YOU'RE TALKING MODES INSTEAD OF MEDIA — The idea of a multi-modal, emergent, rhizomatic community where you feel sexy to be alive. I believe it can happen in a foundation classroom, nevermind the Bauhaus nonsense. We have to imagine, as a culture, embarking richly. You don't wait for your PhD. Or to be taken care of at an MFA. It can happen across platforms and modes and ages. This is the required minimum to begin.
Ian Paige can be reached at ianpaige@gmail.com.
"BLUE HAMMER: A TRANS-HISTORICAL-POST-COLONIAL-DINNER-THEATRE-BURLESQUE" | Whitney Art Works, 492 Congress St, Portland | April 30-May 2 | 7 pm | $25, call for reservations | 207.780.0700 | whitneyartworks.com | leonjohnson.org
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- Easy on the eyes
"The Funnies" at Whitney Art Works is a sprawling show of upwards of 150 pieces by 25 artists, all of whom have been brought together by local artist — Jeff Badger.
- Structural integrity
The five artists featured in "Stratum," now on view at Whitney Art Works, are diverse in background, medium, and scale, but they comfortably crowd the gallery's two rooms with sculptures, paintings, and drawings that respond to the relationships exposed by stripping back layers and how meaning and interpretation shift when new layers are presented.
- Summer people
Ever wonder why there is so much professional-level art made and shown in Maine, a state with a total population less than that of many minor cities? One answer is that following the fame of people like Winslow Homer, creative types flocked to Maine, often to artists' colonies.
- Weight + measure
The centerpiece, conceptually and physically, of Aaron Stephan's show at Whitney Art Works is "Flat World/Round Map," a cast-iron sphere about six feet in diameter. While not exactly the largest ( "18 Columns" covers more ground and "The Burden Crates" is taller) it creates a center of gravity around itself.
- Found, and created
While aesthetically there is little to compare between Rebecca FitzPatrick's "Thread" show and "Multiples" by Owen F. Smith, together on view at Whitney Art Works this month, both artists appropriate found materials, are impressively prolific, and identify with a post- or anti-war movement of the previous century.
- Groups + solos
First on the list of this year's points of interest is the anticipated Portland Museum of Art Biennial, which opens in early April.
- Drugs and culture
University of Southern Maine professor Wendy Chapkis usually studies, teaches, and writes about gender issues, so her latest non-fiction outing, Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine , might seem like a bit of a departure.
- Packed kitchen
Artists, film- and bookmakers, teachers, performers, and motorcyclists Leon Johnson and Megan O’Connell recently made Portland the home.
- The sad ghost of postmodernism
It sticks around, but doesn't always work.
- Altered states
Talking drugs, Zen, and painting with art critic Ken Johnson
- Letters to the Portland Editor: March 13, 2009
We are two Maine natives, who attended the True/False Film Festival in Missouri, couldn't agree more with Christopher Gray's account of the festival and the festival experience.
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