news & events : visiting artists

Artist Lecture Series : Winter 2010

All lectures are free and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted, lectures are held in Osher Hall, located on the second floor of the Porteous Building, 522 Congress Street.

Thursday, January 21

Lewis Hyde, "The Collaborative Self", 12:30

February 4, 1pm
Cheryle St.Onge
Porteous 305

Ms. St. Onge was born in Worcester MA. Her photographs have been widely exhibited, most notably at Princeton University, University of Rhode Island, Massachusetts College of Art, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the American Institute of Architects. Her photographs have been included in four books and she has received numerous awards and residences among them a Polaroid Materials Grant and a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Ms. St. Onge received a M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, and interned at M.I.T. contact printing the archives of Dr. Harold Edgerton. For over a decade, she taught photography at Clark University, and art & writing workshops for high school students at the Worcester Art Museum. She divides her time with her family between Durham, New Hampshire and coastal Maine. 
www.cherylestonge.com

February 9, 12:00
Jennifer Moore and Chris Dingwell
Jennifer Moore is your garden variety medicine tattooer. She spends her days at Sanctuary Tattoo in Portland Maine, putting prayers on people’s skin and helping truth and beauty surface. She practices tattooing as a healing art, bringing her experience as a professional psychic, Reiki master and body centered spiritual healer to her tattoo sessions to offer an experience for the heart and soul as well as the body.
www.spirittattooing.com

Chris Dingwell started tattooing in 1994 after finishing a Masters Degree in Fine Arts at Ohio State University. His painting, drawing, and sculptural work have strongly influenced his tattooing. Chris constantly has to think beyond what his clients bring in to him, but without losing track of their intention. He likes to do work that is as non-traditional as possible; anything painterly and unusual is fun. The real question is how far can we push this tattooing thing? And in how many directions at once?
www.chrisdingwell.com/artists.html

February 11, 12:30pm
Judith Allen

Judith Allen-Efstathiou, a mixed media artist, earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts from School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University (1989) Massachusetts and a Masters of Art Education from The University of La Verne, California (1992). She exhibits her work in both the USA and in Greece, and has been included in many international printmaking biennials throughout the world. Her work is in the collection of The Portland Museum of Art, Maine; The Farnsworth Museum of Art, Maine, The New York City Public Library, Silvermine Guild Arts Center, Connecticut; The Museum National of Warsaw, Poland and Museum National of Silesia, Poland. Her work is included in the publication Maine Printmaking 1800-2005: The Imprint of Place by David P. Becker, published by The Center for Maine Contemporary of Art and Down East Books. (2006). She lives half of each year in the heat and bustle of Athens, Greece and half in the frozen quiet of Portland Maine winters.
www.allenefstathiou.com

February 16, 12pm
Molly Hatch
Ceramic artist Molly Hatch aims to design new objects and redesign old objects in the hope that the folks using her work will begin to see art in the everyday.
www.mollyhatch.com

February 17, 12pm
Juile Poitras Santos 
Julie Poitras Santos makes work that explores the landscape of liminal space and the overlap.  She links spaces and bridges gaps through communication and translation.  The work creates narratives, actions and opportunities for exchange to investigate these places of connection.  Julie's solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Reykjanesbaer Art Museum in Iceland and at the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Spain.  She has attended residencies and created performances and projects in Vermont, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Iceland.  She received her BS from Tufts University in 1990, and her MFA from the University of Colorado in 2000.  She currently works as a Studio Instructor in MECA's MFA program
juliepoitrassantos.blogspot.com

February 18, 12:30pm
David K. Ross
Ross' current installation brings together the visual technologies of the camera obscura at the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine with the ICA at MECA.
www.graphicstandards.org/biography_dkr.htm

February 23, 12pm
Elliot Earls, feature film screening of "The Saranay Motel"
Elliott Earls is a graphic designer and performance artist. Currently, the designer-in-residence at Cranbrook is working on a new body of work entitled “Bull and Wounded Horse,” which incorporates traditional media, including egg tempera painting, clay busts, large manipulated photo prints, and an array of robotic musical instruments, combined into a performance piece
www.theapolloprogram.com
 

February 25, 12:30pm
Elliot Earls, lecture 
Elliott Earls is a graphic designer and performance artist. Currently, the designer-in-residence at Cranbrook is working on a new body of work entitled “Bull and Wounded Horse,” which incorporates traditional media, including egg tempera painting, clay busts, large manipulated photo prints, and an array of robotic musical instruments, combined into a performance piece that uses Jitter-based interactive digital video. Here he talks about melding traditional graphic design with stagecraft resulting in a delightfully curious, historically rooted, unprecedented art.
www.theapolloprogram.com
 

March 4, 12:30pm
Crystal Cawley
Crystal Cawley makes artist’s books, works on paper, and sculpture by combining decrepit books and their parts with an eclectic mixture of ephemera, such as vintage paper dolls or how-to-sew pamphlets. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and in England, most recently in Secrets, an exhibition of prints made in an exchange by 7 US and 7 UK artists, at the F Block Gallery in Bristol, England. Her work is in many public collections, including the Bowdoin College Library, Portland Museum of Art, RISD Library, and the Library of Congress. Cawley was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2005, and Good Idea Grants from the Maine Arts Commission in 2004 and 2010.
www.crystalcawley.com

March 16, 2pm in Student Center
Joshua Enck
Joshua Enck trained as an architect before returning to school to earn a MFA in Furniture Design From Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Through handmade functional and sculptural objects, his work explores agricultural and industrial landscapes and the subjects of collection and the forgotten object. He currently lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island and balances his studio practice with teaching in RISD's Furniture Design and Foundation Departments.
www.joshuaenck.com

March 18, 12:30pm
Deb Todd Wheeler
Wheeler is a sculptor, inventor, and media artist. Her work concerns technology as a mediator for human interaction with the environment. Wheeler's work in on view in Exchange at the ICA at MECA.
Web site

Visiting Artist lectures are free and open to the public. For additional information, see www.meca.edu or call (207)775.3052.