LEWISTON — “Secrets of the Sea”—When those of us who’ve been around awhile see a title like that, the first thing that might come to mind would quite likely be the memory of those wonderful old Jacques Cousteau documentaries—knowledgeable adventures taking us into the deeper oceans and featuring creatures that we were already at least somewhat familiar with—the wildlife “stars”, so to speak, of those oceans—whales, sharks, porpoises, dolphins—or the somewhat more exotic species—giant squid, maybe; electric eels, sea turtles, but nothing, really, that we hadn’t seen before. We got to know them better—their behaviors, life cycles, migration patterns if they had any, who were predators and who were prey. We got to know them better, but we didn’t get to know the complexity of their environments, the minutiae from which those environments are built–the existence underneath it all of the endless unseen things that support that existence and which that existence creates, regenerates, and flushes back into its oceans, continually modifying and rebuilding their worlds.

This underworld of being is virtually unknown to the popular mind. Those who make their livings from it, fishermen, for instance, know parts of it that relate to them directly, but science and its offspring, biology, geology, environmental studies are the ways in which we have come to see and begin to understand that vast, ever-present, fluctuating, ever-changing, mostly never-seen world that supports, builds, and sustains all life in all the oceans of the planet. Science needed to discover the elements of that world before art can begin to record and comment upon it — and once again, following a tendency that’s been turning into something of a tradition over the past eight years, USM’s Atrium Art Gallery has an exhibit of art that has risen primarily from science, and that art has in turn risen from the work of 25 artists and 14 writers.

The artists represent all the principle disciplines—painting, printing, drawing, sculpture, assemblage and mixed media. The writers all have work in a complementary poetry chapbook—”Poems for Tube-Snouts and other Secrets of the Sea” —that is part of the exhibit, with the work of a few of them up on the walls.

The work shown here ranges from the commonly recognized larger creatures—whales, a giant squid, an octopus, one leopard shark—down almost immediately, one might say, into the deeper darkness and the often tiny “lesser” creatures—many if not most of which, dwell on or near the bottom. Two of the more striking images of these larger creatures are Adelaide Tyrol’s “Hunt for the Giant Squid (Kraken)”, acrylic on a suitably large canvas at the center of which is the kraken’s eye, which seems here almost three-dimensional, so inset is its appearance in the creature’s body, and Tyrol has true purpose in that, stated in an accompanying note: The kraken, which can reach over 50 feet in length, has the largest eye of any living creature, 11 inches in diameter and gifted in many levels of vision. On another wall is Tyrol’s equally large oil and gold leaf on canvas “Zone of Influence”—a beautiful, very happy-looking octopus seemingly dancing a solitary ballet.

Of the whales, we have three of Jamie Hogan’s illustrations from a childrens’ book on that subject, two by Rebecca Goodale—“Sei Whale” and “Sperm Whale” both ink on paper with collage set deeply in long frames with a human female swimming in each to render the relative sizes of the creatures— the scale of the whale, as it were. Interestingly, right next to these two works, Goodale also has three more “smaller” works, in both senses—going from the size of the creatures illustrated to the intention of the exhibition—three three-dimensional dry point etchings, hand-cut and assembled: “Horseshoe Crabs Mating,” “Horseshoe Crab Larvae,” and “Horseshoe Crab.”

Further along in the gallery the painting which might be said to bring the world of the whales into that of that of the “bottom feeders” and bringing them all into our common consciousness is Chris Augusta’s slightly abstract and brilliantly lit pastel on paper ocean of “Thoughts of White Whales.” Near the surface are a few smiling cetaceans drifting happily over depths crowded with creatures that grow larger and more pronounced on the bottom—starfish, coral, shell-dwellers, crawlers of many kinds—just about all you could think of down there—and next to the painting is a quote from Melville’s Moby Dick—“O Nature, and soul of man, how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! Not the slightest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.”… And from there, I suggest, we now seek that slightest atom of the deep ….

The majority of the art here, and all the poems in the chapbook, with one exception—a long slightly antagonistic conversation with a whale—are dealing with those mysteries. Among the most striking of them are five works of varying size by Nicole Duennebier—all acrylic on panel, all extremely detailed many-colored multi-images rising from deep blackness. What might seem like abstractions at first glance are actually highly magnified likenesses of plankton, cysts, fungus, invasive floral fauna and other related matter. Duennebier brings these things forth with incredible depth and gusto. She says of her work: “My interests in natural phenomenon and my love of candied Old Master opulence always seems to be present in my painting …. Painting with attention to detail—I’ve become accustomed to the fact that nature in itself, or anything living, really, never allows you to have a perfectly idealized experience. Everything is always spewing, dripping, rotting a little…”

And all of those conditions can be found in almost all the rest of the art here.— In still more deeply colored and complex works by Chris Augusta—“Undersea World Studies,” “Revolt of the Echinoderms,” and the lobsters and trap buoys of “A Very Good Year.” In Wendy Newcomb’s oil on panel “Sea Garden” and “Tidal Dance,” both done so strongly that you can not only see but almost feel the strength of the currents running through them. In Anne Alexander’s “Suspended Seaweed,” eight raku-fired ceramics dangling from the ceiling by the door representing bladderwrack, a seaweed common in Maine waters that rises toward the surface to gather the sunlight necessary for its survival. In the sculpture assemblages of Mary O’Malley’s “Bottom Feeder” series—a teapot, creamer and sugar bowl, serving bowl  and vase—all hand-sculpted and covered with undersea life, like remnants of some old shipwreck, as are Brian White’s old metal tea kettle assemblages covered with sand, shells, and coral.

There’s nowhere near enough room in this review to cover all of the artists in this show. But there is one I need to close with, that prolific comic genius of rusted metal, Nathan Nicholls of Waldoboro, who died quite unexpectedly on  July 11. His work is very popular. Probably most of us have seen some of it at one time or another, either in various displays or in photographs, and some of it already resides in museums. He has two pieces in this show—“Seahorse,” rising about seven feet off the floor, made from a snowmobile muffler, horseshoes, hammer head, and woodstove top—and the even more comic and creative “Angler Fish” likeness of that deep-sea creature who hunts with a little light suspended in an arch rising from its forehead. This piece rises like a tricycle, its body built from a bicycle seat, rebar, garden forks, pick heads, propane tank, rake tines, and electric lights for its eyes. May Nathan Nicholls’ rust rise into a treasure filling many more museums.

 “Secrets of the Sea: Inspirations from marine plants and animals,” Atrium Art Gallery, USM Lewiston-Auburn College,  through Nov. 22. 

Copy the Story Link