A contemporary take on the surrealist parlor game featuring 10 Maine artists & 10 from away. This show was the inaugural exhibition in the new Studio One Gallery at Waterfall Arts.
The exhibition presented a contemporary take on the surrealist parlor game, Exquisite Corpse, which originated in Europe during the early decades of the 20th century. The game involves creating a drawing of a figure by passing an accordion-folded paper “round-robin” style amongst a group of artists, each contributing a separate head, torso, legs and feet without seeing the section which preceded it. The results are fantastical, unnatural creatures.
The show at Waterfall Arts featured the work of 10 local artists who, in turn, each invited an artist from away to participate in the game. The works circulated among the participants by mail, going from towns across Maine to New York, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Rhode Island, North Carolina and Connecticut before making their way back to Waterfall Arts.
The Maine artists represented in the show are: Michael Branca, Megan Chase, Kenny Cole, Beth Henderson, Joanne Halpin, June Kellogg, Judith Krischik, Ted LaFage, Peter McFarland, Ulrike Stadler, and Melita Westurlund. Artists from away include: Don Doe (Brooklyn, NY), Ian Ingram (Santa Fe, NM), Rob Horton (Saugerties, NY), Nick Mook (Wakefield, RI), Gabrielle Feldman (Honesdale, PA), Angus McFarland (Chapel Hill, NC), Jeffery White (Athens, GA), Garth Evans (Woodstock, CT).
Along with the exhibition was a lecture, Art and Play: Games as a Mechanism for Creative Work, with Owen Smith, Professor of Art & New Media, UMO. There was a $5 suggested donation.
Also opening in the Corridor Gallery was 4 Levels of Absurdity: An Installation of Whimsical and Foolish Works by area artists.
“The Parent Project,” a new installation by Belfast artist Stewart Henderson opened in the Clifford Gallery on Friday, June 1, with a public reception for the artist from 5-7pm. The installation addresses the question, “How much do our parents influence what we do in our creative lives?” Henderson, who attributes his love for art from his mother and his deep appreciation for the world around him from his father, incorporates such diverse itemsas New Yorker magazine covers, a canoe, recordings of bird songs, and a large-scale collage paintingfrom 2003, titled, “Groovy,”in this multi-media installation.
n “Walking in Time,” Dudley Zopp’s new installation created for Waterfall Arts’ Clifford Gallery, columns of paintings reflect matters of contemplation as contemporary as highway cuts and as ancient as the Acadian orogenyof the Paleozoic Era.
Zopp was one of an international group of artists invited to participate in Waterfall Arts, then the Art Center at Kingdom Falls, original “Art in Nature” residency in 2001.
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