Congrats Student Artists!

Congressional Art Awards

The Congressional Art Competition began in 1982 to provide an opportunity for Members of Congress to encourage and recognize the artistic talents of their young constituents. Since then, over 700,000 high school students have competed for the honor of having their work shown in the U.S. Capitol.

The competition is open to all high school students. The overall winner of each participating district will have the opportunity to have their work displayed in the Cannon Tunnel of the U.S. Capitol for the entire year, beginning in June. In addition, winners will be flown to Washington, D.C. for the official opening of the show in June.

Congratulations to the following students who are being honored this year, 2015

DISTRICT ONE		DISTRICT TWO
WINNER		WINNER
Self Portrait  acrylic		The Widow  white charcoal
Djordje Jevtic    Grade 12, Scarborough High School    Art Teacher: Erin Landry-Fowler		Liam Reading     Grade 12, Bangor High School     Art Teacher: Kal Elmore
FIRST RUNNER UP		FIRST RUNNER UP
Self Portrait  graphite		Airport  ink pen
Anna Kinee    Grade 12, Brunswick High School    Art Teacher: Allison Price		Youjin Choi     Grade 11, Foxcroft Academy     Art Teacher: Jane Blay
SECOND RUNNER UP		SECOND RUNNER UP
After the Music is Over  charcoal		Mirror’s Reflection  charcoal
Olivia Potter     Grade 10, Morse High School     Art Teacher: Heather Monsen		Maxwell Clarrage     Grade 11, Lewiston High School     Art Teacher: Nathaniel Meyer
HONORABLE MENTION		HONORABLE MENTION
Living in a Bottle  photography		Inside the Yellow Room  gouache
Kailey Coleman     Grade 12, Noble High School     Art Teacher: Ginny Vakalis		Jingfei Zhou     Grade 12, Gould Academy     Art Teacher: Lauren Head
HONORABLE MENTION		HONORABLE MENTION
Lips  acrylic		Pores  photography
Haleigh McKechnie     Grade 12, Thornton Academy     Art Teacher: Jennifer Merry		Riley Hemmings     Grade 11, Hebron Academy     Art Teacher: Jeanine Eschenbach
HONORABLE MENTION		HONORABLE MENTION
The Bermuda Triangle  digital		Menenius  digital
Lily Munro     Grade 10, Brunswick High School     Art Teacher: Colleen Kearney-Graffam		Meghan McDunnah     Grade 12, Mount Desert Island High School     Art Teacher: Charlie Johnson

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and Congressman Bruce Poliquin  are delighted to announce the winners of the 2015 Congressional Arts Awards in Maine’s Congressional districts.

Pingree congratulates Djordje Jevtic, an exchange student from Belgrade, Serbia, who is attending Scarborough High School, for his winning artwork, “Self Portrait,” a distinctive work in acrylic.

“I’m always amazed by the quality of work that Maine students submit to this competition,” said Pingree. “I’m excited that Djordje’s work will represent our state at the Capitol—it shows a lot of talent. Winning the competition should be a great memory of Maine for him to bring back home,” “My thanks and congratulations go to all the students who participated this year, the art teachers who inspire them, and the Maine Arts Commission for coordinating this wonderful event. ”

Poliquin acknowledged Liam Reading, a senior at Bangor High School, as this year’s winner for Maine’s Second District for his white charcoal piece, “The Widow.”

“I continue to be amazed by the extraordinary talent and work of our Maine high school students,” said Poliquin. “Congratulations to Liam, and everyone who entered the competition, for sharing their artistic gifts.”

For information about the Congressional Art Competition please contact Julie Horn at the Maine Arts Commission, at 207-287-2790 or julie.horn@maine.gov

MAC Visual Arts Director

Meet Julie Horn

I am fortunate to work with Julie Horn at the Maine Arts Commission. Julie serves as the Visual Arts Director and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her work. She moved to Maine in September 2013 with her husband and two wonderful children from Tennessee where she served as the director for visual arts at the Tennessee Arts Commission. Recently, I sat down with Julie and interviewed her for this blog post…. Introducing JULIE HORN…

Why Maine?

Julie is originally from Aroostook county, specifically Presque Isle and has moved to her home state with her husband to raise their children. She is happy to be at the Maine Arts Commission to assist in the development of new grants and initiatives for Maine’s Cultural Plan.

Julie’s History

Julie did her undergraduate work at the University of Tuscon, AZ in painting and illustration. For a short period she worked in a foundry at AZ State doing large 3D sculpture work. She went to graduate school at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, MI in print media. Her focus was on performance and video installation.

At that point she moved to Tennessee to teach at the university level. Foundational courses included curriculum, art appreciation, and studio classes in drawing, painting, 2 and 3D design, and color theory. She also developed a time-based media class and video production class.

She worked at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, TN, curating public programs and doing independent writing (art criticism) for a Nashville paper and state publication out of Memphis and the magazine Art Papers from Atlanta, GA. While there she also curated and juried shows.

During the last 7 years Julie worked at the Tennessee Arts Commission as the director of Visual Arts, Crafts, Media, and Design. She received certification in non-profit leadership and management from the Center for Non-Profit Management in Nashville. While at the commission she curated and ran the gallery in the office. She was responsible for the annual acquisition budget to purchase pieces for the state collection. That collection was at the state museum and at the arts commission. Julie worked on several public art projects with first lady’s of TN. She developed the master artist/apprentice program for contemporary artists. A large portion of her work was on grant development and management in Tennessee.

Maine Arts Commission Visual Arts Director work

Julie is as busy at the rest of us at the Maine Arts Commission, developing and managing many components of the MAC work. Her responsibilities include administrating the following programs

• Curate Art in the Capital program
• Several grant programs
• Percent for Art program
• Congressional Art Competition
• Maine Youth Excellence in Art
• Other programs that fall under Visual Arts

Julie’s favorite part of the work is having discussions with the field on what’s happening in visual art.

Julie’s Goals

Julie would like to see the agency develop better resources for the visual art constituency. For example, the MAC website should have resource material for specific needs of an artist. She has already and I am certain will continue to identify resources, and provide assistance and information. She also hope to develop regional sensitivity for the Maine Arts Commission. As she acquires an understanding of the stakeholders she is learning how they help to build the arts in Maine, i.e. individual artists, collectives, gallery’s, collectors, councils.

And from Julie…

“I am excited to be back in my home state to bring 30 years of experience on the national level to see how I can help my home state. I have a personal interest at stake. My favorite part of this type of work is facilitating discussions that educate the public on how art is incorporated into everyday lives including the visual language and interpretation of art. It is so embedded into our thinking that people are sometimes unaware of it, specifically the non-art people. I enjoy bringing information and knowledge to the non-believers, those who don’t understand art, so they realize they already know it. Asking the right questions in a leading format to help them realize that they really do know it. A series of questions can help in formulating their knowledge.”

My favorite question… What would you do if given $500,000 Julie?

“I would pay off my student loans and with the remaining thousand, no, no. I would retire, no, no! Practical side of me says to set up all the right accounts for my kids. I would buy a house on the water in the coastal part of Maine with a huge barn. Inside would be a music studio for my husband and a studio for me. I’d sit on my balcony drinking coffee and looking at the water.”

Julie can be reached at julie.horn@maine.gov.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congressional Art Awards

Call for Art

The Congressional Art Competition began in 1982 to provide an opportunity for Members of Congress to encourage and recognize the artistic talents of their young constituents. Since then, over 700,000 high school students have competed for the honor of having their work shown in the U.S. Capitol.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, Congressman Michael Michaud and the Maine Arts Commission invite Maine high school students (9-12) to participate in this year’s Congressional Art Competition. The selected students will have the opportunity to have their artwork displayed in the Cannon Tunnel of the U.S. Capitol for one year, beginning in June 2014.

Each year, the U.S. House of Representatives sponsors a competition for art created by high school students from every Congressional district in the United States. This annual call for art has provided a grand scale opportunity for Maine art students to be recognized and highlights how essential quality arts education is for all students.

Finalists and Runners Up, their families and art teachers will be invited to a reception at the Blaine House in Augusta where the selected students will be recognized. The Blaine House event is the annual celebration that highlights the close partnership between the Maine Arts Commission and Maine’s Congressional offices. Both of Maine’s Congressional representatives are highly enthusiastic about this program and strongly encourage their constituents to apply.

Competition Guidelines

Entry Requirements:

1. Must be a high school student: grades 9-12.
2. Work must be two-dimensional.
3. Work must be unframed, and no larger than 25 in. by 25 in.
4. Work must be no more than 4 inches in depth.
5. Each entry must be original in concept, design, and execution and not violate any U.S. copyright laws.
6. Any entry that has been copied from an existing photo (not the student’s own), painting, graphic, advertisement, or any other work produced by another person is a violation of the competition rules and will not be accepted.
7. Work entered must be in the original medium (not a scanned reproduction of a painting or drawing).
8. One entry per student.(Please note that while schools may submit multiple entries, individual students are limited to one entry.)
9. Acceptable categories:

Paintings (oil, acrylics, watercolor, etc); Drawings (pastels, colored pencil, pencil, charcoal, ink, markers); Collage (must be two-dimensional); Prints (lithographs, silkscreen, block prints); Mixed media (use of more than two mediums); Computer generated art; Photography.

Submissions:

To be considered for review, the student information and release form AND artwork must be submitted in digital format. Actual artwork will not be accepted for review.

–Artwork format must be a digital or scanned image saved as JPEG (.jpg) with resolution of 300 dpi or higher at 5” x 7”. When you save your image, use the following naming conventions for the file:

• Artist name_title of image_year of work.jpg (Example: JaneDoe_Untitled_2014.jpg).
• Maximum of 72 characters in the file name.
• Name cannot contain any spaces or characters other than letters, numbers, underscore or hyphen.

–A completed and signed student information and release form must also be submitted. Please go to https://mainearts.maine.gov/Pages/Education/Congressional-Art-Comp.

Forms can be saved at a Word document or as PDF. When you save your signed student information and release form, use the following naming conventions for the file:

• Artist name_title of image_year of work.doc  (Example: JaneDoe_Untitled_2013.doc).

• Maximum of 72 characters in the file name.
• Name cannot contain any spaces or characters other than letters, numbers, underscore or hyphen.

Submission materials will be accepted as email attachments only (not embedded in the email) and should be sent to Julie Horn at julie.horn@maine.gov.  Please put “CAC Submission” in the subject line of your email.

Your email should have the following two attachments:

1. Image in .jpg form as specified above
2. Student information and release form in .doc or .pdf form as specified above.

***Entries that do not have the specified documentation will be considered ineligible.***

The final decision regarding the suitability of all artwork for the 2014 Congressional Art Competition exhibition in the Capitol will be made by a panel of qualified persons chaired by the Architect of the Capitol.  Artwork must adhere to the policy of the House Office Building Commission. In accordance with this policy, exhibits depicting subjects of contemporary political controversy or a sensationalistic or gruesome nature are not allowed. It is necessary that all artwork be reviewed by the panel chaired by the Architect of the Capitol and any portion not in consonance with the Commission’s policy will be omitted from the exhibit.

For information about the Congressional Art Competition please contact Julie Horn at the Maine Arts Commission, at 207/287-2790, or through e-mail at julie.horn@maine.gov.

Getting Ready-Leading the Way

Just around the corner!

Visual Arts Director Julie Horn and Chris Higgins Administrative Assistant work on preparing name tags

Preparing for a conference is time consuming and takes several months but the last week before the event is pretty intense! This week is no exception. Yesterday was spent on many details including copying, creating nametags, individual schedules, checking numbers, names, stuffing folders, etc. The more I rush to complete the tasks the ‘to do’ list seems to grow longer.

I think back to the first statewide arts education conference that I helped plan in 2007 and I realize how much I’ve learned over the years. Carol Trimble who was the Executive Director of Maine Alliance for Arts Education and I periodically chat about that conference which was held at The Samoset in Rockport with almost 300 attendees. We turned away several teachers since there wasn’t enough space. Scott Shuler gave the keynote, Karen Montanaro and Camden Hills singers performed at the Farnsworth reception and we had over 25 workshops. The next one was held in 2009 at Point Lookout with the 2007 National Teacher of the Year, music teacher Andrea Peterson provided the keynote and First Lady Karen Baldacci danced with us at the opening evening reception. In 2011 the biennial conference was held at USM and was focused on the first teacher leader group of the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative. It was a fabulous success – teachers teaching teachers created a huge learning environment for all attendees. Each conference was unique and provided fabulous learning opportunities.

I am really looking forward to the conference this Thursday, October 24, Arts Education: Leading the Way. You can still register, there is still space in some workshops. Lynn Tuttle will provide an update on the National Core Arts Standards during the opening session. I am guessing it won’t just be educational but also fun! The door prizes will be given during the closing (I need to remember a hat and funny glasses) along with a performance by the University Singers. We are thrilled to be having music students from UMaine attending and providing assistance! Thank you to Laura Artesani for her help with the details and arrangements!

Work details are also happening for the Maine International Conference on the Arts being held in the same location on Friday and Saturday. If you are interested in attending either conference please go to https://mainearts.maine.gov for information and for a link to registration.

I need to get back to the details…. I know I will see at least 185 (last count from registration) of you on Thursday – YAHOOOOOOOO!