even though renovated, it had structural issues.”

Three contiguous galleries can exhibit the work of three artists or the work of 25 artists, which will be the case this November when CMCA holds its biennial.

McAvoy toured Take just prior to the opening of the new facility.

We enter the empty building via the loading dock and face a long highly polished concrete floor. We are joined by McAvoy’s daughter, Elizabeth, who is home from the Rhode Island School of Design. She once sat for Alex Katz who painted her portrait in his studio in Lincolnville. She was just a kid at the time.

McAvoy motions to a curving front desk leading to a large expanse of wall space. “We’re making art front and center rather than wasting the space with information about the gallery,” she says. The gift shop is tucked away like a Murphy bed.

CMCA executive director Suzette McAvoy | Photo by Amy Wilson

This isn’t your father’s or mother’s art museum. CMCA is an American Kunsthalle, a German term for a building that hosts art exhibitions.

“It makes us nimble,” says McAvoy. “As an exhibition space, we can take a chance on artists, which is what CMCA has always done – and it always works out.” McAvoy ticks off additional benefits to being an exhibition space rather than a museum.

“First of all, museums have permanent collections,” she says. “They require time, effort and expense.”

We walk into the large gallery space and watch the light play on the bare white walls.

“Second,” says McAvoy, “there is the cost and the work of conservation. Then there is the effort to acquire the gifts. And there is the storage, of course.”

We move from one gallery space to another observing through the skylights, a 20-foot sign that says “EAT” in giant letters. It is Robert Indiana’s piece originally created for the 1966 World’s Fair and now on the roof of the Farnsworth Museum next door.

Architect Toshiko Mori designed the CMCA building to capture the light of Penobscot Bay and bestow it on Maine, and Maine-connected, artists who will show there. The new building on Winter Street came into being due to a large bequest by Nellie Taft, descendant of two presidents, a board member of the Whitney and also a painter.

The town of Rockland itself is experiencing a revival. As of six years ago, the little working-class community on the coast was known for sardine processing, but the plant closed and galleries began to migrate north from Portland, 75 miles to the south. There are 25 art galleries in Rockland and three art-making spaces. New restaurants, coffee roasters, a bakery or two, and consignment shops compete for business a block from the waterfront. New boutique hotels opened over the summer, constructed by boat builders. Another new hotel acts as a gallery, catering to the type of clientele that might be inclined to purchase a five figure painting, it has art for sale as well as rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the bay.

“The final thing to fall into place was the availability of a piece of property right next to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland,” says McAvoy.  She expects foot traffic to improve now CMCA is in the heart of what is beginning to look like the new center for art in Maine.

Prior to her engagement with CMCA in 2010, McAvoy was head curator of the Farnsworth Museum, which specializes in art related to Maine and to the art of the Wyeth family.

“I gave Jamie a little tour earlier this week,” she said of the surviving member of the art dynasty. “He thought it was wonderful.”

Artists are a natural resource in a state where paintings have been made from points along the coasts by the likes of Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer and NC, Andrew and Jamie Wyeth.

Along the craggy coastline of Maine there are pocket beaches where stones get caught within the embrace of bedrock. Time and the tide polish the stones to a deep luster. Some stones are veined with white quartz.

These objects of beauty are prized by jewelry makers and have even been confiscated at airports by officials. Protected from jewelry-making predators, the stones are considered natural resources, like Maine’s painters. Year after year artists return for the Maine light to paint. Their work gains luster; the artists sometimes gain fame.

First to exhibit in CMCA’s main gallery was an artist who lives and works in Maine but had never shown in the state before. Jonathan Borofsky is a busy man on the international art circuit in Berlin, Korea, the Beijing Olympics. He agreed to create work for the new CMCA building’s inaugural show when he had a look at the looming main gallery space with 26-foot ceilings. The 50′ x 52′ space is the exact size of his studio in Ogunquit and the light from the vertical windows in the sawtooth roof brought back memories.

Interior CMCA | artist Jonathan Borofsky | Photo by Amy Wilson

“It was exactly like the kunsthalle in Basel,” he says, referring to an installation in Switzerland called Dreams 1973-81. Borofsky is best known for his series of massive site-specific sculptures “Hammering Man” in Frankfort and “Molecule Man” in Berlin.

The sculptor’s work is sometimes towering totems of abstracted figures in galvanized steel and polished aluminum, sometimes painted, sometimes not.

“The reason for this show at the new CMCA is for people to look at great art,” says Borofsky. “Not to show it or sell it.”

Borofsky says his work is of a spiritual nature. His initial inspiration was Gauguin. “When I first saw the Gauguin painting “Where do we come from? What are we doing? Where are we going?” as a kid, I realized I could do that, I could find out the answers to those questions. Gauguin gave me permission.”

The other two exhibitors to open CMCA were Alex Katz and Rollin Leonard, both Maine summer residents. Katz exhibited a series of “direct” paintings, a first pass at his 9” x 12” oil portraits in oil and Leonard, a virtual unknown, exhibited a multi-media work called “Vernal Pond.”

Programming for CMCA also includes ArtLab, which focuses on the local community, with classes and workshops for students and adults.

“The exhibits support the programming,” says McAvoy. “We exhibit to serve the educational programming. That exposes people to art who wouldn’t normally have access to shows of this work.”

When asked if the light is really what draws artists to Maine, McAvoy responds that it is the light and also the affordability of the wilds of Maine. And one other thing.

“Painters come here because of the light but also because of the isolation,” she said. “Maine is where the work gets done.”

Top Image: Installation of Particle Soul-014, 2016 | CMCA courtyard | (From L to R) executive director Suzette McAvoy, artist Jonathan Borofsky  | Photo by Amy Wilton

The post An American Kunsthall appeared first on Take Magazine.

What have you been up to in the last nine months since we spoke?

Well, let’s see… it’s been a busy year so far. At the very beginning of the year, the dead of winter, I hibernated, planned new projects, and snuggled with my three dogs. In the spring, I did a residency at the Mass MoCA studios in North Adams, MA through a cool organization called Assets for Artists. While I was there, I started on the lion’s share of work for the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) Biennials coming up this fall, and met a group of super talented artists and equally good people.

Installation view: Left:”Hangover rag rug”, ink drawing on cut paper 2015 | Right: “New England Short Stack” crochet thread, panel nails on wall, ink on thread | photo by Michael Winters

Shortly after that, my day job as a producer for a small creative branding agency brought me to Munich and the Alps, a place I had never been, and was promptly blown away by those mountains! In late spring/early summer I had work in group shows at Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, and George Marshall Store Gallery in York, Maine. Also, I got really into container gardening this year, and built a vertical planter, which I’ve wanted to do for years.

Index (Mountains)
Ink on paper in color stained frame, 2016 | 20.5 x 27.25 inches | Photo by Stewart Clements

In late summer, I found out I was the 2016 recipient of an Artist Advancement Grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and I could not be more grateful and excited! And here we are—at present, I’m mentoring a few students this semester as part of the New Hampshire Institute of Art low-residency MFA program, finishing up work for the CMCA biennial, starting new work for a solo show at Carroll and Sons in Boston during late January, and looking forward to the deCordova Biennial opening on Oct. 6th.

What can visitors expect to see from you during the upcoming biennials at the deCordova and CMCA?

The work that I have in the deCordova Biennial is all new, and mostly new at CMCA. In the last year, my work has been very focused on landscape and ecology—and connecting these subjects conceptually with everyday objects, and asking questions like: How do everyday objects in the domestic realm relate to a natural landscape? How does our everyday world expand and connect to a larger framework? I am working with the Life Nature Library book series a lot this year—making painted trompe-l’oeil objects that look like the books, and at the same time are asking—is this a landscape painting? As well as making drawings where I copy the entire index of these books and am asking—is this a landscape drawing? Examples from this body of work is in both Biennials.

What is your art—whether a recreation of a rug, phone book, beach chair, or some other everyday object—trying to communicate?

I want my work to inspire viewers to look closer at everyday life. I want to help educate perception. I think that we can find wonder in the everyday, if only we just slightly shift our view, keep our eyes open, and are willing to see the connection between things.  I want to make work born from this place and have it inspire in others a desire to interact with the tangible/ physical world. To roam, to touch, to seek, to ask questions and to have reverence for the history that is contained in places, and also the grandeur of nature and this planet we inhabit.

(Untitled) Blanket acrylic, ink and correction fluid on wood, 2015
52hx49wx1d | Photo by Michael Winters 20

Drawing great attention to the unremarkable calls into question what can be considered precious and worthy of investigation. Rooted in observation and taking the form of drawings, painted objects, and installations, my work aims to bend perceptions of the things we recognize and experience as common and everyday, thus creating a deeper awareness of the experience of “seeing,” and allowing for unexpected connections to be made between concept, materials, and the iconography of objects. As much an experiment with materials as a behavioral study of the familiar and analog, my work engages the viewer in an active game of questioning perceptions by dissecting, duplicating and mimicking the objects, underlying patterns and organizing systems that make up the backdrop of our lives.

The term ‘Trompe L’oeil’ literally means “to fool the eye” but I like to think of it as meaning “pay attention, look closer, have awareness, alter your perception.” If my work can disarm the viewer and cause them to truly be in present time for just a moment when they are looking at my art, that’s what I consider a successful piece.

Undoubtedly a lot of time goes into each of your pieces. Can you describe the process?

At its beginning/discovery phase, it is non-linear, experimental, and subject to chance. Once a project is underway my process slows and becomes more about the repetitive and meditative.

My background is in painting, and I guess at some point, I wanted to allow myself the freedom to think outside of one particular media, and only two dimensions. Once I gave myself that permission, I realized that there are lots of materials I want to work with and learn about, and lots of different objects in the world that I was curious about. I think keeping that sense of wonder and curiosity alive about the everyday stuff and sites of life are what drive me to make work.

I will come across “perfect objects” out in the world, and these things have often been used, like an old beach chair or map, and I like to dissect them, figure out how they were made, and how they behave. I combine that with an interest in materials themselves—like loving the way hand-folded metal looks, or how multiple lines drawn on paper can add up to mimic thread or woven textile—and I make honest work about it. I look, handle, inspect and recreate in an effort to understand. Deception is not the major goal—it’s understanding. That process is everything to me. The final piece is like an artifact of this investigation.

Untitled (plant hardiness zone map) Acrylic and ink on folded aluminum 20 x31 inches | Photo by Stewart Clements 2016

My process of recreating objects to mimic the original is derived from a desire to really understand how an object behaves, how it is made, and how it causes or reacts to human encounters. I’m also interested in how the process of repetitive mark making has a rhythmic, satisfying, meditative quality.

Photo by Tammy Byron

Carly Glovinskiis a multi-media artist working in Dover, New Hampshire. Be sure to visit her website and sign up for her newsletter for updates and messages from the artist.    

Top photo second multi-rag rug, ink and correction fluid on paper, 2014 | 34h x 46w | Photo courtesy of the Carly Glovinski

The post Carly Glovinski – is this a landscape painting? appeared first on Take Magazine.

Do you notice how much we mention aspects of weaving in everyday conversation? How much we talk about the ‘common threads’ through our lives, the very ‘fabric of our beings’, moments that pull at our ‘heart-strings’?

We are all Woven in some way and Gail Skudera‘s show of the same name at the Maine Museum of Photographic Art, communicates this philosophy in a visually stunning way. This upcoming exhibition, curated by MMPA director Denise Froehlich, is a mixed-media feast. Skudera has a long and impressive resume of shows across the states and the world starting in the 80’s; textiles, photography, collage, assemblage, painting – all these techniques and materials have passed through her work. Director Froehlich is enthusiastic and rightfully so, “Talk about expanding the photographic medium, the truly spectacular thing about Skudera’s work is that her process is photographic in nature, and she realizes the imagery employing weaving and construction.  There isn’t another artist using this methodology in the State!”

The Changling, 2011 | woven mixed media, 41 x 40 inches

Opening October 3rd, and running until December 30th, visitors to the exhibition will be presented with assemblages, collages, and wall hangings featuring human subjects, known and unknown to the artist. Skudera notes, “Some are personal and some have become personal after working with them for so long.  For years I have worked with family photographs and photographs of known subjects. When I began to introduce found photographs that I was in some way ‘taken’ by, it opened up new freedom for me in approaching what was once familiar.”

Aperture, 2014 | woven mixed media, 30 x 12 inches

We were Taken with it too – Skudera presents us with one the most inventive examples of contemporary collage. The manipulation and interpretation of photography is being stretched out of its old familiar format now that digital has become the top dog. Film and printing continue to be used, but in wilder, more abstract, innovative ways than they were initially made for. Her use of photographs as raw material for weaving a base for her work marries the equally analog world of fiber arts, culminating in objects that are as appealing texturally as visually. There is space for the work to breathe, open fretwork here and there, button reference points, you can look at the surface and then sink in deeper. There’s a conceptual element as well, the artist as needleworker, darner, knitter that gives the works a homey familiarity and the color palette evokes a nebulous but nostalgic place in time.

Block Portrait, 2010 | mixed media on blocks

Gail Skudera’s WOVEN
Maine Museum of Photographic Arts
5th floor, USM Glickman Library
Portland ME
Exhibition Dates: October 3 – December 30, 2016
Opening Reception: Thursday October 27, 6-8pm
Artist Talk: Thursday December 1, 6-8pm

All of the works shown at MMPA are for sale (unless noted).  70% of the proceeds go directly to the artist and 30% to MMPA to cover operating expenses.

Top image: Aperture, 2014, woven mixed media, detail

The post Gail Skudera: W O V E N appeared first on Take Magazine.

The internationally renowned Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH recently appointed a new Director and CEO, Dr. Alan Chong. Dr. Chong will be the Museum’s ninth director in 87 years; he succeeds Susan Strickler, who retired in June after 20 years in the position.

“I am truly honored to have been chosen as the Director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art. This excellent museum has accomplished a great deal, not the least a beautiful building which ties its historic components together,” said Dr. Chong.

The Museum, which features European and American paintings; decorative arts; photographs and sculpture, includes work by Picasso; Monet; O’Keeffe, Wyeth and LeWitt. From October 1, 2016 through January 16, 2017 the Museum will showcase an exhibit Mount Washington: The Crown of New England, the first-ever museum exhibition devoted entirely to art featuring the Mount Washington region, and the first exhibit Dr. Chong will oversee in his new role.

“[The Currier Museum] is a small museum with impact – and with great potential,” said Dr. Chong. “There is a great advantage in being a nimble and creative institution that can adjust to its environment. I hope that I can help imagine a new path for the Currier Museum.”

Dr Alan Chong | Image courtesy Currier Museum

2017 is set to be a banner year for the Museum, aside from this recent change in leadership, the Museum was also awarded a $60,000 grant from Jane’s Trust, which will be used to expand its popular arts education programs. In the coming year, the Museum aims to increase access to artistic expression and arts education for underserved populations.

Dr. Chong in particular believes strongly in this mission: “We should bring the museum closer to its audience by bringing a depth of engagement with more first-time visitors and stronger support.”

Though Dr. Chong is new to the Manchester area, having relocated from Singapore where he served as the Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum, he is not new to the New England area. From 1999 through 2010, Dr. Chong held the position of Lia and William Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

“Manchester is an up and coming town in a beautiful part of the world. I couldn’t be happier to be settling here: it’s cooler than Singapore and the traffic is better than Boston!” said Dr. Chong.

Dr. Chong officially began his position at the Museum on Thursday September 8th.

He concluded, “It’s my hope that the Currier Museum will be treasured by all of New England.”

Top Image Entrance to Currier Museum | ‘Origins’ sculpture by Mark di Suvero 2001-2004 | Image courtesy Currier Museum

The post A Season of Change for Currier Museum appeared first on Take Magazine.

To hear Tim Rollins talk about his story, his art and the process of creating is like listening to a preacher for the creative. In the early 80s, the Pittsfield, Maine, native began teaching a combined curriculum of art and reading to children in the South Bronx. From their work together, he and his students developed a collaborative process that combined working with printed matter as the core of and art making process that eventually grew beyond the classroom.

He formed the Art and Knowledge Workshop with a group of academically at-risk students who became known as the art collective K.O.S. (Kids of Survival). Current members of K.O.S. include Angel Abreu, Jorge Abreu, Robert Branch, Ala Ebtekar, Ricardo Nelson Savinon, Noe Sosa, and Logan Swedick. Now more than 30 years later they are still making work together as well as exporting their process of collaboration and creating through workshops in schools and art installations around the globe.

This September, the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) is presenting Unbound: Tim Rollins and K.O.S., the museum’s first survey of work by the group.  The show contains work from the PMA’s collection as well as works from the museums and private collections that have added Rollins/K.O.S. to their holdings.  As part of the exhibition, the mural A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be placed on permanent exhibition, unveiled in a very special collaboration with the Portland Symphony Orchestra featuring live music and narration by the artist Tim Rollins on September 16th.

Take recently had a chance to speak with Rollins about his life growing up in Maine and how it impacted his development as an artist and how it has influenced his work with K.O.S.

Tim Rollins (third from left) and the artists of KOS | Photo courtesy Portland Museum of Art

Were you always an artist, or did that come after some particular moment? Did that moment happen when you were still living in Maine, or did it come elsewhere?

I was always an artist since I or anyone in my family remembers as I was raised in Burnham and Pittsfield, Maine. While my brother wanted GI Joes and my sisters wanted Easy Bake Ovens and Barbies, my favorite thing to get would be a dozen of those newsprint Doodle Pads and the big boxes of Crayola crayons that you could get at the Mammoth Mart at the Elm Plaza in Waterville.

Funny, but I was recently asked by Phaidon, a major art book publishing house, to relate when I first encountered a work of truly fine art. What a question. I was racking my brain and memory. I loved the illuminated marquee over my beloved Bijou Theatre on Main Street in Pittsfield.  Liked the slowly spinning safety yellow and red arrow Sunoco gas station sign on Main Street as well. But then it all came back to me – when I was real little I used to visit the Unitarian Church just off Main Street as well. The church had this magical stained glass window in the back portraying Jesus preaching to a group of children in front of Tree of Life. My folks remember me running to the back of the church and standing on the back row pew and just gawking at the glowing apparition until they had to drag me out of there. That was it, I was to be an artist. Just found out a year ago after research for the Phaidon thing that the window was made in the early 1900’s by the great Louis Comfort Tiffany. In Pittsfield, Maine! Amazing Grace.

What about growing up in Maine has influenced your work? Has it been a constant thread or is it something that rears its head from time to time?

While I was growing up on Somerset and then Cianchette Avenues in Pittsfield, my daddy was a hand sewer of shoes at the Northeast Shoe Co. and then Dexter Shoes.  It was hard work and sometimes he would bring materials home to make in the house to add to his piecework. He made the best things and to this day I can’t look at a pair of shoes from New England (those that are left!) and not see the craft and beauty but the sweat that went into their making. My mum worked there for a while also, took a break and then became for many years a ward secretary at the small Sebasticook Valley Hospital in town.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (detail) , ink on latex saturated cellulose | Image courtesy Portland Museum of Art

I believe Mainers have a very strong culture of makers and healers and – yes – very pragmatic mystics. Almost all the people I had engaged with in my youth were “doers of the word.” My White Light moment came when I was maybe 12 years old and Gramm (Alice) Rollins was working in the dorm dining room at Colby College in Waterville.  One blustery winter night, she needed a ride home from the college to her place in Burnham. She called my dad and she told him to “bring Timmy.”  He wanted to know why and she said, “Just never you mind and bring him!”  I was thrilled because I always loved seeing her and had never actually been to Colby before. The college is on a hill just outside of downtown and there is a blue beacon on a spire in the center of the campus. Going into the building to pick up Grammy we slowly trudged through the snow to get to the car and she turned to me looking me straight in the eye and said, “Timmy you are going to a school like this someday.” While I didn’t end up at Colby, her prophecy was done. Now the Colby Museum of Art has our Darkwater work in their permanent collection and will be included on view in the Portland Museum of Art exhibition. I very lucky and blessed to have received a superlative education at Warsaw Junior High School, the Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield and the experimental University of Maine in Augusta under the leadership of Philip Paratore – all who encouraged (or better, tolerated) my attempts at becoming an artist as maker…as healer…as preacher.

Your history of your collaborative work with KOS is rooted is an urban educational experience. What do you think the work would have been like if you started working collaboratively in a rural setting?

Some of my most moving experiences as an educator have been encountered in the workshops I’ve conducted with youth and communities in Maine over the years. I’ve worked with the wonderful Edge folk in Washington County, the Denmark Arts Center, A Company of Girls in Portland and most recently another almost all girls workshop toward the making of a large scale painting in celebration of the life and legacy of the great Sen. Margaret Chase Smith that is now on view in the renovated Sen. MCS Federal Building in downtown Bangor. Would love to do something in Portland soon…it’s been in my mind for a while.

How does it feel to be coming back home and making work in Portland?

As for the Portland experience, I hope it’s going to be like a Homecoming Service – a revival meeting praising the everlasting power of art and true community.

For more information on the Portland Museum of Art, follow them on Facebook, Twitter and their Instagram.

Top Image: Tim Rollins and K. O. S. (United States, established 1984), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2016, ink on latex saturated cellulose, 159 3/4 x 416 5/8 inches. Museum purchase with support from the Maine Center for Creativity, 2016.7. | Image courtesy of Portland Museum of Art

The post Tim Rollins & K.O.S.: Art for revival appeared first on Take Magazine.

Clover Burke was around five years old when her father began taking her on road trips. A Rhode Island photographer known for both commercial and fine art work, Jesse Burke cleverly positions his daughter in natural environments that are both awe-inspiring and vaguely menacing.

Flesh and Blood, 2012 photo by Jesse Burke

Burke released the images over a span of years and was amazed by the lack of criticism he encountered.  “You don’t see a lot of fathers and daughters together,” Burke says about the series, which he’s named Wild and Precious. “And there’s something timely in these pictures since people are hyper-aware of the environment right now.”

Burke humbly calls himself “nature dad photographer guy” and refers to all of his work as pictures (not photos or photographs), almost as though this were an amateur hobby and these photos aren’t being snapped up by museum curators. The RISD Museum acquired a number of the photos, which are on display through September 22nd, 2016, and follow-up exhibitions are on deck at Southern New Hampshire University’s McIninch Art Gallery and Gallery Kayafas in Boston.

The project is by all accounts a hit, one of few art projects to ever receive praise from both Vice and People. Photos from the series have entered museum collections, and the accompanying Wild and Precious book from Daylight Books made a slew of year-end Best Of lists at the end of 2015. Oh, and Time Magazine selected Burke’s Instagram feed as Rhode Island’s best in their coast-to-coast roundup of the nation’s best accounts worth following.

Face of Despair, 2015 photo by Jesse Burke

Clover is alone in each photo, even if her dad is nearby with a camera and hopefully a first aid kit, just in case. In many instances, she’s secondary to the natural wonders surrounding her. And there’s always an element of risk. In the remote Pacific Northwest, Jesse and Clover heard (but thankfully didn’t see) a nearby mountain lion. On another trip, they narrowly missed an encounter with a black bear.

The photos work on a number of levels. A cute kid being cute – that’s the entry level. Raising environmental consciousness for a younger generation – that’s another one. But then there are the deeper meanings. Popular culture has insisted that young girls are always threatened by shadowy outside forces. It’s a story as old as Little Red Riding Hood, but we’ve never seen it quite in this way before.

Clover is Burke’s oldest child, but now her younger sisters Poppy and Honey accompany the family on road trips. Would Jesse consider duplicating the project with his younger girls?

Best Friend, 2013 photo by Jesse Burke

Probably not, he says, but only because the family now travels as a unit. “It seems obvious, but one unintended consequence is that the project made us into an adventure family.” (The younger girls make regular appearances on Burke’s Instagram feed.) Favorite day trips range from Bristol CT, Rhode Island’s Audobon Society to the town of Dorset, Vermont.

In A Young Girl’s Mind, 2013 photo by Jesse Burke

The road trips have slowed down while Burke promotes the series and plans his next body of work. “I’m not exactly sure how that’ll pan out. I can’t imagine the next series being as successful as this one,” he says. “But maybe it can.”

Top photo Blistered, 2011 by Jesse Burke

The post Capturing Clover appeared first on Take Magazine.