~ Join us for two events on Sunday, April 15th ~
~ Paula Gerstenblatt ~
Artist’s Talk at 2pm
Paula will discuss her exhibition “Full Circle,” which traces her life, including her departure from New England to California at 17 years old and her return to Maine at 56 years old, plus her extensive travel over the years. Her paintings are figurative and abstract. They merge text and visual images on paper and canvas, including a 30 ft. scroll narrative of a newly divorced young mother grappling with the competing demands of art, work and motherhood. This diverse body of work represents her developmental, geographic, and emotional journey.
~ Off the Page ~
Performance of “Etty’s Song” at 4 pm
Martin Steingesser, Judy Tierney and Rudy Gabrielson will perform “Etty’s Song”, a tribute to Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew who was killed in 1943 at Auschwitz, along with members of her family. The tribute is based on Etty’s writings and complemented by Martin’s poems, with Rudy playing keyboards and other instruments. They call their trio Off the Page, because they take beautiful words written for the page and repurpose them as a performance of words and music. Steingesser has called Etty the “unknown Martin Luther King Jr.,” who had the ability in the darkest moments to find peace, love and light. She kept a journal the last few years of her life, and her writings were published in 1981, nearly 40 years after her death at the hands of the Nazis. “Etty’s Song” focuses on the meaning of her life and emphasizes her spirit and capacity for love.
Do not miss these
inspirational events.
March 8, 2018 – May 4, 2018
First Friday Art Walks:
May 4th, 5pm-8pm
Spiegel Gallery
Karen Brooks ~ Reliefs – These works inhabit the broken and holy. They reflect the relationship between the hidden inner nestled in the natural world. The paper sculptures are black and white, constructed in boxes. This highlights their structure to emphasize the light they hold.
Dr. Norm Rosenbaum ~ Small Animal Sculptures – Dr. Rosenbaum, retired physician, discovered stone carving in 1996 after studying woodcarving at the University of New Mexico. His Alabaster carvings of animals have been exhibited at Bowdoin College, Greenhut Gallery, Portland and as far away as Colorado, New Brunswick and Santa Fe, N.M.
Om Devi Reynolds ~ Sumi Drawings – Om Devi Reynolds is a visual artist whose focus for this show is brush work on paper. Her meditative work is about equanimity and our true-nature in this fleeting world. Om Devi has a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology and lives in Casco ME.
Linda Gerson ~ Figurative Paintings – Since 2004 Linda Gerson has participated in weekly drawing groups with a live model. In recent years she has used life drawing as a transition to making more abstract shapes in both her drawing and her oil painting. A resident of Maine for close to twenty five years, Linda’s art is informed by her natural environment, her dreams, as well as her many years as a psychotherapist.
FULL CIRCLE | Paula Gerstenblatt
Fineberg Family Community Room
Paula Gerstenblatt’s work articulates a personal vantage point of relationships, nature, social commentary, and the journey of becoming a person in the world. She uses color, abstraction, form, and collage to construct her narrative. This exhibit represents her full circle journey from New England and back, starting with a narrative scroll of a newly divorced mother; paintings from sojourns to Greece, France, Denmark, and Ghana; and culminating with a series of paintings inspired by life in Maine. These journeys provide more than the opportunity to make art; they embody all that is entangled in the human experience.
Paula Gerstenblatt attended San Francisco Art Institute, received her BA in Art from Goddard College, and received her PhD in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin. Gerstenblatt is also a community art practitioner and recipient of two National Endowment of the Arts Design grants and several foundation awards for projects in Senegal, Texas, and Portland, Maine where she is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at University of Southern Maine.
JUST A MOMENT IN TIME |Nanci Kahn
Third Floor Sanctuary
In the photographic installation, “Just A Moment In Time”, black and white photographs are printed on silk representing the Buddhist notions of Impermanence and Transience; everything in the world lasts for just a moment. Life is fleeting. It is ephemeral, fragile and impermanent. It is the essence of the speed of childhood depicted in these photographs. Alongside these photos are large format images of keepsakes. Unlike heirlooms, objects that have been passed down from generation to generation, keepsakes have no real monetary value. We cherish them for the energy they exchange with our hearts. Their value lies in the remembrance of a specific person, a specific adventure, a specific moment in time. Together, both bodies of work blend to speak of the past, of memory and remembrance, and the knowledge that it is all just a moment in time.
Nanci Kahn is a photographer and sculptor based in Falmouth, Maine. She has exhibited in galleries and museums in Maine, New York, San Francisco and Ethiopia. Her work can be found in the permanent collections at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, The Kroch Library at Cornell University, the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, the Stephen K. Halpert Photography Collection at the University of New England, Portland, Maine, and the Judy Ellis Glickman Collection at the Portland Museum of Art, Maine.
