NORWAY — The public is invited to a First Friday opening from 5-7 p.m. Friday, May 2, at the CEBE Gallery on Main Street.

will be featured along with a short video about Langlais’ career and artistic legacy.

Known for his monumental wall reliefs and sculptures of animals from the 1970s, Maine-born artist Langlais (1921–1977) created a rich and diverse oeuvre in his 56 years. From figurative to abstract painter, from abstract to figurative sculptor, to visionary environment builder, Langlais’ art was driven by a deep sense of place, and an unrelenting search for materials and subjects that reconciled his rural roots with postwar artistic movements and ideologies.

In 2010, Langlais’ widow, Helen, left an extraordinary bequest of over 3,500 of her late husband’s works to Colby College. The Colby curators chose to retain a few hundred pieces and established a relationship with the Kohler Foundation to care for the remainder of the collection. The Foundation has inventoried and restored the collection and has sought capable museums, colleges, and public institutions to display and interpret Bernard’s art.

In 2013, representatives of the Western Foothills Land Trust visited the Langlais estate in Cushing with Kohler Foundation conservators and requested consideration for pieces that reflected two of the Trust’s Norway preserves: farm animals for Roberts Farm Preserve, and bird-related pieces for Shepard’s Farm Family Preserve. The donation approval was completed in 2013; smaller indoor pieces were picked up in November 2013 and the larger outdoor sculptures are to be delivered to Norway in July or August of 2014.

This summer the farm pieces will be installed in the warming hut at Roberts Farm Preserve on a rotating basis. Eventually they will be displayed in exhibit rooms on the first floor of the rehabilitated Pike-Roberts farmhouse. This August, a large cow and horse sculptures will be delivered and installed outdoors at Roberts Farm, and eight tall bird-related pieces will be installed in the open field at Shepard’s Farm Family Preserve off Crockett Ridge Road. The outdoor installations will be completed in time for the influx of 350 Bike Maine visitors on Sept. 7.

The CEBE Gallery at 447 Main Street is open Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. The Langlais exhibit will be up through May.

Copy the Story Link