FARMINGTON — The University of Maine Farmington celebrated the beginning of a new academic year with “Juxtapose: the UMF Art Faculty Exhibition”, which features the work of UMF’s own art faculty. The exhibit officially opened to the public on Thursday, Sept. 7, at the UMF Art Gallery and will continue until Sunday, Oct. 8.

The exhibit blends together a wide variety of artistic styles and methods, including painting, photography, sculpting, and video installations. The faculty members featured in the exhibit are Ann Bartges, Tom Jessen, Dawn Nye, Elizabeth Olbert, Jesse Potts and Katrazyna Randall.

Bartges had two pieces featured in the exhibit, the first being a video installation titled “Duet”. The piece features the cutout of a tea kettle and a spray bottle with images projected onto the cutouts while a harpsichord prelude by Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre is playing.

“My most recent video installation, “Duet” [2023], explores the juxtaposition of formal classical music with quotidian imagery,” Bartges told The Franklin Journal. “A teapot and a spray bottle are similar in utility, both vessels are used in the home to hold and disseminate liquid in very specific ways. However, fancy teapots are for serving guests, and cleaning products are for the work done before the guests arrive.

“The projections displayed on these silhouettes host a fluid stream of video imagery depicting interior and exterior domestic spaces, chores around the home and children at play, all to the tune of a harpsichord prelude.”

When asked about her choice of music, Bartges stated, “This piece of chamber music was played in the court of King Louis XIV at the Palace of Versailles. Its contextual history haunts the unpretentious video imagery with echoes of hyperbolized formality and the performance of status, while also nodding to the exceptional feat of Lady de La Guerre’s achievement of professional success as a female musician in the 17th century.”

Bartges is a photographer and video artist and also serves as director of the Emery Community Arts Center at UMF. A graduate of the University of Michigan with a masters in fine arts, her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at arts spaces such as the Grimmerhus Museum in Denmark, Dark Horse Experiment in Melbourne, Australia, and most recently at Cove Street Arts in Portland and the L. C. Bates Museum in Hinkley, Maine.

Bartges other piece, titled “Grandma Series”, are three photos that are featured on the second floor of the exhibit. “In this series, my 4-year-old son plays with life-sized paper cutouts of my mother’s hands,” she said.

“I made this project during the time of almost total shutdown at the height of the pandemic. My mom lives 500 miles away, but long-distance travel at that time felt forbidden.”

According to Bartges, the hand cutouts were printed from screenshots taken over a video chat call. “The image quality of the printed hands is low-res and pixelated,” she commented, “The colors of her skin are muted and have that tell-tale video chat bluish tone. Yet, my son tries to interact with the stiff paper hands as if they are human, as if they might return his embrace.”

Bartges stated the piece was intended to comment on the growing imbalance of virtual interaction compared to in-person integration. “In what ways do relationships change and evolve when we can’t touch each other, or make direct eye contact?” she asked rhetorically.

Also on the first floor is a piece by Jesse Potts. Titled “Slow Walk Home”, the installation is a wall built into the art exhibit with a door spliced into the wall. On one side is a the door tilting down, but upon walking to the other side, visitors are met with the other side of the door, tilting up with balloons tied to the edge of the door.

Potts says the inspiration for the piece came from an experience he had at an airport around 10 to 15 years ago. “I was sitting at my gate waiting to board a flight in the airport. I remember seeing a mother and father slowly meandering through the airport terminal with two small children in tow.

“The slow idiosyncratic pace of that family zigging and zagging has been an image that has stuck with me ever since. Their slow lurching path was such a dramatic contrast to the speed, directness and seeming urgency of everyone else in the airport.

“I have often thought of my observation of that family’s slow walk as a metaphor for a lifespan and the interconnectedness and importance of the company of others.”

Potts redirected this metaphor to his piece in the exhibit, stating, “I’m interested in using the door as a symbolic object that represents the passage between spaces. In the gallery, the door is a liminal object that is neither open nor closed and a rather mundane or sedate sight.

“After you move through the gallery and view the piece from the opposite side of the wall you are confronted with a bunch of Mylar party balloons. Some are tied to the hinge of the door in hopes to conjure the feeling of buoyancy or lift as though the balloons are raising the door up or pulling it through the wall in some kind of Excalibur type fantasy.”

The UMF Art Gallery is open from Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 4 p.m., or by appointment. For more information on the exhibit, or if interested in an appointment, email maline@maine.edu or call [207] 778-1062.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.

« Previous

Farmington approves buying narcotics tester

Next »

Family focused yoga coming to Farmington