Maine Perspective Front Page
Gallery Glimpses
Summer at the Museum of Art
Two exhibits - one of watercolors and another of prints - will be on exhibit concurrently in the University of Maine Museum of Art through the first half of the summer, May 18-July 3.
Chenoweth Hall: The Early 50s Watercolors will be in Carnegie Gallery. In the early 1950s, Chenoweth Hall (American b. 1908) painted a dramatic series of watercolors, capturing her travels in Maine and the Southwest. Armed with an acute understanding of artist John Marin's synthesis of abstraction and depicted landscape, she forged a group of works that are poetic in their affinity for the essence of subject and often sublime in feeling. This series of plein air works combine an enthusiasm for the process of recording their subjects with the urgency of capturing the fleeting moment through abstraction.
In the 1938 Gallery will be Big Fun: Prints from Robert Venn Carr, Jr. '38 Collection. The contemporary collecting eye of Robert Venn Carr Jr., UMaine Class of '38, gravitated to works which were brightly colored, big and fun. The artists included in this exhibition reveal a preoccupation with bold, colorful images on a large scale. Their use of irony and humor reflect their roots in Pop art. The 16 pieces in the exhibition include works by Jonathan Borofsky, Louisa Chase, Jim Dine, Nancy Graves, Red Grooms, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Elizabeth Murray, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist.
Brightly Beaded a First
Moccasins, purses, pouches and other decorated items will illustrate the rich beadworking traditions of Native American women in a new exhibit at the Hudson Museum.
Brilliantly Beaded: Northeastern Native American Beadwork, May 12-Sept. 6, is the first major exhibit in the country devoted to the region's beadwork. Funded by a major grant from the Maine Humanities Council, the exhibit will feature about 75 examples of Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Iroquois beadwork.
"The general lament among beadworkers is the small number of pieces available for study and inspiration," says Gretchen Faulkner, the exhibit's co-curator. "Examples of traditional clothing were avidly collected by ethnographers and deposited in museum collections far from the peoples who made them."
Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, Native American women decorated clothing with porcupine quill and moose hair embroidery, painted motifs - and beads made from shell, bone and copper. Europeans brought woven fabrics and glass beads, which were integrated into existing native decorative traditions.
In the 1700s, native women made items such as moccasins and purses for sale to outsiders. By the mid-19th century, a variety of household items were decorated with beads. Many of these objects included dates, place names and inscriptions.
Beadworking traditions continue today. The Hudson exhibit will feature the work of Penobscot beadworker Jennifer Neptune.
Brilliantly Beaded draws upon the Hudson Museum's collections, and holdings from other museums in Maine and Massachusetts, and in private collectors.