Maine Perspective Front Page
Dialogue
The University community is invited to Dialogue at the Museum of Art, Nov. 5-Dec. 18.
This year's art faculty exhibition is all about the dialogue that occurs between artists and the art that influences them, as well as the communication that then occurs with viewers. UMaine artists have selected art or objects that create a dialogue with their own work. By opening up that dialogue to viewers through art and text in this exhibit, the subtle communication that most often takes the form of a whisper comes to the fore in scintillating conversation.
The format and theme of this year's exhibit marks a major departure for the annual faculty art show.
"The show provides insight into the creative process - not just the result but a key to what artmaking is about," says James Linehan, chair of the Department of Art and one of the 15 artists in the show. "Often people ask who influenced us and why. Here, we're starting with that question.
"In some ways, we're taking things that are in the background of what we do and putting them in the foreground as a way to engage the audience more directly," says Linehan, who will pair one of his works with a color woodcut by Chuck Close. "This is an obvious invitation."
The show is not about the semblances between works by UMaine artists and their sources of inspiration, but more about visual documentation. Companion pieces - art and artifact - were chosen for the genre represented, the language communicated, the medium used. In some cases, the pieces provide the historical context, the philosophical edge, the muse. They may be pieces that once influenced the UMaine artists on their journey of self-discovery and expression, or the forms of expression that continue to evolve and inspire today.
Each of the pairings is linked by text, written by the faculty artist, to further the dialogue with the audience.
For example, printmaker Elizabeth Dove will juxtapose her work with the metaphoric implications she sees in such
forms of expression as a box of star maps from Fogler Library and a star chart from the Planetarium.
Cristin Millett's research focuses on the history of medicine. Using this knowledge to inform her work, she constructs instruments, anatomical models and diagrams that are incorporated into installations. For her companion piece for Dialogue, Millett contacted a graduate school colleague with whom she had lost touch. What she found was that their once different artistic pursuits are now more similar than ever in the arena of medicine.
Brooke Knight has taken a page from the artist book, Royal Road Test. Working in collaboration with Owen Smith, Knight has replaced the typewriter Edward Ruscha, Patrick Blackwell and Mason Williams threw from a speeding car with a computer thrown from a moving truck. In their multimedia installation, Road Apple Test, Knight and Smith borrow from visualization methods and data categorization used in science.
Other UMaine artists and their chosen "dialogue" works: Michael Lewis - Zdzislaw Sikora; Jay Hanes, Eleanor Weisman and Hawk Weisman - Eleanor Coerr; David Decker - James Whistler; Wally Mason - Robert Motherwell; Elizabeth Dove - Hans Vehrenberg; Deborah de Moulpied - Erwin Hauer; Liane Judd - James W. Sewall Co.; Alan Stubbs - Rebecca Silberman; Siri Beckman - Barbara Petter Putnam; Cristin Millett - Kaersten Colvin-Woodruff.
"By showing related work drawn from the University Collection and beyond, viewers can get insights into what we're doing and interested in as individuals," says Smith, who, in addition to the collaborative work with Knight, is presenting one of his pieces with an Ellsworth Kelly print, which he chose for its abstraction.
"That's the dialogue, the discussion, the engagement between ourselves and the series of ideas of other artists and historical periods. Now, by putting our work next to a possible related work or source, we're allowing viewers to hear and participate in part of the dialogue."