Posts from — May 2009

Paul Butler, the MFA’s first Visiting Faculty member this summer, will be warming up for his MECA stint in Italy! Read about his Reverse Pedagogy residency as it gets underway in the palazzos and canals of Venice…

(net experiments 2009)

The Line The Path and The Shadow. I am interested in the ways that we remember our way by connecting to the land and the land to the map and the map to the memory. I am interested in the space between the body and the environment. The space that defines connection and also defines boundaries. The line as a divided and connected. A seam and a tear.

Recently I have also been looking at ways that our view is altered by fragmenting  of the territory we perceive. I am interested in the ways that we look out from our bodies into our environment, perceived as a captive, prisoner, voyeur, or participant, what we see and how we see a path and an environment..The paintings on fragments and inverted fragments speak to this.

I am also interested in shadows and time and how a shadow becomes an object and yet it moves through time. The way a shadow defines not only the absence of the object, but its presence. The metaphor of impressions left upon others by objects and people led me to explore the net… Both a barrier and a sieve and a metaphor in this case for letting go, setting free and the act of grieving, as well as holing a potential for abundance and future wealth has led me to undertake a series of drawings and embossings and etchings with the object of the net.

Michel Droge’s website

In addition to current MFA faculty and staff Amos Latteier, Rebecca Duclos, and Rachel Katz, the graduate program at MECA is thrilled to welcome two new professors, Andrea Ray and Peter Simensky, who will be teaching with us beginning this summer and fall, respectively.

Andrea Ray, Inhalatorium 2004

Professor Andrea Ray is a New York-based installation artist whose work primarily investigates the effects of ill-perceived relations and misdiagnosed conditions between subjects and their environments. Her projects often incorporate sound and architectural components and are supported through focused research across a number of fields and disciplines including psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, utopian studies, literary and aesthetic theory. Andrea received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989 and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1994. She attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 1996 and has taught widely and maintained an international studio practice ever since. Andrea brings with her a tremendous intensity and care in her interdisciplinary and intermedial teaching that has been honed at institutions such as the Kansas City Art Institute, Hunter College, Cooper Union, the College of New Jersey, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Parsons The New School, and the Malmö Art Academy in Sweden. Andrea will teach the summer Perspectives course, both Research Methdologies courses for 1st and 2nd year students in the fall, as well as the Interdisciplinary Studies and From Impetus to Analysis courses in the spring term. The MFA at MECA is thrilled to have Andrea join the faculty this June.

Peter Simensky, Neutral Capital 50 (Real Real Fictions) 2007

Professor Peter Simensky is a Maine-born, New York-based artist whose work spans numerous media including sculpture and installation, three-dimensional design, collage, video, photography, performance, print, and textiles. Peter received his BA at the University of California, Berkeley in Art History and Studio Art in 1999 and his MFA at Hunter College in 2003. In the same year Peter was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Peter’s expansive network of artists and writers (developed in part through his position as a photo editor at Artforum from 2001 to 2003), as well as his extensive teaching experience at Hunter College, University of California San Diego, and New York University will be a significant asset to the program in the fall when he joins the MFA as a consultant to assist with the crucial pairing of MFA students and individual studio advisors in each student’s home community. In the fall term Peter will also be teaching the Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945 course for 1st year students as well as the Guided Studies and Studio Thesis courses in the fall and spring terms, respectively, for graduating students. The MFA is excited to welcome Peter who will begin his work with us in mid-August.

 where there's smoke (2009) pen and charcoal 24" x 18"

I was born and raised in Massachusetts and have spent most of life working and going to school around the Boston area. My interests range from social etiquette and aesthetic violence to the natural world of magnetism, physical anomalies, and unknown terrains of the deep ocean and the spirit world. I now live in Portland, Maine with my family.

I make work that is irrational out of impulse that draws from the social conditions that surround me. People turn into animals and praying mantises stop traffic. On surrealist terms I play with the notions of the natural world and the man made world colliding. Drawing and collage have allowed me to play God in miniature. The lark is not for me alone. Black ink on white paper begs to be read. It allows the viewer common accessibility.  This proletariat vehicle traveling in the realm of higher art is as paradoxical as the work itself. Often I choose to incorporate the aftermath of an event, often a violent death or a physical transmutation. I construct a scene without closure as the scene between the before and after the occurrence prove more engrossing to me. I am curious if the ambiguity empowers the viewer to choose a situation or if it arrests the person as they determine what kind of a person they are for taking too long a look.

My encroachment into sculpture is starting to avoid the game of sensibilities and address our connection with the dead through objects of personal significance. I am striving to reanimate life embedded within objects while addressing the underdeveloped terrain of spiritual research metaphysical and parapsychological. By making a physical event, although representational, I want to extend what was the reading of a drawing to the idea of baring witness.

Stacy Howe’s website

 bomber (2008) charcoal and acrylic 22" x 16"

Congratulations to the class of 2009!  Below are a few images of work being installed in the ICA galleries before the final thesis reviews took place.

Untitled (2009)

Alisha Gould is a visual artist whose sculptural works, installations and photographs repurpose simple, everyday materials using handmade methods and repetitious processes to create unexpected transformations that exist somewhere between the beautiful and the absurd.  Her projects explore the poetic potential of spaces, the interior/exterior dichotomy, and the relationship of the natural and the artificial.

Alisha is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, currently getting her masters at Maine College of Art. She lives and works in Kennebunk, Maine.  In addition to her sculptural work she also runs a design business featuring limited edition hand silk screened prints.

Alisha Gould’s website

Salt Books (2008)

I am seeking to represent the concept of fragility.

Through my exploration of this concept I wish to specifically address aspects of mental fragility. This idea pertains to memory loss and retention, neural disintegration, mental change and dysfunction, as well as mental distraction and reaction through actual physical sensibilities. It is my goal to have the viewer and the artwork be motivated by physical sensory reactions and deprivations such as touch, smell, hearing, taste and sight.

I address this topic in light of recent events that have occurred in my life over the last 2 years. My Grandmother, Lillian Henninger died in June 2006 of severe Alzheimer’s Disease. She lost all ability to speak and write more than two years before her death, which led to anxiety for both herself and our family. In 2007 I lost the man who I claimed to be my Grandfather, Donald “Trouble” Manchester. Trouble died from severe Alzheimer’s Disease as well, he became completely unable to recognize the family and friends that he had known and cared for much of his life. I watched both of these wonderful people decline, mentally and physically. My Grandmother’s mentality degraded more slowly while Trouble went downhill quick and lasted less than a year. I was most struck by the importance of things that were forgotten, why was it that my Grandmother could not remember my Mother’s name but would ask for her dog “Fuzzy” often? She had known the dog only a few years while she had birthed and raised my mother.  Trouble could remember everything that was growing in every greenhouse that he owned, but he couldn’t remember to water the plants or turn the heat on at night so all the plants died from exposure. How does the mind select what is more pertinent to memory? Do we have any control in what we remember? Is there a way to retrieve the memory once it is lost? What is a memory once it is trasnversed into the mind? How is it translated, represented, formulated and retrieved? Most importantly, is there a way to stop, slow or even reverse the process of memory loss?

Losing memory tends to have a positive and negative ripple effect around those afflicted. I am interested in the power of this loss and also the connectivity and disconnectivity associated with it. I am also interested in the ways that sensory perception tie into this loss, specifically if the senses are affected by it. If one forgets that their favorite warm sweater is the white one in the closet, will they remember if they put it on and feel comfort? Will it cause a brief recollection or something more pertinent? When Trouble used to forget to turn the furnace on in the greenhouse he would get into his truck to go home and if he smelled diesel fuel he would instantly remember to go back and turn on the furnace. When he had springtime cold and couldn’t smell anything he didn’t remember once. If one fights to remember one thing will another memory be lost or diminished? If my Grandmother tried to remember all day that she had to dress nice for dinner later she would forget to eat lunch, take her pills, and take the dog outside. Is there a way to harness the positive and negative aspects of memory loss to allow for a peaceful existence? Even worse, if one cannot remember anything at all, are they at peace with themselves? Is memory loss a disease or does it become one of greater integrity when psychological ramifications begin to take hold of its victim?

I wish to answer these questions through utilization of materials that are fragile, to create visual and physical works of art which will activate the human senses. I wish to use materials that are tactile and will appeal to the sense of touch, materials that can be smelled and imagined as taste. I will use materials that are changing in physicality and chemical composition; materials that are rotting, melting, disintegrating, unraveling, becoming aged, brittle, delicate, worn away. By utilizing materials that are ever changing, like the human mind, I will create an experience that will be self gratifying in memory, and will be an experiment in itself in regards to memory retention.

Mari Skarp’s website