Maine Art Education Conference

April 3 Zoooooom!

JOIN COLLEAGUES FROM ACROSS THE STATE

VIRTUAL SPRING ART EDUCATION CONFERENCE

SATURDAY – APRIL 3rd – 9:00-2:30

This past year has held many challenges, but there are so many things to celebrate, and you are invited to join colleagues from across Maine for the annual art education conference. This year things will look a bit different as we will be apart. The conference will be coming to you safely via Zoom and we have an outstanding lineup of speakers for you and it is only $20.00 this year!

Conference Registration Link Found Here!!!!

Keynote Address Presenters: Natasha Mayers & Robert Shetterly

About our Featured Keynote Speakers: Natasha Mayers has been called “the heart and soul of activist art in Maine.” She is widely known for her work supervising more than 600 school and community murals from Maine to Nicaragua.

Natasha Mayers

She has been a Touring Artist with the Maine Arts Commission Artist-in-Residency Program since 1975. She has taught students from nursery school to college and in diverse populations: immigrants, refugees, prisoners, the homeless, and the “psychiatrically labeled,” with whom she has worked since 1974, and has organized many exhibits of their artwork.

Her portrait was painted by Robert Shetterly as part of his Americans Who Tell the Truth series, featuring her words: “We need artists to help explain what is happening in this country, to tell the truth and reveal the lies, to be willing to say the emperor has no clothes, to create moral indignation, to envision alternatives, to reinvent language. We need artists to help us come together and share our voices and build community around powerful issues concerning our roles in the world and our planet’s survival. Compassion must be translated into action.”

Rob Shetterly

To learn more, visit Natasha Mayers’s Website and Robert Shetterly’s American’s Who Tell The Truth website

Presenters

Joseph Cough – Midcoast Music Academy
Cory Bucknam – Brunswick Junior Hig)
Lori Spruce & Holly Houston – Brewer High School & Yarmouth High School
Samara Yandell – Biddeford Middle School
Hope Lord – Maranacook Middle School
Argy Nestor – Sweetland Middle School

Those that attend earn contact hours and get swag!! Conference Registration will Close April 1! Sign up today to save your spot! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. 

Monhegan Artists’ Residency

Artists selected

Congratulations to the three artists recently selected to participate in the 2018 summer residency program on Monhegan: weaver Sarah Haskell from York, printmaker Jude Valentine from East Machias, and educator and painter Raegan Russell from South Berwick. I’m especially excited for all three artists since my paths have crossed with each of them at different times in the past. My warm wishes for wonderful experiences on Monhegan this summer!

Last years educator recipient Cory Bucknam from Brunswick Junior High School presented at a pecha-kucha style event which includes her experience on Monhegan last summer. You can view it at the recorded Vimeo below.

Information on each of this years recipients is below.

Raegan Russell 
Uprooted Heart, gouache on canvas, 12”x12″, 2016.

Raegan Russell is the Visual Art Department Chair at the Berwick Academy in South Berwick, Maine and will be participating in the 2-week K-12 art teachers’ residency. She looks forward to being inspired by the beauty of Monhegan and sees her paintings as a way to “hold on to the ephemeral and to explore the changing landscape and its forms.” Russell received a BFA and MFA in painting from Boston University, and is currently on sabbatical in South East Asia.

Jude Valentine 
Woods and Water, cliché verre, mixed media monotype, 22”x30”, 2018.

Jude Valentine creates landscape monoprints in a process through which she draws and paints directly on polymer plates while outside in the landscape. She sees her prints as revealing “elements of landscape,” while being “densely layered with an energetic animism of line and limited color.” Valentine holds a BFA from the Maine College of Art and MFA from the Vermont College of Art, and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maine, Machias. She was a 2017 Artist in Residence at the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center.

Darah Haskell is a textile artist who works with thread in many forms. Prior to her residency time on Monhegan, she intends to weave and “weather” ground cloths, which she will then embellish on island. She will “use the time to stitch, hem, knot, and embroider” and will also “expose additional pieces of hand woven cloth to site specific environmental

Sarah Haskell 
Secrets of the Infinite, indigo dyed, woven linen, cotton embroidery thread, 15″x28”, 2017.

elements,” while observing “the forces of nature at work, not only on my handwoven/stitched cloth but … ultimately on me.” Haskell is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and was recently awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hewnoaks Artists’ Colony.

Special thanks to our 2018 jurors: 

The jurors this year included Kathryn Jovanelli, museum administrator at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor; Henry Wolyniec, Portland artist and former studio manager at Space Gallery; and painter Nathaniel Meyer, a Monhegan residency recipient in 2015 and art teacher in the Lewiston High School.  All three were impressed with the varying concerns for the natural world apparent in this year’s applications and their inventive modes of expression.

The jury viewed a wide range of visual arts and selected work in three particularly experimental media: fiber arts, cliché verre monotypes, and works on paper that combine printmaking and painting techniques. Portland artist and MARC board member, John Knight, who organized this year’s jury process noted:  “Jurors had a challenge selecting three artists from many strong candidates, but they found work that resonated with all of them after multiple viewings and lively discussion.”

And, thank you also to the many folks who work to bring this opportunity to Maine artists and educators!

The Monhegan Artists’ Residency supports the creative growth of dedicated Maine artists by providing them time and space in which to work free of interruption and constraint in the inspiring environment of Monhegan Island.

Monhegan Awards

2017 Monhegan Artists’ Residency Awards Announced

Meg Hahn, On a String, 2016, oil on panel, 12”x12”

MONHEGAN—The Monhegan Artists’ Residency Corporation has announced their choice of three Maine artists for the 2017 summer residency program on Monhegan Island:  Meg Hahn and Mia Snow, who are both painters and recent graduates of the Maine College of Art, and Cory Bucknam, a Gifted and Talented Art Teacher at Brunswick Junior High School who creates abstract ceramic pieces.  Hahn and Snow will spend five weeks in June and September, respectively, and Bucknam was awarded the two-week residency in July, recently established for artist-teachers who serve the K-12 grade levels in Maine.

Cory Bucknam, untitled, 2017, white earthenware, 12″x18″

The three were selected by a jury that included Chris Stiegler, curator, art historian, and chair of the MFA in Studio Art at the Maine College of Art, Portland; Hilary Irons, artist, and co-founder/curator of Able Baker Contemporary, Portland; and Kelly Finlay, a Monhegan Artists’ Residency board member and public programs manager at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland.

Established in 1989, the Monhegan Artists’ Residency program supports the creative growth of dedicated Maine artists by providing them time and space in which to work free of interruption and constraint in the inspiring environment of Monhegan Island.  Long a haven for innovative artistic practice, the island offers a dramatic setting and a compelling community of visual artists, fishermen, and gardeners who provide an unusual and distinct perspective on the modern world. For more information about the residency, see monheganartistsresidency.org.

Maia Snow, Aiahha, 2017, oil on canvas

If you have questions please contact Susan Danly at susandanly@gmail.com or by calling her at 233.0896.