Tourists! Form a line to feast your eyes upon delectable treasures of the Maine landscape! Our cash crop of coastlines in our great state is fodder for countless exhibitions this summer.
Leading the fray is the Portland Museum of Art with The Quiet Landscapes of William B. Post, which features turn-of-the-century photographs by the Maine artist. Not that this is run-of-the-mill landscape kitsch to place over the billiard table in someone’s basement game room in Jersey; Post was a pioneer of the Pictorialist style and a downright avant-garde gentleman.
Meanwhile, Michael H. Lewis is infusing Aucocisco with meditative works featuring the Maine woods. The esteemed University of Maine professor’s technique of thinly applied oils could bring to mind the watercolors Grandma makes of buoys hanging on a white picket fence, but there’s no mistaking this collection of work as a meditative dive into the deep waters beyond empirical thought into a place of spiritual regeneration. Stick that in your lobster trap coffee table and smoke it.
June Fitzpatrick Gallery will feature Maine artists of similarly profound caliber all summer long. You fact-checkers may find fault with that statement, noting that Helen Gamble, Lois Dodd, and William Thon are either not Maine natives or no longer Maine residents. In rebuttal, consider the late William Thon, a New Yorker who resided at Owls Head for seventy years in a house he and his wife built entirely themselves. He was enormously successful in the New York gallery scene, but rarely left Maine to attend his openings. He lost much of his sight and ability to see color so he painted powerful works in black and white, living simply into his nineties. That’s more Maine vigor than you’ve got in your little finger so stop text messaging your friend about meeting at Amigo’s and go hiking, city slicker.
Hopefully you didn’t eat your own eyes out of frustration when the 30th straight day of rain came. If you’ve still got them, bring both to SPACE Gallery mid-July for the Media That Matters Film Festival. Jury-selected works of animation, music videos, documentaries, and experimental works clocking in under eight minutes are intended to spark debate and get you riding that high horse off into the real world of political action.
The Portland arts community has greatly benefitted from the presence of SPACE, and now we can complete our cosmic happy meal set with the appearance of Time. This aptly titled August show at Filament Gallery features timepieces, kinetic sculpture, and whatever else artists like Angela Adams, Arthur Ganson, Matt Hutton, and Ellen Weiske decide fits into the category. Time is NOT something to fuck around with, so be sure to be there.
Actually, Ubu Studio is the only gallery I would trust to mess around with time, mostly because I have a theory that curator Frank Turek is actually a Watcher-being from a distant galaxy and I don’t think Watchers need to sweat time too much. Co-pataphysical-conspirator Reed Altemus curates the current show, Visual Poetry, which is up for the rest of the month.
