Maine College of Art

Opening and Book Signing for On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution
2016-04-21 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | ICA at MECA&D, 522 Congress St., Portland, Maine, 04101, United States
Opening and Book Signing for On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution
With Drew Hodges, Founder of SpotCo
Thursday, April 21, 6:00–8:00pm with remarks at 7:00pm
Artists at Work, First floor of Porteous
Published by Rizzoli, On Broadway is a visual and oral history of Broadway with artwork by SpotCo, the New York design company founded by Drew Hodges, who will be a faculty member in the Graphic Design Department this fall. The book was written by Drew Hodges with a foreword by Chip Kidd and an introduction by David Sedaris.

Art in Exodus Storytellling
2016-06-20 18:00 - 20:00 | ME
On National Refugee Day, Monday, June 20, from 6-8pm, MECA&D hosts “Stories from Art in Exodus,” a storytelling event through which the work of the artists in the Art in Exodus exhibition will come to life.
Art in Exodus is a mentoring, exhibition, and storytelling project through which refugee artists share their art and culture through an exhibition and a storytelling event.
Maine College of Art & Design is pleased to present the second annual Art in Exodus exhibition in it’s flagship Porteous Building, from June 3-24, 2016, in recognition of World Refugee Day, which takes place every year on June 20 and in conjunction with Portland’s World Refugee Day celebration at King Middle School on Saturday, June 4, 2016. Open 9:00am—5:00pm weekdays in the Porteous Lobby.
The exhibition Art in Exodus features five artists: Kifah Abdullah from Iraq (acrylic paintings); Nabaa Alobaidi from Iraq (traditional pyrography woodburning); Titi De Baccarat from the African country of Gabon (mixed media paintings, sculpture, and jewelry); Jawad Alfatlawi from Iraq (handmade traditional instruments); and Diana Brown from Colombia (wearable textile art).
This project is funded in part by an Arts & Humanities grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maine Humanities Council.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Seth Goldenberg MFA '05, Designer
2016-06-23 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Seth Goldenberg, CEO of The Epic Decade
Seth Goldenberg is the Founder & CEO of The Epic Decade, a design think tank group propelled by the essential question "How will we Live, Learn, Work, Play, and Sustain ourselves in the 21st century?" The studio works with clients, sponsors, and partners to convene thought leaders, develop intellectual property, forge stakeholder and business partnership collaborations, and launch complex demonstration projects that represent breakthrough business and cultural models. Participants in The Epic Decade's IDEAS Salons have included executives from Google, Apple, GE, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Harvard University, American Express, the Gap, MIT Media Lab, the Guggenheim Museum, Genentech, University of Toronto, IBM, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, NASA, and more. The Epic Decade takes on some of the most complex, wicked, and inextricable challenges of our time.
RSVP on Facebook here.
About the MFA Visiting Artist Summer Lecture Series
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2016 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with the MFA Summer Intensive Residency Program, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East Magazine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.
Header credit
Photo courtesy of Epic Decade.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-Chief of Hyperallergic
2016-06-27 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-Chief of Hyperallergic
Hrag Vartanian is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic, the winning art blogazine based in Brooklyn, NY. His art criticism explores the evolving status of art, its audience, and its transmission and reception. His words and images have appeared in countless publications, and he has been invited as a guest commentator on Al Jazeera, CBC, ABC, WNYC, KCRW, and other national and international media outlets. In addition to his writing and commentary, he has curated numerous exhibitions, including #TheSocialGraph, which was the first exploration of the evolving landscape of social media art back in 2010, and The Arch of my Eye's Orbit at BAM in 2016. He maintains an extensive Flickr archive of art-related images (10,000+) under a Creative Commons license.
RSVP on Facebook here.
About the MFA Visiting Artist Summer Lecture Series
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2016 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with the MFA Summer Intensive Residency Program, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East Magazine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.
Header credit
Photo by Veken Gueyikian.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Huma Bhabha, Sculptor
2016-07-05 17:30 - 19:00 | ME
Huma Bhabha, Sculptor
Huma Bhabha is known for her engagement with the human figure and her use of found materials. Often tending towards the grotesque, Bhabha's sculptural works and photo-based drawings feature bodies that appear dissected and dismembered, but one can likewise view them as monuments to human life reclaimed from the detritus of a post-apocalyptic landscape. Incorporating materials like Styrofoam, animal bones and clay, Bhabha creates figures that feel unstable and ephemeral. Insistently contemporary, they nevertheless recall classical figurative traditions across a range of cultures and historical periods. Huma Bhabha’s selected solo and group exhibitions include Wages of Fear, C L E A R I N G, Brussels, Belgium; Salon 94, New York, NY; VW (VeneKlasen Werner), Berlin, Germany; Unnatural Histories, MoMA PS1, L.I.C., NY; All The Worlds Futures, 56TH La Biennale di Venezia 2015, Venice, Italy; Wild Noise: Artwork from The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; and America is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art Inaugural exhibition, New York, NY.
RSVP on Facebook here.
About the MFA Visiting Artist Summer Lecture Series
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2016 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with the MFA Summer Intensive Residency Program, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East Magazine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.
Artwork Credit
Detail of Against What? Against Whom?, 2014, Cork, Styrofoam, wood, acrylic paint, oilstick
Sculpture Dimensions: 95 x 36 1/8 x 24 inches (241.3 x 91.8 x 61 cm)
Base Dimensions: 56 x 44 x 4 inches (142.2 x 111.8 x 10.2 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York

Visiting Artist Lecture: Lori Nix, Photographer
2016-07-11 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Lori Nix, Photographer
Lori Nix was born in the late 1960’s and raised in the American Midwest. Her early exposure to the destructive powers of Mother Nature and Hollywood dystopian stories fueled her young imagination. For the last 20+ years she has constructed small scale dioramas and photographed them. Beginning with retelling the tall tales of her youth in her Accidentally Kansas series, she has progressed to imagining urban scenes of the apocalypse. Her last series, The City, spanned 10 years and imagined a future mysteriously devoid of mankind. Intensely detailed and rich in color, her photographs offer up a possible future for modern society. A small selection of Nix’s solo and group exhibition venues include The Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany; Galerie Klüser, Munich, Germany; Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA; ClampArt Gallery, New York, NY; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; and Apex Art, New York, NY. Her solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Art, Kansas Focus Gallery, Overland Park, KS, is upcoming.
RSVP on Facebook here.
About the MFA Visiting Artist Summer Lecture Series
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2016 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with the MFA Summer Intensive Residency Program, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East Magazine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.
Artwork Credit
Lori Nix, Fountain, from the series The City, C-print, 2008

Visiting Artist Lecture: Keith Edmier, Sculptor
2016-07-18 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Keith Edmier, Sculptor
Keith Edmier has evolved his artistic process into one that intertwines his own personal narrative with historical personalities, architectural simulations, and botanical wonders. He has directly collaborated with many iconic figures such as Farrah Fawcett, Evel Knievel, and Frank Veteran (the doctor who attended to John Lennon the night Lennon was shot), among others. His use of materials such as casting his childhood crush in white Crayola crayon, the recreation of his childhood home, or masterfully executed botanical specimens in otherworldly synthetic materials add to the presence of his work when one encounters his ghostly creations. Keith Edmier has been the focus of numerous exhibitions including Keith Edmier: 1991—2007, CCS Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Crystaline Wombs and Pregnant Hearts, neugerriemschneider, Berlin; and Keith Edmier, Die Hallen Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum Haarlem, The Netherlands. His upcoming solo exhibition, Brementowne, opens at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2017.
RSVP on Facebook here.
About the MFA Visiting Artist Summer Lecture Series
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2016 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with the MFA Summer Intensive Residency Program, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East Magazine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.
Artwork Credit
Keith Edmier, Victoria Regia (First Night Bloom), Polyester resin, silicon rubber, acrylic, polyurethane, pollen, steel, 285 x 325 x 338 cm, 1998. Courtesy of the Akzo Nobel Art Foundation Collection.

Visiting Artist Lecture: Ann Hirsch, Performance Artist
2016-07-25 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Ann Hirsch, Performance Artist
Ann Hirsch is a video and performance artist who examines the influence of technology on popular culture and gender. Her immersive research has included becoming a YouTube "camwhore" with over two million video views and an appearance as a contestant on Frank the Entertainer...In a Basement Affair on VH1. She was awarded a Rhizome commission for her two-person play Playground, which debuted at the New Museum and was premiered by South London Gallery at Goldsmiths College. Hirsch has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Recent solo shows include MIT List Visual Arts Center, Smart Objects, Los Angeles, and the New Museum’s online project space First Look.
RSVP on Facebook here.
About the MFA Visiting Artist Summer Lecture Series
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2016 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with the MFA Summer Intensive Residency Program, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East Magazine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.
Artwork Credit
Ann Hirsch, Playground, 65 minute two person play, performed at The New Museum, presented by Rhizome, 2013. Photo cred: Oresti Tsonopoulous

Drew Hodges
2016-09-14 18:30 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
About Drew
Drew Hodges started Spot Design in 1987, followed ten years later by the launch of full service New York City entertainment advertising agency SpotCo in 1997. SpotCo has sold over 30 million tickets to live entertainment, and created the branding and advertising campaigns for numerous Broadway shows and cultural institutions including Rent, Chicago, The Color Purple, Kinky Boots, Avenue Q, Book of Mormon and Hamilton, among many others. Cultural institutions include The New York Botanical Gardens, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall among others.
Drew is the former president of the board of AIGA NY and most recently, the author of On Broadway: from Rent to Revolution, published April 2016 by Rizzoli Publishing. He has interests in the performing arts, contemporary art, watercolor, sculpture, and mentoring entrepreneurs. He and his husband Peter Kukielski reside in Portland and Cushing, Maine.

Artist Lecture: David Johansen and Mara Hennessey
2016-09-29 12:00 - 13:30 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Visiting Artist & Guest Lecturer Series invites professional artists, educators, curators, thought leaders, and creative entrepreneurs to give presentations on topics of interest and importance to the MECA&D community.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Supported in part by the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation, the Isabel K. Pease Trust, and friends of the College through the Osher Chair Naming Program. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
David Johansen and Mara Hennessey
Thursday, September 29th, 12:00pm

New York City rock legend David Johansen has been recognized over the years for his brilliant forays into entertainment and culture. In the 1970’s, Johansen, along with Johnny Thunders formed the seminal protopunk band the New York Dolls. Though they disbanded a few years later ("too much, too soon"), Johansen continued to follow his mantra of "adjust and create," emerging as the iconoclastic persona/performer known as Buster Poindexter, a "Rascal Pack bon vivant" known for his trademark martini glass and pompadour. With The Uptown Horns, Johansen/Poindexter performed a mixture of jazz, lounge, calpyso and novelty. He also occasionally performed with the Saturday Night Live house band.
Johansen claims that he is "neither unhappy enough to be a poet nor indifferent enough to be a philosopher, but lucid enough to be a condemned man." For several years he performed in an act called Howlin for Hubert, in which he conjured Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters with Howlin Wolf's guitarist, the late Hubert Sumlin. He continues to write, sing, and tour with the New York Dolls as well as through solo performances in NYC’s classiest nightclubs as Buster Poindexter.
Johansen's wife Mara Hennessey has been touring and collaborating with him for many years. A writer and visual artist, Hennessey designs, produces, and art directs their performances, both at home in New York, and all over the world. She is currently working on a book based on material from her travels.

Media Sponsors

Maine Home+Design is connected to those who live and breathe architecture, art, and good living. Its pages are filled with architectural masterpieces, home design inspiration, compelling artwork, designers, craftspeople, and the latest design trends and industry news.
At Maine Magazine, we believe that Maine is alive with intense creativity and passionate people who contribute to the vibrancy that makes this such a great place to live. We dedicate ourselves to bringing it to our readers.

ART21 Screening (2 days, 4 screenings)
2016-10-17 16:00 - 2016-10-18 18:00 | Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design, first floor
The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design (ICA at MECA&D) will be screening Art 21. There will be director introductions, Q&A, and student discussion with each viewing.
Featured artists: Natalia Almada, Edgar Arceneaux, Nick Cave, Minerva Cuevas, Stan Douglas, Theaster Gates, Brian Jungen, Barbara Kasten, Liz Larner, Tala Madani, Liz Magor, Damián Ortega, Pedro Reyes, Diana Thater, Jeff Wall, and Chris Ware.
Episodes, Dates, & Viewing Times

Mexico City — Monday, 10/17, 4:00pm
Los Angeles — Monday, 10/17, 6:00pm
Vancouver — Tuesday, 10/18, 9:30am
Chicago —Tuesday, 10/18 , 6:00pm

About Art21 Season 8
The series provides unparalleled access to the most innovative artists of our time, revealing how artists engage the culture around them and how art allows viewers to see the world in new ways. Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actress Claire Danes will join the Peabody Award-winning documentary television series “Art in the Twenty-First Century” as its broadcast host for the series’ eighth season.
The new season showcases the geography, architecture, society, culture, and heritage of each location. Each episode highlights aspects of contemporary life that viewers everywhere experience. “Using the sounds, colors, and energy of the city as a landscape that artists respond to and interact with, the films expand beyond the studio to explore each artist’s engagement with their communities and the world around them,” said ART21 Executive Producer Eve Moros Ortega.
Episode Descriptions
Mexico City
Mexico City artists exit their homes and studios to use the growing megalopolis as their canvas. The artists present everyday materials as artworks, mine recognizable images for their poetic potential, and take their art to the streets. Damián Ortega (b.1967, Mexico City, Mexico) uses objects from his everyday life—Volkswagen Beetle cars, Day of the Dead posters, locally sourced corn tortillas—to make spectacular sculptures, which suggest stories of both mythic import and cosmological scale. Pedro Reyes (b.1972, Mexico City, Mexico) designs ongoing projects that propose playful solutions to urgent social problems. From turning guns into musical instruments, to hosting a People’s United Nations to address pressing concerns, to offering ecologically friendly grasshopper burgers from a food cart, Reyes transforms existing problems into ideas for a better world. Minerva Cuevas (b.1975, Mexico City, Mexico) is a conceptual and socially-engaged artist who creates sculptural installations and paintings in response to politically charged events such as the tension between world starvation and capitalistic excess. Cuevas documents community protests in a cartography of resistance while also creating mini-sabotages—altering grocery store bar codes and manufacturing student identity cards—as part of her Better Life Corporation. Natalia Almada (b.1974, Mexico City, Mexico), the great-granddaughter of Mexico’s controversial 40th president, Plutarco Elías Calles, makes intimate films that delve into the tragedies of her Mexican-American family’s personal history as well as the Sinaloa region’s violent present.

Chicago
Chicago is a city rooted in industry and towering architecture, and artists in Chicago are disrupting urban experience through experimentation. Nick Cave (b.1959, Fulton, MO, USA) creates “Soundsuits”—surreally majestic objects blending fashion and sculpture—that originated as metaphorical suits of armor in response to the Rodney King beatings and have evolved into vehicles for empowerment. Theaster Gates (b.1973, Chicago, IL, USA) first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures out of clay, tar, and renovated buildings, transforming the raw material of the South Side into radically reimagined vessels of opportunity for the community. Barbara Kasten (b.1936, Chicago, IL, USA) makes photographs and video projections in her studio that evoke an experience of movement through modernist architecture. Chris Ware (b.1967, Omaha, NE, USA), known for his New Yorker magazine covers, is hailed as a master of the comic art form. Ware’s complex graphic novels, which tell stories about people in suburban midwestern neighborhoods, poignantly reflect on the role of memory in constructing identity.

Vancouver
In small and tightly-knit Vancouver, artists reframe the world through a series of sophisticated illusions. By recreating historical moments, staging photos of vernacular scenes, and crafting intricate sculptures that trick the eye, artists reveal how everyday images and moments from the past are not always what they seem. Liz Magor (b.1948, Winnipeg, MB, Canada) makes uncannily realistic casts of humble objects—gloves, cardboard boxes, cigarettes—that speak to mortality and local histories. Through complex video installations, photos, theatrical productions, and virtual reality simulations, Stan Douglas (b.1960, Vancouver, BC, Canada) reenacts historical moments of tension that connect the history of Vancouver to broader social movements of struggle and utopian aspiration. Brian Jungen (b.1970, Fort St. John, BC, Canada) draws from his family’s ranching and hunting background, as well as his Dane-zaa heritage, when disassembling and recombining consumer goods into whimsical sculptures. Attentive to the accidental encounters that can inspire an image, photographer Jeff Wall (b.1946, Vancouver, BC, Canada) recreates flashes of inspiration by building sets and repeatedly photographing gestures until they coalesce into a picture that’s printed on a grand scale.

Los Angeles
While sprawling Los Angeles has world-class museums and art schools, artists working in the shadow of the entertainment industry are more “under the radar,” affording them the space and time to imagine. Diana Thater (b.1962, San Francisco, CA, USA) makes video installations that poetically grapple with threats to the natural world. She is filmed preparing for her monumental exhibition, The Sympathetic Imagination, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Liz Larner (b.1960, Sacramento, CA, USA) experiments with abstract sculptural forms in a dizzying array of materials, including polychromatic ceramics that evoke the tectonic geologic shifts of the western landscape. Tala Madani (b.1981, Tehran, Iran) skewers stereotypes in her sharply satirical paintings that evoke clashes of culture: men and women, the rational and the absurd, Western and non-Western. And Edgar Arceneaux (b.1972, Los Angeles, CA) investigates historical patterns through drawings, installations, and multimedia events, such as the reenactment of Ben Vereen’s tragically misunderstood blackface performance at Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural Gala.

Artist Lecture: Allyson Mitchell
2016-10-20 12:00 - 13:30 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Visiting Artist & Guest Lecturer Series invites professional artists, educators, curators, thought leaders, and creative entrepreneurs to present on topics of interest and importance to the MECA&D community.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Supported in part by the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation, the Isabel K. Pease Trust, and friends of the College through the Osher Chair Naming Program. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Allyson Mitchell
Thursday, October 20th, 12:00pm
Lady Sasquatchs – installation view of Midge by Allyson Mitchell
Allyson Mitchell is a maximalist artist working in sculpture, performance, installation and film. Her practice melds feminism and pop culture to investigate contemporary ideas about sexuality, autobiography and the body, largely through the use of reclaimed textile and abandoned craft. These articulations have resulted in a coven of lesbian feminist Sasquatch monsters, a room-sized Vagina Dentata, an army of super genius Holly Hobbies and a woodland utopic library complete with a wishing well of forbidden political knowledge. Her works have exhibited in galleries and festivals across Canada, the US and Europe, including Tate Modern, the Textile Museum of Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, Walker Art Center, The British Film Institute, Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
A survey of Mitchell's "hand made" animated film and video work recently toured festivals and performance spaces internationally with exhibitions in Dublin, London and Bologna. Until their retirement in 2004, Mitchell also performed actively with the fat performance troupe 'Pretty Porky and Pissed Off', which she co-founded in 1997.

Media Sponsors

Maine Home+Design is connected to those who live and breathe architecture, art, and good living. Its pages are filled with architectural masterpieces, home design inspiration, compelling artwork, designers, craftspeople, and the latest design trends and industry news.
At Maine Magazine, we believe that Maine is alive with intense creativity and passionate people who contribute to the vibrancy that makes this such a great place to live. We dedicate ourselves to bringing it to our readers.

Artist Lecture: Saya Woolfalk
2016-11-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Visiting Artist & Guest Lecturer Series invites professional artists, educators, curators, thought leaders, and creative entrepreneurs to present on topics of interest and importance to the MECA&D community.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Supported in part by the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation, the Isabel K. Pease Trust, and friends of the College through the Osher Chair Naming Program. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Saya Woolfalk
Thursday, November 3rd, 12:00pm
Saya Woolfalk, Virtual Chimeric Space, Mixed Media with HD Digital Video Projections, 42' x 12' x 12'
Saya Woolfalk is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. With the multi year projects No Place, The Empathics, and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women's lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.
Her work considers the idea that symbolic and ideological systems can be activated and re-imagined through collaboration, imaginative play and masquerade. To effect this re-imagining objects, bodies, and landscapes are constructed to immerse us in the logic of another place. In many ways Woolfalk’s works become the repository of the dreams and ideas of the many people who participate in producing and imagining the contours of the works. In the tradition of the fable or folk story, Woolfalk maps the desires and ideas of people to create narratives that attempt to be relevant to a contemporary audience.

Media Sponsors

Maine Home+Design is connected to those who live and breathe architecture, art, and good living. Its pages are filled with architectural masterpieces, home design inspiration, compelling artwork, designers, craftspeople, and the latest design trends and industry news.
At Maine Magazine, we believe that Maine is alive with intense creativity and passionate people who contribute to the vibrancy that makes this such a great place to live. We dedicate ourselves to bringing it to our readers.

"Freedom Over Me" Book Launch at Portland Public Library
2016-11-05 14:30 - 16:30 | Rhines Auditorium, Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Way, Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Ashley Bryan Presents New Book: Freedom Over Me at the Portland Public Library Rines Auditorium. November 5, 2016, 2:30-4:30pm

Followed by Book Signing by Award Winning Maine Author, Illustrator Ashley Bryan, 93, artist and author/illustrator of over 50 books, will present his newest and most ambitious book to date: Freedom Over Me. Books will be available for sale and signing at the event by Shermans Bookstore.
Freedom Over Me brings to life eleven slaves Bryan first encountered in an 1828 slave document he bought at a local Maine auction over a decade ago. The original bill of sale listed the eleven individuals only by name and price—along with other goods from a southern estate—livestock, household goods, farming equipment. With brush and pen, Bryan assigned the people faces, histories, skills, talents, relationships, hopes and dreams. He described the effort of creating their lives as a “mind, heart and soul project.” As he drew their portraits and wrote their stories in prose, he thought of himself, “a black man, reading, writing, painting freely,” all the time aware that, “had I been born under slavery…” He noted that a slave “caught in these acts would have been brutally beaten, even to the extreme of cutting off the slave’s hands.” When the anguish of these thoughts would overcome him, Bryan would go out into the garden and paint the hollyhocks and dahlias to relax.
“An impressive coalition of groups came together to organize this Portland launch for Freedom Over Me,” notes Daniel Minter, one of the event organizers. Minter, also an artist and children’s book illustrator who considers Ashley Bryan to be a significant mentor and role model, teaches at the Maine College of Art & Design (MECA&D). He is a founding board member of the Illustration Institute and serves on the Board of the Ashley Bryan Center. The Ashley Bryan Center, along with the
Illustration Institute, MECA&D, the Portland Public Library, the Abyssinian Meeting House, First Book and Shermans Bookstore are all collaborating partners in the event. The Illustration Institute’s exhibition, Picture This: The Art and Workings of the Illustration Institute will be on view in the library’s Lewis Gallery (through December 17). The exhibition shares the ideas, process, craft and art of seventeen local and national professional illustrators, including Ashley Bryan.
The November 5th Portland event is scheduled just two days after the prestigious Kirkus award will be announced in Austin, Texas. Freedom Over Me is one of six nominees in the Kirkus Young Readers Literature category, selected from over five hundred candidates. Bryan has won numerous awards for his works in children’s literature in the past, including a Coretta Scott King—Virginia Hamilton Award, and a Laura Ingalls Wilder Award—both for Lifetime Achievement. He received an honorary award at MECA&D in 2014 in acknowledgement of his lifetime achievements in the arts.

For more information about the event, call 207.871.1700 x723
For more information about Ashley Bryan, please visit this site.
Media contact: Donna Isaacs 802.236. 5646; donna.isaacs@gmail.com

Viewing: PBS' Mercy Street
2016-12-06 17:30 - 20:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
The Maine Film & Video Association (MFVA) will be hosting South Portland producer Lisa Quijano Wolfinger of Lone Wolf Media in a presentation of the Second Season of her most recent project, the prime time episodic drama for National PBS, Mercy Street. Wolfinger will be screening the first episode of the Second Season over a month earlier than its January 22nd premiere on Maine Public Television. She will lead a discussion of what it takes to sell an idea to the PBS network, how this second season differs from the first in terms of characters, story and production. Free Leonardo’s Pizza and drinks.

The event is open to all. MFVA members and MECA&D students are free.
Non-member admission is $10.

The series was co-created by David Zabel, (showrunner/writer for NBC’s ER) and is executive produced by David Zuker (The Good Wife) and Ridley Scott (Gladiator and Thelma & Louise).

Artist Lecture: Dyani White Hawk
2017-02-02 12:00 - 14:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Dyani White Hawk
Thursday, February 2, 12:00pm
MECA&D’s Visiting Artist & Guest Lecturer Series invites professional artists, educators, curators, thought leaders, and creative entrepreneurs to present on topics of interest and importance to the MECA&D community. All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited.
As a woman of Lakota and European ancestry, White Hawk was raised among Native American communities within urban landscapes. Her work reflects these cross-cultural experiences through the combination of modern abstract painting and traditional Lakota art forms. Some works are executed strictly in paint; others incorporate beads, porcupine quills, ledger paper, brass sequins and other materials representing a Lakota aesthetic. White Hawk strives to create honest, inclusive compositions that acknowledge all parts of her history, Native and non-Native, urban and reservation, grassroots and academia. These works are intended to increase exposure and inclusion of Native American contributions and thought within contemporary arts. The complexity of visual and conceptual references encourage conversations which in turn acknowledge the diversity of Native experiences, break down misconceptions, generalizations, and reinforce the importance of a Native voice within contemporary arts.
Dyani White Hawk, Untitled (blue and gold), acrylic, oil, vintage beads, thread on canvas, 2016

Media Sponsors

Maine Home+Design is connected to those who live and breathe architecture, art, and good living. Its pages are filled with architectural masterpieces, home design inspiration, compelling artwork, designers, craftspeople, and the latest design trends and industry news.
At Maine Magazine, we believe that Maine is alive with intense creativity and passionate people who contribute to the vibrancy that makes this such a great place to live. We dedicate ourselves to bringing it to our readers.

Artist Lecture: Abelardo Morell
2017-03-02 12:00 - 14:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Abelardo Morell
Thursday, March 2, 12:00pm
MECA&D’s Visiting Artist & Guest Lecturer Series invites professional artists, educators, curators, thought leaders, and creative entrepreneurs to present on topics of interest and importance to the MECA&D community. All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited.
Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree in 1977 from Bowdoin College and an MFA from The Yale University School of Art in 1981. In 1997 he received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College.
His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room(1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), published by Phaidon Press. Recent publications include a limited edition book by The Museum of Modern Art in New York of his Cliché Verre images with a text by Oliver Sacks.
Abelardo Morell, Tent Camera Image, Walden Pond, 2016

Media Sponsors

Maine Home+Design is connected to those who live and breathe architecture, art, and good living. Its pages are filled with architectural masterpieces, home design inspiration, compelling artwork, designers, craftspeople, and the latest design trends and industry news.
At Maine Magazine, we believe that Maine is alive with intense creativity and passionate people who contribute to the vibrancy that makes this such a great place to live. We dedicate ourselves to bringing it to our readers.

Justice for Women Lecture Series: Storytelling Event & Write-in
2017-03-22 12:00 | Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design, first floor
Justice for Women Lecture Series: Storytelling Event and Write-in
MECA&D is teaming up with the Justice for Women Lecture Series, presented by the University of Maine School of Law, and the USM Office of Multicultural Student Affairs to host a storytelling event and write-in on Wednesday, March 22 from 12:00pm–1:30pm in the ICA. Joining us from Malaysia, Zainah Anwar, a leading voice in the Muslim feminist movement, will encourage others to tell their stories by sharing her own.

Want to help?
There is no action without inspiration.
In addition to attending the event, you can donate postcards and supplies for the event. We want these stories to inspire participants to write messages of hope to their senators, representatives, family members, or friends. Our state is home to over 8,000 new Mainers who are Muslim, making this awareness raising event as much a local issue as it is global.
For questions contact Shiva Darbandi at diversity@meca.edu.

Artist Lecture: Ian Lynam Design
2017-04-06 12:00 - 14:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
Ian Lynam Design
Thursday, April 6, 12:00pm
MECA&D’s Visiting Artist & Guest Lecturer Series invites professional artists, educators, curators, thought leaders, and creative entrepreneurs to present on topics of interest and importance to the MECA&D community. All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited.

Ian Lynam Design is a multidisciplinary creative studio specializing in unique solutions for international clients. The studio has been based in Tokyo since 2005. Ian Lynam Design is a Tokyo design studio operating at the intersection of graphic design, design education and design research. We specialize in identity, cultural research and typography. We make stuff for forward-thinking humans.
Ian Lynam speaks internationally on a range of topics from Japanese typography to cultural concepts revolving around design. Presentations tend to wind and weave through aesthetic trends and analysis, graphic design history, design criticism, and political economy.

Media Sponsors

Maine Home+Design is connected to those who live and breathe architecture, art, and good living. Its pages are filled with architectural masterpieces, home design inspiration, compelling artwork, designers, craftspeople, and the latest design trends and industry news.
At Maine Magazine, we believe that Maine is alive with intense creativity and passionate people who contribute to the vibrancy that makes this such a great place to live. We dedicate ourselves to bringing it to our readers.

Gallery Talk: Curator Susanne Slavick of 'UNLOADED'
2017-04-06 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design, first floor
Please join us for a Gallery Talk with Curator Susanne Slavick on Thursday, April 6, 2017, 6:00-7:30pm.
Renee Stout, Baby's First Gun, 1998
Curated by Susanne Slavick, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art, Carnegie Mellon University; UNLOADED is a multimedia group show that explores historical and social issues surrounding the availability, use, and impact of guns in our culture. It includes works by: Lauren F. Adams, Nina Berman, Joshua Bienko, Casey Li Brander, Anthony Cervino, Mel Chin, Cathy Colman, Dadpranks, James Duesing, Jessica Fenlon, Vanessa German, Jinshan, Andrew Ellis Johnson, Jennifer Nagle Myers, Adrian Piper, Don Porcella, Devan Shimoyama, Susanne Slavick, Renee Stout and Stephanie Syjuco.
UNLOADED presents a number of perspectives on the image and impact of guns in contemporary culture, though none endorse them as a means to an end. Works by 19 artists touch upon a host of issues surrounding access to and use of firearms, across demographic categories. They examine and represent the role that guns continue to play in our national mythologies, suicide rates, individual and mass murder, domestic violence, and the militarization of civilian life.
Gun ownership and control is a divisive topic in this country. The artists in UNLOADED visualize the power of the gun as icon and instrument, the damage it can do and how weapons might be rejected, broken or silenced. Some show the power that guns wield in our daily realities and personal fantasies. Others mourn and resist that power, doing everything they can to take it away, believing there are better ways to resolve conflicts, ensure safety and keep the peace.
UNLOADED is touring to ten venues across the country.

Artist Lecture: Jesse Small
2017-06-19 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Jesse Small
Jesse Small, Aurora Arbor 2016. Stainless Steel throughout. 11’ x 26’ x 4’.
Monday, June 19 at 5:30pm
Jesse is currently an artist in residence at Angels Gate Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California. Prior to that he has worked and shown in numerous places, including Vallauris, France, Jingdezhen, China, and Ernabella, Australia. These experiences have led Jesse to combine a unique range of primitive and high tech processes from distant corners of the globe. His work has consistently incorporated local culture and techniques. Present in all his work is questioning selected norms. This is done using great attention to craft in sculptures that elevate simple utilitarian forms, that are themselves utilitarian, or made from found objects. Recently his work with shadows asks the viewer to trade permanence for an object that reveals cycles. In any case, Jesse's range in scale and materials reflect a studio process formed by the moments necessity rather than overarching ideals or dogma.
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

Artist Lecture: Tamara Gonzales
2017-06-26 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Tamara Gonzales
I Am The Hummingbird77 x60 in acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2016
Monday, June 26 at 5:30pm
Originally from California Tamara Gonzales has lived and worked in New York for more than three decades. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Shoot the Lobster and Martos Gallery, Sargent’s Daughters, Regina Rex, Sometimes (works of art), Norte Maar, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her work has recently been featured in the New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, and Hyperallergic. She is represented by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York City.
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

Artist Lecture: Ruth Erickson
2017-07-05 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Ruth Erickson
Liza Voll, photographer
Wednesday, July 5 at 5:30pm
Ruth Erickson is Mannion Family Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. She co-curated the major exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 with Helen Molesworth and has organized exhibitions of the work of artists Rokni and Ramin Haerizadeh and Ethan Murrow at the ICA/Boston. She is currently at work on the first U.S. survey of Mark Dion’s work to open in 2017. Erickson received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and has published and presented her writing widely. She serves as a visiting critic at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

Artist Lecture: Rose Marasco
2017-07-10 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Rose Marasco
Rose Morasco, Interior Number 5, From the series Interiors, 2008, Archival Inkjet print, 45 x 35 inches
Monday, July 10 at 5:30pm
Rose Marasco is a prolific photographer and an award winning educator. Her photographs were subject to a large survey at the Portland Museum of Art in 2015. Additionally, her work has appeared in exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution and the Houston Center for Photography. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Southern Maine. Marasco developed the photography program at USM where she taught for 35 years. Prior to coming to Maine, Marasco initiated the photography program at Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in her hometown, Utica, NY.
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

Artist Lecture: Brandon Alvendia
2017-07-17 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Brandon Alvendia
Brandon Alvendia, The Great Good Place install shot, exhibit organized by Brandon (l-r The Franklin, Ron Ewert and friends, Trunk Show and Scott Wolniak, filmfront) — The Great Good Place, Neon, 2015
Monday, July 17 at 5:30pm
Brandon Alvendia is a Chicago-based artist, curator, and educator. His interdisciplinary practice playfully engages spatial and social architectures to envision temporary utopias, regularly performing and exhibiting around North America in collaboration with various artist-run initiatives. He is the founder of multiple Chicago alternative spaces artLedge (2004-2007 w/ Caleb Lyons), BEN RUSSELL (2009-2011 w/Ben Russell), The Storefront (2010-2014), and art-publishing house Silver Galleon Press (2008-present). He was a recipient of the Propeller Fund in 2010, organized a three-act community-oriented experimental dramatic work, Chambre d’Amis, around the theme of place and memory for the Institute of American Art in Portland, ME in 2013, and continues to publish through Silver Galleon Press, which he expanded into a workshop to focus on its performative and communal aspects. As an artist-curator, his work supports the efforts of local and international artists by creating platforms for experimentation, discussion and collaboration. He is working on a nomadic research project ATLAS DRIFT, initiated through the Independent Curators International, based on artist-run culture with stops recently completed in Chicago (w/ threewalls) and Bergen, Norway (w/ Tag Team). Alvendia is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA ‘03) and University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA ‘07).
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

Artist Lecture: Keith Boadwee
2017-07-24 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Keith Boadwee
Keith Boadwee, Softcore, 2000
Monday, July 24 at 5:30pm
Keith Boadwee studied at UCLA in the late 80’s where he worked with Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden. Boadwee produces paintings, drawings and photos that explore his continued fascination with the body, actionism, expressionism, sex, humor, and abjection. His works have been reviewed in publications that include Hyperallergic, Contemporary Art Daily, Artforum, Art in America, The LA Times and the New York Times. Boadwee has exhibited at The New Museum, MOMA PS1, Hacienda, Zurich, Paradise Garage, LA , Shoot The Lobster, NYC, Brennan and Griffin, NYC and Gallerei Deborah Schamoni, Munich. In 2014, Boadwee published a book with Hacienda Gallery and Micronaut Press, “Keith Boadwee: 1989-2013”. For the last decade, Mr. Boadwee has taught at California College of the Arts and San Francisco Art Institute.
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

Artist Lecture: Sonya Clark
2017-07-31 17:30 - 19:00 | Osher Hall, Maine College of Art & Design, 2nd Floor, 522 Congress St., Portland, ME, 04101, United States
MECA&D’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art Program is pleased to announce the 2017 MFA Lecture Series, which brings a national and international roster of visiting artists, curators, and scholars to Portland, Maine. These Visiting Artists intersect with MECA&D’s eight-week MFA Summer Intensive, deliver a public lecture, attend critiques, and conduct studio visits with all graduate candidates.
All lectures in this series are hosted in Osher Hall and are open to the public at no charge. Seating is limited. Call 207.699.5010 for more information.
Sonya Clark
Sonya Clark, Hair Craft Project (Ife), 2014, collection of MFA, Boston, photograph
Monday, July 31 at 5:30pm
Born in Washington DC to a psychiatrist from Trinidad and a nurse from Jamaica, Sonya Clark’s work draws from the legacy of crafted objects and the embodiment of skill. As an African American artist, craft is a means to honor her lineage and expand notions of both Americanness and art. She uses materials as wide ranging as textiles, hair, beads, combs, and sound to address issues of nationhood, identity, and racial constructs. She has been a full professor and Chair of the Craft and Material Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia for over a decade. Formerly she was Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and she was awarded their first Mid-Career Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011. She also holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2015 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from her alma mater Amherst College where she received a BA. She has exhibited her work in over 300 museums and galleries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. She is the recipient of several awards including an Anonymous Was a Woman Award, an Art Prize Grand Jurors co-prize, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship in Italy, a BAU Camargo Fellowship in France, a Red Gate Residency in China, a Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy, an 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, a United States Artist Fellowship, and an Art Matters Grant. Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Musees d'Angers in France among several other institutions. Several publications have reviewed her work including the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Italian Vogue, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, and Huffington Post.
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Media Sponsor

Down East Enterprise, Inc., is a multimedia company based in Camden, Maine. The company’s flagship publication, Down East: The Magazine of Maine, is the largest paid-circulation magazine dedicated to the Pine Tree State. For nearly six decades, Down East has been the authority on Maine, and today continues to capture the reader’s attention with an insider look at contemporary life in Maine. People who love Maine love Down East.

An Evening with New Yorker Illustrator Emily Flake
2017-08-28 18:30 - 20:00 | 45 Seashore Avenue, Peaks Island, ME, United States
An Evening with New Yorker Illustrator Emily Flake

Monday, August 28, 6:30–8:00pm
Historic 5th Maine Museum on Peaks Island
45 Seashore Avenue, Peaks Island, ME
Free and open to the public
Presented by MECA&D & the Illustration Institute

Emily Flake began cartooning for The New Yorker in 2008, and has had more than a hundred cartoons published in the magazine since. Her cartoons and illustrations have also appeared in Mad, the New York Times, the New Statesman, the Wall Street Journal, the Globe and Mail, and in many other publications. Her book These Things Ain’t Gonna Smoke Themselves (Bloomsbury USA) was published in 2007, and she is currently working on Mama Tried, a book of essays and cartoons about parenting.

An Evening with Wayne White
2017-08-29 18:30 - 20:30 | 2 Garden Pl, Peaks Island, ME, 04108, United States
An Evening with Wayne White

Tuesday, August 29, 7:00–9:00pm
Peaks Island Lions Club
2 Garden Pl, Peaks Island, ME 04108
Free and open to the public

Wayne White

The Illustration Institute will be screening the documentary BEAUTY IS EMBARRASSING followed by a Q&A with Wayne White, who is the subject of the film.
Wayne White is an American artist, art director, puppeteer, set designer, animator, cartoonist and illustrator. He has won four Emmy Awards for his work. Learn more about him here.
View the trailer for Beauty is Embarrassing here.
View Wayne White's TED Talk here.

ICA at MECA&D: American Genre Painting Symposium
2017-09-15 10:00 - 17:00 | ME
Portland, Maine ~ The Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the Painting and MFA programs at Maine College of Art & Design (MECA&D) is pleased to invite the public to attend On Genre: A Painting Symposium, a daylong series of conversations about the power of painting and the idea of genre as a cultural structure — one that guides interpretation, anticipation and imagination.
This unique community gathering will spotlight and examine the exhibition American Genre: Contemporary Painting, curated by Michelle Grabner, Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Nationally and internationally recognized presenters will be joined by an engaged group of artists, arts leaders and students to share perspectives about still life, landscape and portraiture as categories that chart historical continuity and reveal American value systems. A rich opportunity for extended discussion, Grabners’ exhibition is compelling and approachable, and yields great potential for interpretation and reflection on painting and genre as spaces of agreement.
The morning session will begin with a brief overview by Michelle Grabner, followed a keynote lecture entitled Contemporary Genre Painting: Animating the Intimate by Marie Shurkus, Ph.D, Chair of Academic Studies and Professor of Art History at MECA&D. Drawing insight from the feminist tenet that the personal is political, this talk will analyze how contemporary genre paintings invite audiences to participate in an imaginary realm that activates real consequences.
An afternoon panel discussion, Painting as Common Ground, led by Barry Schwabsky, American poet and the art critic for The Nation (the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States), will explore genre and painting as systems that organize, interpret, translate and imagine history and experience. In response to Michelle Grabner's curatorial focus, five panelists Sharon Butler, Angela Dufresne, Shara Hughes, Chris Stiegler and Roger White will share a variety of perspectives and insights about contemporary painting and illuminate the role of genre as a ubiquitous frame of reference. A community event intended to foster cultural dialogue, audience members will be encouraged to take part in an extended question and answer period following the presentation.
On Genre: A Painting Symposium will end with a closing reception in the ICA. For more information, please contact Erin Hutton, Director of Exhibitions and Special Projects, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Maine College of Art & Design at 207.699.5025 or ica@meca.edu .
This event is free and open to the public. Due to limited seating, RSVP to the September 15th Symposium by emailing ica@meca.edu.
Header Artwork: Dan Attoe, Cedar Tree with Creep, 2017
