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MAINE ARTISTS INVITED TO APPLY FOR MONHEGAN RESIDENCYTHOMASTON— Applications are being accepted for the Monhegan Island residency for emerging Maine artists. Formerly called the Carina House Residency, this summer the program will provide a visual artist with the opportunity to live and work on Monhegan for five weeks. The deadline for application is March 31, 2008 . Send application materials to Monhegan Artists' Residency Corporation (MARC), P.O. Box 187, Thomaston, ME 04861. Applicants will be notified on or before April 30, 2008. The program consists of a five-week-long residency during the summer of 2008 (May 31 to July 5). Entry is open only to Maine residents and is aimed at emerging visual artists working in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, graphic printmaking arts , photography, sculpture, or and new media the digital arts . For more information on the Monhegan Artists' Residency, including complete application guidelines, history and past residents, visit www.monheganartistsresidency.org . This year's judges are Lynn Travis, painter and a previous artist in residence on Monhegan; Britta Konau, curator of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art; and Donna Bergen, a gallery owner from Tenants Harbor. “The sale of the Carina House this past winter has obliged the Monhegan Artists Residency Corporation to find new quarters,” said Gail Scott, chair of the MARC board. “We are pleased to announce that this summer's resident will stay at the Hitchcock House with a studio in the Black Duck fish house.” Previous residents include John Knight, Nicole Duennebier, Connie Hayes, Sarah Knock, Marguerite Robichaux and Robert Pollien. The Monhegan Artists' Residency Corporation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supported by individual donors, art galleries, corporate sponsors, and foundation grants. MARC Fellows showing at CMCA : MARC Fellows Joe Kievett and Mercedes Gilbert are showing at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Join us on Friday, July 6, for a special summer reception featuring the exhibitions "Alan Magee: From the Underground River," "Altered Nature: Manipulated Photographs," "Joe Kievitt: Photosynthetics," and "Mercedes Gilbert: Unstill Waters." There will be a members' reception from 5 to 6 pm and a public reception from 6 to 8 pm to celebrate the high days of summer and the thoughtful work of these varied artists. http://www.cmcanow.org ARTIST YVONNE JACQUETTE TO BE FEATURED SPEAKER AT ÉLAN FINE ART GALLERY ROCKPORT—Acclaimed artist Yvonne Jacquette will give a slide talk titled “The Aerial Muse” at Élan Fine Art Gallery in Rockport on July 9 at 8 pm. Admission is $8, and seating is first-come-first served. Sponsored jointly by Élan Fine Art Gallery and the Monhegan Artists Residency Corporation (MARC), Jacquette's talk is a benefit event to support the Carina House Residency. Each year MARC awards the five-week residencies to two emerging Maine artists through a juried competition process. The residencies provide studio space at Carina House on Monhegan Island and a stipend for each artist. Jacquette, who divides her time between New York City, Maine, and Colorado, is renowned for her nighttime and aerial views. In her paintings Jacquette brings a sense of magic to the physical features of cityscapes and landscapes as viewed from airplanes and high buildings—including (before 9/11) the World Trade Center. In 2003 Jacquette was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received numerous other awards and commissions, including a Guggenheim Artist Fellowship. Her work is exhibited widely and found in such prominent public collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, as well as several Maine museums.
Farnsworth Museum/RocklandCARINA HOUSE—THE FIRST DECADE Ten years ago the Monhegan Artists Residency Corporation, supported by the Farnsworth Museum and individual donors, created the Carina Residency. Its purpose was to allow two Maine artists every summer to each spend five weeks on Monhegan Island in “creative experimentation and exploration.” This exhibition presents the works of seventeen of the artists who enjoyed this opportunity. In written statements these artists express the great feeling of freedom the residency gave them to separate themselves from their usual lives and spend five weeks alone with their thoughts and their materials. In many instances they need not have used words—their work speaks for them. Most of these artists are well known in Maine, and what comes through time and again after a residency is a simplification when compared with earlier work. Marguerite Robichaux said she was influenced by “the austerity of the island.” Austerity is not a quality that figures into her earlier work, but it is here in the 1997 Dawn—Lower Richardson, a 54” by 50” inch painting of clouds, sea and a single branch. This is a work that is both open and full, not crowded as some of her paintings have been. Connie Hayes came to Carina House in 1991, the year after she had embarked on what was to be many years (and the practice continues) of painting Borrowed Views , paintings done while Hayes borrowed a house for a few days, supplying her with ever-changing vistas. Hayes says that the immersion on Monhegan “set a standard for the intensity of inspection” she has used ever since. Her lines have become more exact, even as her color saturation becomes more intense. While sound is not part of the work on display by Karen Adrienne, the sounds of the sea and the island, as well as the visual impact of sea life, have enriched her later work. Her mixed-media artworks involve the body and the actions of its organs. Also, there is always an implied emptiness, as in Seduction , consisting of torso clothing both inflated and deflated. Perhaps it is sound that is needed to fill the void. And, in what must be one of the best paintings ever done by David Little, Private View, he presents a figure, a tree, and a ghostly ship, all so similar in size, yet looking just right—a real departure from his dappled landscapes. These artists, as well as many others in the show, have put their gifts of time and solitude to very good use. Shirley Jacks A graduate of Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Jacks wrote for NBC radio and television in the early 1950s, and then resumed a career in journalism writing for newspapers in the Philadelphia area from 1967 until the early 1980s. After relocating to Portland in 1986, Shirley and her husband Grant Jacks started Greater Portland Magazine , which eventually became what is now Mainebiz . She wrote art reviews for Art New England and other publications and contributed essays to catalogues for exhibitions of Bernard Langlais, John Hultberg and other artists. The Jackses were champions of the arts in Maine. This review originally appeared in Art New England in 1999.
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