Christopher Burns
For The Maine Campus
On Friday night, the Lord Hall gallery space ushered in its latest exhibition with highlights from the Department of Art faculty. Opening amid the high profile dedication of the new Wyeth Family Studio Art Center on Sept. 29, the fall exhibition at the University of Maine Museum of Art on Oct. 3, plus the well-received MFA art show, “Without Borders Fest X,” closed on Sept. 27, provided much competition.
The opening reception on Oct. 4 proved inconspicuous, yet received a warm reception from those in attendance. This fall’s faculty exhibition features the work of professors Alan Stubbs, Andy Mauery, Ed Nadeau, Kerstin Engman, Michael Lewis, Nina Jerome Sutcliffe, Owen Smith and Wayne Hall.
The work featured represented a diverse spectrum from oil painting to sculpture, from mixed media to photography and craft. However, the highlights of the show consisted primarily in the oil painting medium, although many of the artists used novel approaches in both form and materials – in particular, Engman’s use of roofing felt as a canvas.
The diminutive crowd at the opening afforded Friday’s guests an intimate atmosphere, complementing the night’s themes of nature, identity and home.
Of particular emphasis at the faculty exhibition was an expression of Maine. All but a select few works took Maine as their theme, exploring the vast aesthetic country of the Pine Tree State. While the faculty of the art department came from across the country, their sensibilities have rooted firmly into the rural, natural rhythms of the state.
Many of the works evoked a mythos of place. Nadeau’s oil paintings of river bridges and rural routes revealed a well-directed attention to detail and bought an almost photo-realism to the canvas. In these quotidian scenes, he captured a sense of the comic and dramatic in rural life. The approach of an impending storm created tension as the cars on the bridge awaited inundation.
Engman’s produced some of the most impressive work from the clearly talented faculty. Her oil paintings, which dominated the center wall, demonstrated near-surgical precision with every brushstroke. Each stroke was short and controlled, allowing Engman to reveal the subtle gradation and change in color, with emphasis on the relation between light and darkness in nature. Overall, her palette tended towards the darker colors of fall. For instance, “Bramble Series – Violet with Orange” used a reduced palette with an impressive use of line. In contrast to her stunning, visually intoxicating nature paintings, were more intimate scenes. In “My Mother, My Daughter,” viewers look in on this domestic scene where two generations sit together, the grandmother smiling affectionately and the granddaughter looking toward her, her face slightly obscured.
Moving away from these scenes from the hinterland, Sutcliffe explored the Down East coast. Her work demonstrated an environmental imagination and consciousness in these paintings lovingly referred to as “Homage to the Ocean.” Within these painting were embedded texts from Elizabeth Kolbert’s research on ocean acidification and Henry David Thoreau’s musing on the tidal zone.
The other artists explored themes of Maine in quite a different way. Hall, a sculptor and wood-worker, presented several works of artisan furniture — a bench, ottoman and chair, among others. What proved of immense interest with both Hall’s and Smith’s work was it spurred a questioning of the traditional ontology of art. Hall’s use of craft and technical art, and Smith’s acquisition of Van Gogh reproductions seem to ask what is a work of art and what ought to be considered a work of art? Is the Van Gogh reproduction any less of a work of art than the original?
In a continuing engagement with hair, Mauery brought another series of works with hair as a medium to Lord Hall. This latest set of sculptures used common hair treatment products to maintain them in a rigid posture, with threads weaved through them creating pictograms of animals. In many ways her continued experiments with hair engaged with the greater notion of identity. For many, hair is a sign that shows spiritual, ethnic and social beliefs. To wear it long, short, or not at all, becomes an expression of personal identity.
The work on display showed the level of technical proficiency and eye for subject matter possessed by the art faculty. With new studio space on campus, it will no doubt be conducive to reinforcing this level of quality among the students who are safely in their hands.
The faculty exhibition runs from Oct. 4 to Nov. 15.