Posts from — February 2010

MFA Alum Tina Zagyva ‘09 has a solo exhibition at the Bauchhund Gallery in Berlin.

Themselves Has Been a Gathering: Vessel #2
Bauchhund Gallery | Berlin, Germany
February 13th – March 13th 2010

photos: Tina Zagyva

AWARDS
ICA Director Lauren Fensterstock’s exhibition “Twilight” won the the critics pick and people’s choice award in the New England Art Awards category for a themed exhibition. Organized by the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, the awards honor the best art made in New England and top exhibitions organized in the region.

The MECA viewbook for Admissions won the Silver category from CASE Communication Awards. Congrats to designer Janet Friskey/Friskey Design, writer Gabe Goldberg, photographer Richard Howard and project manager Molly Hunt.

Amanda Begins ’09 won the only award for Maine at the AIGA Best of New England awards. Begins entered the competition as a student and was one of four students to take home an award at the ceremonies held at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

The Portland Phoenix named the 200 most influential people in Portland. Kudos to those in the MECA community: MECA staffers Lauren Fensterstock, Jay Cornell and Jessica Tomlinson as well as alumni Lisa Pixley, Randy Reiger, Aaron Stephan, Sean Wilkinson, Katie Diamond, Brooke DeLorme and Michelle Souliere.

EXHIBITIONS
Illustration faculty member Alex Rheault is included in a show at the Silvermine Guild Arts Center, located in New Canaan, CT, opening on February 28th and running through April 9th.

The Faces of Literacy exhibition, featuring portraits taken by MECA photography students and alumni, traveled from the Saco Museum to the State House Welcome Center in Augusta.

ALUMNI
Sasha  (Johnson) Eisele ’04  was hired as the Creative Economy Coordinator for the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire.
Randy Regier MFA ’07 is showing in the DeCordova Biennial. In a review by the Providence Phoenix: “Portland artist Randy Regier’s work is just beginning to be known, but he may be one of the best sculptors in the country.” In a review in the Boston Globe: “Randy Regier has installed one of the coolest, most eye-catching flying machines never to have existed.”

The alumni poster project is online. See the posters about alumni careers, made by students in the graphic design department.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mainecollegeofart

GRANTS
MECA received three grants to complete the restoration of the Porteous Building. The Maine Arts Commission provided $15,000 to equip Osher Hall, MECA’s 112-seat lecture hall with ADA technology to ensure full accessibility, the Quimby Family Foundation supported the overall Porteous project with a $40,000 gift, and the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation has issued a $200,000 challenge to the College to raise the final funds to complete renovations on the third and fourth floors to accommodate the move of the Photography Department from the recently sold Baxter Building.

MECA also received a $2,500 grant from the Maine Charity Foundation Fund of the Maine Community Foundation and a $5,000 grant from the Morton-Kelley Charitable Trust to support the reinvigoration of the holdings of the Joanne Waxman Library to better serve the College’s curriculum.  These grants contribute significantly to a fundraising effort to purchase 500 new titles to replace important areas now missing from the collection in fine art, design and photography.

MFA Alum Kevin Dacey ‘07 has a new exhibition of drawings up at the Raymond LaFontaine Art Center.

NEGOTIANTS + TRANSITIONERS
Raymond LaFontaine Art Center | Gardner, MA
February 1st – March 6th 2010

Randy Regier, MFA ‘07, was recently asked to guest-write a photo essay about his NuPenny project for the “Circle into Square” arts and community website in Portland, Oregon.

Read the full essay (and see more images!) on the Circle into Square website.

The MFA program would like to open its office doors to promote work of MECA MFA students and alum in The M+B Gallery. During the year the MFA office see countless perspective students, trustees, archive users, and many friends of the institution. By displaying alumni work in our space we hope not only to promote our program but to continue a bridge between the alumni and the current students. Work will rotate every 3 months.

The space itself is comprised of our main wall which is 9’ X 14’ wide. The space is not restricted to only 2D work. At the threshold of our office is a digital LCD projector affixed to the ceiling for projection and sound. Video would loop during business hours Monday –Fridays.

Deadline: March 15th 2010
To Submit Work: click here to apply.
Contact: Stacy Howe MFA ’10, Gallery Coordinator
(showe [at] meca [dot] edu)

MFA Director Rebecca Duclos will work with artists Donna Akrey, Jon Knowles, and Leah Garnett for a one night performance in Montreal this March.

Telepathic Drawing Session
Articule | Montreal
March 24-27, 2010

I’d say I’m transmitting it. If someone picks it up, then that’s communication. Someone might pick it up a thousand years from now. Someone might pick it up five minutes before I’ve thought about it. You see, because that sort of transcends time and space, and these things sort of exist for all time, so to speak.

Robert Barry speaking with Patricia Norvell about his telepathic pieces, May 30th 1969

“Black Holes 2008″ by Leah Garnett

Telepathic Drawing Session is a modest (if not largely invisible) project which brings together fascinations with extra-sensory perception, preoccupations with conceptual art, and a special interest in the expansiveness of Canadian geography and its scalar restraints on collaborative artistic practice. Rebecca Duclos’ proposal results from of a series of explorations that have brought together research on the 1960s telepathy works of Robert Barry with Ted Serios’ parallel experiments in photographie de la pensée in order to propose a project in which telepathic communication is used to generate images between remote individuals. Telepathic Drawing Session proposes a new model for a thoughtful, collaborative art practice that strives to overcome the pesky limits of time and space—so long a perennial problem for Canadian artists hoping to work with one another across provincial boundaries without the financial assistance of travel grants, the luxury of residencies, or access to unlimited Air Miles. Duclos will work with artists Donna Akrey, Jon Knowles, and Leah Garnett for a one night performance in which drawings will be transmitted between Montreal, Quebec and Sackville, New Brunswick using telepathy and live radio broadcasts.

MFA Alum Anna Shapiro ’00 has a new exhibition of paintings up at the BankRI Pitman Street Gallery.  The Phoenix Providence recently selected it as an Editor’s Pick.

Recent Paintings by Anna Shapiro
BankRI Pitman Street Gallery | Providence, RI
January 7th – February 3rd 2010

“I really love making things about beauty,” says Anna Shapiro, “even if they’re not beautiful.” The founding director of Firehouse 13 has made a big dent in the local arts scene in the last few years. Between her paintings and her sculptures, she is constantly at work. “I’m always exploring the juncture of humans and nature in some way. I have an eco-feminist perspective. I’m interested in how the earth is treated, how the land is treated, and how women are treated.”