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Museum And Gallery

Arc printing

David Driskell’s PMA retrospective
For more than 50 years David Driskell, in his art and his distinguished academic career, has been a creative force in the intersection of modernist art and the African diaspora.

By KEN GREENLEAF | November 18, 2009

Simple and distinct

Solid, serious abstractions at CMCA
“Planes of Abstraction” at the Maine Center for Contemporary Art brings together five artists with broad experience who share a common interest in a simplified image.

By KEN GREENLEAF | November 11, 2009

Behind the walls

Museum L-A synthesizes history and art
Museum L-A is sequestered in the far end of the Bates Mill Complex in downtown Lewiston, with a bold red and yellow awning announcing its presence and trumping its otherwise unassuming facade, which might otherwise be lost in the sea of industrial brick and concrete.

By ANNIE LARMON | November 04, 2009

They’re crafty

A bright three-person show at ICON
While each of the artists exhibiting at ICON this month is stylistically distinct and refined, the relationships between the work of Joe Kievitt, Meghan Brady, and Andrea Sulzer provide a welcome cohesion, and a unique peek into the practice of three individual artists who have a dialogue outside the gallery.

By ANNIE LARMON | October 28, 2009

Jazz on paper

Romare Bearden's improv collage
A gem of a show, two shows really, has quietly appeared at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

By KEN GREENLEAF | October 21, 2009

Plotting experience

Kendra Ferguson and Noa Warren at June Fitzpatrick
Kendra Ferguson and Noa Warren are deftly paired at June Fitzpatrick’s Congress Street gallery this month, as an established and emerging artist each compulsive explore the subjective and human potential of minimalism.

By ANNIE LARMON | October 14, 2009

People, unhid

A Robert Solotaire retrospective at Gleason
The late Bob Solotaire collected views the same way he collected friends, and he had a great many of both.

By KEN GREENLEAF | October 07, 2009

A mill grows in Biddeford

Six artists wax hyper-real at the North Dam Mill
'We're responding every step of the way to our environment. And to each other.'

By ANNIE LARMON | September 30, 2009

Deep layers

Mark Wethli's latest work is some of his best
Throughout his long career Mark Wethli's work has been studied, careful, and formally rigorous.

By KEN GREENLEAF | September 23, 2009

Retro for fall

Major artists of Maine's past go on display
Leaves are turning, roads aren't crowded; it's time to look ahead for interest in the fall art season.

By KEN GREENLEAF | September 16, 2009

Growth + maturity

Portland's art scene has changed quite a lot
The Phoenix 's first 10 years in Portland roughly bracket the period during which I stopped writing about art.

By KEN GREENLEAF | September 16, 2009

Topographic musings

MECA's second Alumni Biennial
"Aggregate" is Maine College of Art's second themed Alumni Biennial at the Institute of Contemporary Art, showing work chosen by a jury from among recent work by BFA and MFA graduates. While the artists represent a range of mediums, graduating class ('97 to '08), and experience, the integrity of the selected works is consistently impressive.

By ANNIE LARMON | September 09, 2009

Revisionist whims

Karen Lewis purges her obsession at the CMCA in Rockport
The story of Johann Christian Woyzeck goes like this: A German man born into poverty in the late 18th century tries his hand in several professions. Handicapped by a schizophrenia unrecognized by most at the time, he eventually becomes a soldier.

By ANNIE LARMON | September 02, 2009

Idealist views

Three shows at the PMA explore truth
The path through my various responsibilities has led me to the Portland Museum several times in recent weeks, and along most of the floors. While passing through the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibit of photography I was struck by thoughts about templates created by dominant illusions, and how a consistent sense of an ideal world flowed through Cameron's work.

By KEN GREENLEAF | August 26, 2009

Building up

Inspired modernists Cutler and Thon
In the current show at the June Fitzpatrick Gallery at the Maine College of Art in Portland, we see two generations of 20th-century modernist painting.

By KEN GREENLEAF | August 19, 2009

Found, and created

Rebecca FitzPatrick and Owen F. Smith illustrate the present
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.

By ANNIE LARMON | August 12, 2009

Growing Maine art

PMA exhibit examines the influence of colonies
Long ago an art critic of my acquaintance remarked that New York was a border town to Europe, and until fairly recently that was true. Artistic ideas would be born in Europe, often France, and migrate slowly across the Atlantic and take root.

By KEN GREENLEAF | August 05, 2009

Everybody poops

Greta Bank talks priorities and realities
Recently selected as one of 17 regional artists to exhibit at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park's Biennial in January 2010 (alongside fellow Mainer Randy Regier), and awarded a grant from the Maine Arts Commission in support of her interactive sculpture "The Cashmere Iron Maiden," Greta Bank is struggling to find studio time on top of being a mother of two.

By ANNIE LARMON | July 29, 2009

Good vibrations

Kate Beck's abstract minimal drawings and paintings hum
As Rothko's color fields can absorb a viewer, and Lewitt's painstaking wall drawings entangle, Kate Beck's experiments with the emotional and abstract potential of line demand a certain amount of submission.

By ANNIE LARMON | July 22, 2009

Lesson from a master

Legendary Met director will take your questions
Philippe de Montebello retired at the end of last year from his position as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after 31 years. During his tenure, the museum nearly doubled in size to two million square feet and increased its collections by some 80,000 pieces.

By KEN GREENLEAF | July 15, 2009