Harry Faust
Art Fund Public Art Sculpture Grant Awardees
In
an ongoing effort to support public art in Maine, and through a
generous donation by the Harry Faust Art Fund, the Maine Arts
Commission has administered a one-time competitive grant that offered
up to $20,000 for artists, non-profit organizations and for-profit
organizations in Maine to create or exhibit public sculpture. In
January, grants ranging from $1,000 to $20,000 became available for
projects promoting the quality of public spaces through the
incorporation of sculptural artwork. The March 31deadline brought many
excellent applications requesting a total $448,156 in support. The
review committee assigned to assess the proposals chose six projects
for funding.
Susan Camp: Gourd Project, a collaborative
project on a communal growing site in Belfast Maine (Waldo County).
Susan
Camp will guide collaboration between students, teachers and community
members involved in the Troy Howard Middle School (THMS) Garden
Project. Her project stems from her sculptural practice of the past
four years of growing and manipulating gourds in two-part hydrostone
moulds. By expanding this activity to a public site and including a
large number of participants in the creation of the pieces, she intends
to extend the boundaries of her practice and stimulate reflection about
our complex relationships with other species. The work also relates to
issues of biotechnology, scientific practice (both contemporary and
historical) and food production.
Camp is
forming a partnering with Jon Thurston and Steve Tanguay, who head up
the THMS Garden Project, to develop an art practice that will highlight
the things already happening at the school garden (enforcing the
importance of sustainable agriculture, advocating fresh locally grown
food, teaching self sufficiency and independence) while expanding that
focus to include the arts. The THMS Garden Project is an ideal site for
this kind of endeavor. The self-sustaining entity is located on the 86
acre site of the Troy Howard Middle School. It is the largest middle
school garden in the country, and in the past eight years visitors from
over one hundred schools have come to explore the grounds and learn.
The THMS Garden Project is well organized with an active web-based
presence, and will be on the Belfast Garden Tour this fall. www.schoolgardenproject.com.
In early May of 2009 Camp will meet with the
students for concept and
image development. From these interactions she will develop a number of
prototypes that can be accommodated in two part moulds. After a final
consultation on the prototypes in early June she will make 20 moulds to
be used on site. The Garden team and supporters will be responsible for
planting, watering, selecting proper gourds, containing, maintaining
and harvesting the products. At the conclusion of the growing season,
all the project participants will meet to view the gourds and celebrate
the creations with the supporters and the community. The gourds will
then be dried (this is a six to eight month process) and then displayed
the following year (2010).
Image: Untitled
by Susan Camp.
City of Gardiner (Jason Simcock):
Sculpture in the Parks, bringing sculpture to the downtown of Gardiner.
(Kennebec County)
The
City of Gardiner, in collaboration with Gardiner Maine Street (GMS),
and local Gardiner arts agencies will be expanding their Sculpture in
the Parks program in downtown Gardiner. The project is an evolution of
a GMS program that started in 2005, when GMS and the City of Gardiner
joined with the University of Maine at Augusta to place student
sculpture within parks. Since then the program has grown to include
local professional artists wishing to temporarily exhibit their work.
The program will sponsor temporary sculpture through 2012.
The Sculpture in the Parks program will
continue to be a juried
exhibition opportunity for sculptural work by Maine artists. Selected
works will be installed between May 1 and October 30. Partnering
organizations include Gardiner Maine Street, The Artdogs Studios,
Johnson Hall, Maine Craft Center and the Maine Sculpture Group.
Image: Finding a
Balance by Rob Lash.
Sandy Macleod: Untitled, intended to install
large-scale outdoor sculptures in the City of Portland. (Cumberland
County)
Sandy
MacLeod has been working on placing large scale public sculpture since
2000. The goal of this project is to install large- scale outdoor
sculptures in and around the city of Portland. In 2002, Sandy was able
to install six sculptures by four artists on the State Pier in
Portland. The sculptures were well received and remained until the city
began to redevelop the pier in 2007. With the help of City Councilor
David Marshall, Ted Musgrave of the Portland Parks Department and The
West End Neighborhood Association, four of the sculptures were moved
from the pier to Harbor View Park in Portland’s West End.
The
city of Portland has offered to provide sites and basic site
preparation to revisit the public sculpture project. Sandy intends to
install up to five more sculptures for a two year period in and around
Portland that will create an outdoor sculpture show that is free and
open to the public.
Image: Unbalanced
by Sandy MacLeod
Robert
Rainey: Path-ology, a project with UMA students to create ephemeral
installations in three different natural locations over the summer of
2009.
Robert Rainey and 13 students from the
University of Maine at Augusta will launch Path-ology, a traveling
sculpture exhibition throughout the summer of 2009. The installation
will be created using a series of 100 photographic images, mounted onto
50 signs which will be placed in a linear sequence along the side of an
existing outdoor pathway. Each of the signs will be a two-sided
freestanding aperture displaying an image on both the front and back,
the first color image is intended to be seen when coming and the second
black-and-white when going.
The intent is to
have visitors of Maine’s parks and nature areas experience the
spontaneity, surprise, whimsy and delight of the images in the natural
context. The work will be on display for approximately one month before
it changes location. Due to the temporary and ephemeral nature of the
piece, it is intrinsically flexible and can be adapted quickly to
whatever arrangements are necessary. The sites that have been secured
to exhibit the work included Pine Tree State Arboretum, Augusta June
6-July 10; Moose Point State Park, Searsport July 11-August 8 and
Lamoine State Park Ellsworth, August 10 - September 7. www.ProjectPathology.com
Image: Image from Pathology
project installation by Catherine McDade.
Randy
Regier: A Toy Store for Spaceship Earth, stylized toy store
installation that will appear in four struggling downtown locations
across Maine in 2010. (Traveling)
A Toy
Store for Spaceship Earth will be designed to rekindle the spark of
imagination and wonder that is alive within the child and latent within
the adult. The toys, boxes, displays and store components will be built
from found materials, objects, artifacts and ephemera from the 20th
century (NOT however, from actual toys). The work will manifest itself
as items that will quickly convert a previously vacant storefront into
a 'suddenly discovered' vintage toy store, replete with robots,
dollhouses, race cars, ships, planes, games and toy animals, etc. This
installation is intended to travel, and will be both durable and
elastic in the sense that it can be configured into different spaces.
The installation would be available to the public, or viewable, 24
hours a day and seven days a week.
The
project is slated to begin January 2010 and over the course of a year
will appear for three month durations in four different towns across
the state. Contributors to this project include Portland based White
Dog Arts graphic design company, David Wolfe Editions, and the
conservator and restoration expert Peter T. Bennett. Richard D'Abati
and the staff of the Maine Historical Society are aware of this project
and eager to help to make it happen, and SPACE Gallery in Portland has
previously sponsored a similar project ‘Now Your Spacecraft Will Be
Your Peace’ and is supportive of this one too. http://www.flickr.com/photos/regierart/collections/72157606257512939/
Image: NuPenny process
by Randy Regier.
