Penelope Jones & Deborah Klotz
August 29 – November 1, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Penelope Jones and Deborah Klotz create work from slow, labor intensive studio gestures in their respective fields. Penelope embraces architectural structure, surface texture, and color interaction in her collages and paintings. Deborah explores ephemeral states of shifting light and weight through material and technical inquiry, building image/object relationships in sculpture and prints.
August 29 – November 1, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Ruth Sylmor’s PIXEL-6 photographs portray 14 youthful faces of Shoah children stenciled on mailboxes in the Paris Marais quarter by French street art portraitist, C215. The faces, chosen in collaboration with activist, Serge Klarsfeld, from his collection of photographs of children deported in 1941-44 by cattle car to Auschwitz death camp, were among the over 500 children in le Marais quarter alone, never to return.
August 1 – October 29, 2024
Curated by mother-daughter duo Camille and Anya Davidson, this pop-up exhibition features yellow ribbons lovingly hand-stitched by diverse Maine community members in solidarity with the 116 innocent civilians still held hostage in Gaza. The installation is set up “tunnel-style” to symbolize the underground tunnels where many hostages are held captive. Visitors are encouraged to walk through the tunnel to view the ribbons, along with the names and photos of the hostages each ribbon represents. “Stich Them Home” is, at its essence, a community effort to keep the hostages and their loved ones top of mind, and a visceral plea to do everything in our power to bring them all home now.
Joyce Ellen Weinstein
July 11 – August 23, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Artist Joyce Ellen Weinstein is a recent transplant to the Portland, Maine area from New York City. About this exhibition, she explains, “My main interest in making art is about people, who they are, what they do and what they look like. However, I cannot ignore the majestic beauty of Maine, most especially the water. Therefore, my work incorporates people and their relationship with the water that surrounds us here.”
Group Exhibition by Guest Curator Lin Lisberger
June 27 – August 23, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
This is a group exhibition of sculptors and painters. In these times of enormous conflict, artists seek to give voice to their distress with these conditions. The artists in the exhibition work with assorted components to achieve a desired narrative about their solutions for peace and quietude.
Margie Patlak
July 2 – August 23, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Maine’s dramatic coast and the wildlife it harbors can inspire awe and an appreciation of the transcendent akin to the religious experiences some have felt after following various Jewish practices.
Lisa Houck
July 11 – August 23, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
This pop-up exhibition features mosaic works by Maine-based artist Lisa Houck. The artist works with color and pattern to create complex, imaginative landscapes, and is inspired by the natural world, exploring scientific concepts in her work.
Whitney River
May 9 – June 28, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
The paintings and drawings in this exhibition offer a glimpse of the intrinsic beauty of quiet moments, and an invitation to appreciate the intricate details found in nature. Through close observation and realistic rendering of organic forms, I offer meditative compositions that evoke the human experience and our need for connection. The minimal arrangement of forms allows the viewer space to breathe, while offering a means to contemplate our own relationships, both with others and within the world we inhabit.
Andy Rosen
May 9 – June 21, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Andy Rosen’s exhibition will feature paintings, mixed media and kinetic sculpture. His works often
utilize unconventional, impractical or even absurd methods of construction to explore a range
of expressions of a craving for psychological interiority.
Ted Arnold
May 9 – June 28, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
This exhibition honors the life and work of Ted Arnold, a multi talented artist who participated in the Portland, Maine art community for many years, showing work at Greenhut Galleries, Susan Maasch Fine Art, and Davidson & Daughters Contemporary Art. He had numerous exhibitions at the Maine Jewish Museum, where he was a beloved friend.
Steve Horowitz
May 9 – June 28, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
In this pop-up exhibition, photographer Steve Horowitz honors the victims and first responders of 9/11. About the images, he says, “The buildings, and the people who worked there plus the first responders, are unforgettable. This is in recognition of them.”
March 7 – May 3, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
Steve and Judy Halpert have been supporters of photography and film for years and have been acquiring photographs since the early 1960s. The Steve and Judy Photography Collection, Part II exhibits the work of more than 20 artists including Berenice Abbott, Eugene Atget, Edward Curtis, Jim Daniels, Barbara Goodbody, Michael Kolster, Judy Glickman Lauder, Verner Reed, Todd Webb, and many others.
March 7 – May 3, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
Dahlov (Zorach) Ipcar is considered her parents’ greatest creative experiment. Ipcar was born at a hospital in Windsor, Vermont to the famed sculptor, painter and educator William Zorach and his wife, the painter and textile artist Marguerite (Thompson) Zorach in 1917, while they were living at Echo Farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire.
Ipcar describes her childhood as unusual, “I grew up in a home full of modern art, of Fauvism and Cubism, in a creative atmosphere, where everything in our home was exciting and different from other people’s homes. From the beginning, art seemed like a natural part of life.”
In the late 1930s after marrying Adolph Ipcar, a longtime friend and summer neighbor in Maine, in New York City, the newlywed Ipcars moved to Maine permanently where they lived on Robinhood Farm, part of the Zorach’s property on Georgetown Island, Maine. Over twenty works from Ipcar’s personal collection, the majority of which were created in her studio and later hung in her residence on Robinhood Farm will be shown in this exhibition.
March 7 – May 3, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
As a sculptor in the United States, William Zorach pioneered the art of direct carving stones. He preferred direct carving granite boulders, which he often found himself on walks. There is a spirituality to Zorach’s sculptures inspired by the stones he used and they are uniquely expressive – largely conveying love, strength and inner peace. Zorach was very thoughtful and articulate about his work.
Many of these direct carved sculptures in stone and wood were cast in bronze. In this exhibition, guest curated by Rachel Walls, seven (7) works in bronze created between 1949 and 1956 will be shown together for the first time. These bronzes – Battle of the Ghetto, Refugees, Their Annihilation, Sacrifice, The Prayer, Samuel Answers the Lord and Head of Moses (pictured) – are deeply personal works Zorach created as he processed his own reaction to the Holocaust in Europe and World War II.
Richard Wexler
January 11 – March 1, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
There’s quiet and chaos, hope and despair in New York City. And while your eyes lift to the skyline, you can miss the heartbeat of life pounding on the streets below. NYC Street Dance is a collection of candid street shots, gathered over five years in NYC, which shines a light on the city’s compelling, unrehearsed drama.
Adeline Goldminc-Tronzo
January 11 – March 1, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
“Painting is my life, my love, my … obsession. It is only when I am in front of a canvas that I begin to know who I am and sense with any type of clarity why I am here. The process sends me on a journey, to a place where I am alive.”
Roz Sommer
January 14 – March 1, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
“In 1929, my grandparents took my 6-year-old mother from NYC to visit the family in Poland. I have two small black and white photographs of the family group. I studied the tiny faces and painted the individuals in gouache. The color is invented, personal and intense, as was the experience of getting to know my family in this way. My mother and grandparents returned to the U.S. The rest were killed in the Holocaust.”
Yoav Horesh
November 2, 2023 – January 5, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
“I was born in Jerusalem to a Persian-born mother and a father of Slovak origin. My mother was the only one in her family who married outside of the Persian-Jewish community and my father was the only one in his family who married a non-Ashkenazi Jew. From 2008 to 2015 I have photographed 55 family members (parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and their children), directing the large format camera to the physical elements which make up the face. In most cases I found myself in my relatives’ faces: The PerSlovak.”
Vivien Russe
November 2, 2023 – January 5, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
With this exhibition, MJM and artist Vivien Russe honor the memory of June Fitzpatrick, a prominent member of the Maine arts community who was the owner and curator of the June Fitzpatrick Gallery.
Shira Singer
November 2, 2023 – January 5, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
“My current practice highlights stories of people at a particular juncture in their lives. I am captivated by language and words and often incorporate them into my work. Words can reverberate throughout generations, creating unforeseen impact. By preserving them, I hope to call attention to the commonalities of human emotion, which often transcend place and time.
My father was a U.S. Army chaplain in Okinawa in 1954-55. Thirty years after he died, I discovered letters that were written to him by family members of servicemen, worried about their loved ones, asking for his counsel.
Deeply moved by this correspondence from another era, yet so evocative of now, I stitched excerpts on my father’s old monogrammed handkerchiefs, dyed with indigo from my garden.”
Mark Little
November 2, 2023 – January 5, 2024
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Originally from New York, pop-up exhibition artist Mark Little received degrees from Alfred University and Massachusetts College of Art. He spent 20 years as part of the Art Scene in Boston and enjoys using different materials and substrates in his work.
Henry Isaacs
August 31 – October 27, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Known for his New England landscape painting, Henry Isaacs returns to the Maine Jewish Museum with this exhibition featuring the landscapes of ponds, beaches, and rivers which are favorite, secret and loved places where we gather and play.
Lesia Sochor
August 31 – October 27, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
“Love of my ancestral homeland and horror at the merciless, brutal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine compelled me to paint images of Babushkas. This iconic symbol of a culture stirs memories of my mother, who in her later years wore one most every day.”
Howard Fussiner
June 29- August 25, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum
About This Exhibition
Painter Howard Fussiner (1923-2006) was well known for his modern figurative work and especially his parade paintings. He drew great inspiration from his many summers spent in Deer Isle, Maine and from artist and Maine native Marsden Hartley, as is evident in this exhibition, which includes some of his Maine landscapes and seascapes. Fussiner’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Slater Museum. In Maine, the late artist continues to be represented by the Turtle Gallery in Deer Isle.
Lynne Shulman
June 29 – August 25, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum
Inspired by folk art traditions and her love of the natural world, Lynne Shulman’s sculptures and reliefs explore narratives of human and animal connections. Shulman incorporates found and vintage objects into her detailed wood carvings; through this integrative process, she considers the beauty and former purpose of these objects—a vintage wooden spool, a shuttle from a closed Maine woolen mill—in order to rekindle metaphor and meaning. Each piece relies on an understanding of the unique qualities of the specific subject, such as the acrobatic movement of a charm of hummingbirds framed by the remnants of a lobster trap. Shulman applies subtle and meticulous detail to transform her subjects from purely representational models to expressive and emotive works of art.
Sue Michlovitz
June 29 – August 25
Maine Jewish Museum
Water is restorative and vital in all its forms. The paradox of water is in its character as peaceful yet invigorating, both life-giving and life-threatening. Sue Michlovitz’s photographic images, shown in both her prints and a fine art book, embrace these contradictions.
Joyce Ellen Weinstein
June 29 – August 25
Maine Jewish Museum
This pop-up exhibition of dry point etchings stitched onto antique handkerchiefs was inspired by an accident that left the artist temporarily reliant on a cane. The experience inspired her to closely observe other older women with mobility issues. She explains, “Because my women of a certain age are not to be ignored or dismissed, are not run of the mill, my presentation should take an unorthodox and what I feel is a more experimental approach to the installation to give them justice. Using the collection of antique handkerchiefs from my mother … I am dry mounting the images directly on to the hankies and embroidering a cross stitch around the image suggesting a decorative frame like design. This of course refers to a by gone era, an era that these ladies may represent.”
Robert Katz
May 4 – June 23, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum
Artist Statement
My recent mixed-media assemblages inspired by selected Parashiyot explore the interplay of myth, ritual, memory and truth. By repurposing found objects, texts and photographs — vestiges of a modern world — I examine the mysteries and struggles depicted in the Scriptures. The use of disparate materials across a consistent background of aged and unfinished wooden boxes literally imbues this visual, biblical mosaic with elements of creation and the smell of the earth.
My compositions are not meant to be literal illustrations of the Torah. Each assemblage is layered with irony, as well as personal and social commentary, while reinterpreting significant moments in our collective Jewish history. I incorporate the recurring themes of retribution, repentance and redemption embedded in the biblical encounters between humans and G-d.
By giving a contemporary shape to the retelling of ancient texts, I have constructed a portal into my imagination, traditions and faith.
ACRYLIC PAINTINGS ON ETCHING PAPER
Alan Fishman
May 4 – June 23
Maine Jewish Museum
For the past twenty six years a significant part of my work has been focused on painting land and seascapes throughout the year. Intertidal is a series devoted to the space between sea and land, between high and low tide: The Intertidal Zone. Observing tide pools and watching the sea ebb and flow fascinates me, and my paintings are meant to evoke the beauty of these potent places. They are not meant to be literal representations, but rather evocative of the visual complexity of these unique environments.
Marcie Jan Bronstein
May 4 – June 23
Maine Jewish Museum
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct. – Carl Jung
Play Date brings together years of process-driven paintings and ceramics, both of which were created in a state of responsiveness to material, shape, color and form: Deep Play.
The whimsical and suggestive ceramic vessels capture relationship dynamics, vulnerabilities and exchanges of energies. These are hand built works which emerged in the process of making; they surprised and delighted me all along the way.
The watercolor paintings are improvisations, composed and discovered completely in the moment. My interest is in using the special qualities inherent to watercolor (bleeding, flowing, layering) to create intimate, sensual paintings that reflect an inner world: Symbolic, emotional and psychological.
Rush Brown
May 4 – June 23
Maine Jewish Museum
Beloved Portland-based artist Rush Brown returns to the Maine Jewish Museum with an exhibition of new and recent work. Brown’s paintings depict a diverse reach of subjects, from landscapes to the human figure. He is well known for his paintings of people interacting with art and each other in museums, inviting us to ponder the narratives that emerge. Included in this show are dozens of smaller works in which he seemingly plucks museum visitors and paintings from the galleries of his larger works and playfully displays them for our consideration. The exhibition also includes paintings of Paris, iconic Portland scenes, a figurative study of another well known Portland artist, and other works that will be familiar to his collectors. Brown received his BFA from Philadelphia College of Art and a Masters in Painting from NYU, and has exhibited at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the University of New England, the Maine Jewish Museum, and many galleries.
March 2- April 28, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Fineberg Family Community Room
Natasha Mayers has been called “the heart and soul of activist art in Maine.” She is widely known for her work supervising more than 600 school and community murals from Maine to Nicaragua. She supervised painting utility poles in her town which depict local history and were featured in Lucy Lippard’s book, The Lure of the Local. For the past 35 years she has been creating parade “floats” for the local Whitefield 4th of July parade. For Natasha, the painted poles and parade floats represent art by the community, about the community, and for the community, empowering a community to portray and know itself. This exhibit displays a broader extent of her work.
Garry Mitchell
March 2- April 28, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Speigel Gallery
In these paintings, I’m creating a space, or a place, or an atmosphere that I can populate with a visual vocabulary of simple forms. I have these source-driven, shapes, colors, and compositional devices. And then when I’m working, I might think “You know what would be good? A red rectangle in the lower right corner.” Then, I think, “Can I fit that into the narrative? Why do I want to see that shape, that color in this particular structure?” So, I’ll try it out, and see if I can fit that into the story and see if it makes sense.
Andy Graham
March 2- April 28, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum –
Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavilion
These images document commercial buildings and storefronts in and around Portland, Maine that are unchanged since the photographer’s arrival as a university student in the mid-1970s. Recognizing the suddenly accelerating shifts in Portland’s business landscape, Graham sought to capture parts of the urban landscape likely to disappear. Influenced by Walker Evans and other FSA photographers of the 1930s, he is particularly focused on signage and architecture. In the years since the images were made in December 2018 and January 2019, many of these businesses have closed and their visual presence in the cityscape has been lost.
Arlene Morris
March 2-April 28, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Pop-Up Gallery Space
Maine-based studio artist Arlene Morris is the former director of the Spindleworks Art Program in Brunswick, Maine. She has a B.A. in Art, summa cum laude, with a minor in English from the University of Southern Maine and also studied at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle. The Maine Jewish Museum is pleased to present this pop-up show of handmade paper assemblages by the artist.
Steven Branfman
Maine Jewish Museum
March 9 2023 – April 28 2023
On September 27, 2005, internationally acclaimed potter and raku master Steven Branfman lost his 23-year-old son, Jared, to brain cancer. A week after Jared’s death, Steven went into his studio, took some clay, and made a chawan, a Japanese-style tea bowl. Each day for one year, he made one chawan– they were the only pots he made. Steven’s daily chawan made at his wheel was his own personal kaddish (the traditional Jewish prayer of mourning).
Steve Marcus
January 12 2023 – February 24 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavilion
Internationally acclaimed New York City artist Steve Marcus’ newest exhibition titled, The Hole in the Net: The Art of Steve Marcus is a whimsical journey into a cartoon world of Kosher folk art. Marcus’ hand-drawn works of art on paper seamlessly weaves his childhood memories of family summer vacations in the beautiful state of Maine with his quirky sense of humor and his personal passion for his own roots and culture.
Gary Green
January 12 – February 24, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Speigel Gallery
From 1976 to 1986, photographer Gary Green lived in New York City, where he studied photography and worked as a photographer’s assistant by day and spent his nights at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City—among other important venues—photographing the performers, the artists, and their fans.
Sara Crisp
January 12 – February 24, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Fineberg Family Community Room
Embracing the sacred universality of the circle, Eastern Spirituality, and the ability of a simple plant to symbolize life force, Crisp’s mixed-media and encaustic works incorporate delicate, meticulous patterning paired with botanical elements such as flower petals, stems, and seed pods.
Oliver Solmitz
January 12 – February 24, 2023
Maine Jewish Museum – Untitled Pop-up Space
Jorge S. Arango, writer for the Portland Press Herald, walked into the Fineberg Community Room at the Maine Jewish Museum in winter 2022 and exclaimed, “HOLY COW!” he was so enamored with Ollie’s work. A wonderful review followed.
A return visit with new work on exhibition January and February, 2023 in our untitled Pop-up Space. Enjoy!
Jack Montgomery
Maine Jewish Museum – Speigel Gallery
November 4 2022 – January 5 2023
When I was a boy, I had a lovely little sailing dinghy, no more than ten feet long. In the evening I took great pleasure running before the wind with the centerboard up, just skimming that surface between the bay and the beach, often scraping along the bottom ever so gently. As I grew older, I often found myself skimming between my dreams and my reflections while awake. The boundary between the two states has become porous, and it is in that space that my most satisfying images arise. What you see here are illustrations of the visions I find there. (Jack Montgomery)
Gretchen Halpert
Maine Jewish Museum – Fineberg Family Community Room
November 4 2022 – January 5 2023
Halpert is intrigued by connections, how one structure attaches to, or influences, another. Smilax herbacea (front) is the result of walking into her back yard and becoming fascinated with its twisting vines, attachments and tendrils, unfolding buds, developing flowers and fruits. She followed this plant’s development from May to October, sketching, researching, learning, and bringing portions into the studio to draw from life. That which captures our interest lures us to further examination. She invites you to look closely. Gretchen Halpert was educated in botany (Connecticut College), scientific illustration (RISD/CE) and trained in medical research. Her work appears in books and journals, and she has been featured in various publications, including Scientific American. Halpert received a solo exhibition by invitation at National Taiwan University; a visiting artist and educator position through the National Science Museum and NSTDA in Thailand; and has been awarded artist grants through NYSFA. She is past president of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators and founding director of the Scientific Illustration Distance Program.
Hank Paper
Maine Jewish Museum – Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavilion
November 4 2022 – January 5 2023
The Blue Door: Israel’s Diversity and Dilemma — showing for the first time — speaks to Israel’s very current moment, especially where issues of democracy and annexation are concerned. It addresses the question of whether and how Israel might continue to define itself as both a democracy and a Jewish state. While each image stands on its own aesthetically, the story the exhibition tells is educational, inspiring, existential, and a tad mystical.
The Backorder Paintings
November 4, 2022 – January 5, 2023
“In our land of the remarkable marketplace we can buy so many things, and we are promised so many things about the things we buy. But there is a lack of products that address certain problems. So I have created them. Demand has been overwhelming and we regret that they are all currently on backorder. ”
Ted Arnold
November 4, 2022 – January 5, 2023
Maxwell Bauman’s collection of strange Jewish-themed “Lego Art” will entertain you at MJM during the holiday season. The focus on Hebrew letters, 10 Commandments, Tzedekah Box, and Burning Bush are created using Legos as a medium. He is a published author, and we have two books available further affirming his talent as a writer.
Featured in The Maine Weekender: Somewhere To Go
October 20 2022 – October 27 2022
Maine Jewish Museum – Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavilion
Violins of Hope is a collaborative exhibition between the Portland Symphony Orchestra and MJM showcasing a collection of violins that were rescued from the Holocaust and lovingly restored to stand witness to the musicians who once played them.
Judy Glickman
Maine Jewish Museum –
Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavillion
September 2 2022 – October 27 2022
“Following the Light” is a departure for Glickman from over 40 years of black-and-white film and darkroom work. As Glickman describes,”Photographing in color with a digital camera has sent me in a new direction — one of exploration and introspection. With a sense of inner presence, the purity of color itself, and its deepest shadows, I am stepping into the light, into the image itself. Through abstractions, patterms, and different perspectives, photography has continued to allow me to immerse and express myself.”
Paula Gerstenblatt
Maine Jewish Museum –
Speigel Gallery
September 2 2022 – October 27 2022
This exhibit of 17 collage portrait paintings anchors individual experiences in a collective narrative of Jewish immigration in the early 1900s from Czarist Russian Ukraine and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, weaving through the Great Depression, WWI and WWII, Jewish South Beach in the 1950s, and the artists coming of age in the 1960s-70s to present times as the mother of two adult Black/Jewish children.
Joan Busing
Maine Jewish Museum –
Fineberg Family Community Room
September 2 2022 – October 27 2022
The monoprints in this exhibit are a tribute to color. Busing’s use of shapes and forms accompany the color in her carefully executed poetic manner.
(Emily Dickinson)
Juliet Karelsen & Jocelyn Lee
Fineberg Family Community Room
June 30, 2022 – August 26, 2022
Through the symbolism of flowers, Karelsen and Lee explore issues of fragility, strength, transformation, beauty, vulnerability, life and death. As Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote “We can describe the flower as full of everything.
Lawrence Elbroch
Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavillion
June 30, 2022 – August 26, 2022
“I have a passion for capturing those quiet, meaningful moments increasingly unusual in our noisy world. As such, I am drawn to spirituality, nature, and people who live simple lives close to the earth. Daily life and rituals are so varied across cultures, but we are richer when we embrace all voices, views, and traditions. My work has been published in Parabola Magazine (Vol. 47.2: Ancestors), Photographer’s Forum Magazine annual “Best of Photography” edition multiple times and have received awards for my work including a commendation from the Sony World Photography Awards.”
Robert Solotaire
Spiegel Gallery
June 30, 2022 – August 26, 2022
“Our father spent his life dedicated to the art and the practice of painting. It’s hard to think of dad without a paint brush in his hand, or standing in front of his easel, or without his camera walking down the street looking for new subject matter. But he was also a loving father, a beloved man about town, an avid reader, and clipper of the news (with strong opinions about what he was reading), a veteran gardener, a music lover, and a voracious traveler. He truly lived a full life, enjoying the world around him and the people he met, and his art reflected that.
July 18 -August 26 2022
At the Maine Jewish Museum, we celebrate and honor the contributions and diversity of Maine’s Jewish immigrants in the context of the American experience and world history… and there are undeniable parallels between the persecution that caused millions of Jews to flee to the USA (sometimes landing in Maine) and the atrocities now unfolding in Ukraine and creating an immigration and humanitarian crisis. We therefore felt compelled to do our part to document Putin’s war against Ukrainians through an exhibition of original photographs in the Museum.
Missy Asen
Spiegel Gallery
May 3 – June 24 2022
Missy Asen is a native Mainer, growing up in Cape Elizabeth. Since she picked up her first crayon, she has found joy in her craft. Missy graduated with a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University. She maintains studios in Falmouth and Sarasota, Florida.
Missy has exhibited her work at Cygnet Gallery, Thos. Moser Gallery, The Clown Gallery in Stonington, Terrazzo Studio and Gallery, Art and Soul in Kennebunkport, Jameson Gallery, and the Island Gallery at Diamond Cove. She has also exhibited in many galleries in Florida. Her work is included in numerous corporate and private collections.
Smith Galtney
Jody Sataloff History and Art Pavillion
May 3 – June 24 2022
Dream Sequence considers the way pictures speak to each other and tell infinite stories through association and suggestion. Galtney’s images are rooted in narratively direct traditions such as autobiography and documentary, but through variation and juxtaposition – random and otherwise – the pictures become cryptic, dreamlike fragments. Whatever story they tell is ultimately up to the viewer.
Smith Galtney is a Maine-based photographer and writer. His photography has been shown at the University of Southern Maine, SPEEDWELL projects, Cove Street Arts, the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, and Engine. A former entertainment journalist, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and GQ, among other publications.
Image: Detail from An Ambulance Can Only Go So Fast, It’s Easy to Get Buried in the Past, 20” x 30”
Marcia Annenberg
Fineberg Family Community Room
May 3 – June 24, 2022
As a painter, installation artist, curator and climate activist, M. Annenberg investigates the black holes of American journalism. Has the two minute sound bite failed the American people?
As we bear witness to the slippage of journalism in our time, the problem of the omission of news, especially the sparse reporting of climate studies, is less well understood as a strategy, that prevents civic engagement. In this talk, I will trace the decline of news coverage in the American mainstream press from the 1990’s to the present. Are our oceans acidifying? Are the glaciers melting? Will we breach 1.5 degrees of warming this decade? Is there a climate emergency? If so, why don’t we all know it, beyond a reasonable doubt.
M. Annenberg is a Conceptual artist. Her paintings, sculptures, installations and videos focus on under- reported stories in American media, concentrating on scientific studies and global warming.
View a video of News/Not News: A Conversation With M. Annenberg
Fineberg Family Community Room & Spiegel Gallery
Guest Curator – Lissa Hunter
March 6 -April 28, 2022
Stories we tell each other are all we have. There would be no past without stories of kings and wars and love and ancestors. There would be no future without stories of hope and aspiration and lessons learned.
Saint, whore, mother, daughter, queen, slave, hero, betrayer, betrayed. The stories of women are abundant in the Bible. The work in Stories looks at these tales with 21st century eyes and retells them in contemporary book art form. Ancient stories
can tell contemporary truths.
Featuring works by:
Jessyca Broekman
Rebecca Goodale
Jan Owen Annie
Lee-Zimerle
Sandy Weisman
Image: (top left to bottom right) Lilith the Astronomer, Lilith the Night Demon, Lilith the Mermaid, Lilith the Poet, & Lilith the Housecleaner Rebecca Goodale, 2022, Ink on handmade Japanese paper, Circle book with cotton braids
Featuring: Heidi Stubbs & Jack Sullivan
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
March 6 – April 28, 2022
Shalom House is a non-profit mental health agency that provides housing and services to adults from all backgrounds who are living with severe mental illness. This year we celebrate our 50th Anniversary of providing Home, Health & Hope with a special exhibition in honor of Nancy Davidson, Curator of the Maine Jewish Museum. Nancy was one of the founding members of Shalom House. She, along with Rabbi Sky, represented the Jewish community in a group of ecumenical leaders looking to create the first halfway house in Maine for those leaving psychiatric institutions during the early 1970s.
For over 28 years the Art Program at Shalom has been an important part of the mental health services we provide. This exhibition features works by Heidi Stubbs and Jack Sullivan, two of the many talented artists in our studio.
View a video about Shalom House
Yehudit Shadur and Tamar Shadur
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
January 9 – February 25, 2022
Yehudit Shadur (1928-2011) was a professional artist whose work includes drawings, paintings, printmaking, and Jewish decorative arts. She had gained wide recognition as the foremost exponent in the revival of the centuries-old, nearly forgotten Jewish folk tradition of papercutting. Her vigorous compositions – a synthesis of time-honored Jewish ritual themes and symbols, and of contemporary perceptions – are rendered in a universally appealing artistic language. Her work is represented in major museums and private collections of Judaica in Israel, North America, and Europe. Together with her husband Joseph Shadur, Yehudit Shadur published two scholarly books that are important additions to the literature of Jewish art after three decades of researching, studying, and documenting the folk-art of Jewish papercutting.
Jewish Papercuts: A History and Guide, 1994, J. L. Magnes Museum (winner of the annual National Jewish Book Council Award for the outstanding book in the visual arts).
Traditional Jewish Papercuts – An Inner World of Art and Symbol, 2002, University Press of New England)
Tamar Shadur was initially trained at the Jerusalem Tapestry Workshop in Israel using the Aubusson technique where she wove fine mural size tapestries designed by well-known artists, Jean Lurçat among them. In the 1980s and 90s Tamar collaborated with her mother, Yehudit Shadur to produce several tapestries with ornate symbolic imagery and Hebrew text that distinguish Y. Shadur’s exquisite papercuts. The Holocaust Memorial Tapestry Project is the final and largest work to emerge from this collaboration. Tamar uses metal pipe looms to weave her smaller tapestries. She has taught tapestry weaving and papercut workshops and given related lectures in various communities. Her work has been exhibited widely in New England, the Southwest, the Midwest, and in Israel.
Images: (Left): Four-Animal Mizrah, papercut over painted highlights, Yehudit Shadur; (Right): Detail, Holocaust Memorial Mural Tapestry, Design: Y. Shadur, Weaving: T. Shadur
Oliver Solmitz
Fineberg Family Community Room
January 9 – February 25, 2022
Rather than making objects, Oliver Solmitz investigates qualities of space defined by structure and color, revealed by light. Ollie often uses found materials such as those from construction sites. And it is in the making that he embraces the tension found between modern materials that reflect a machine-based aesthetic, and work that purposefully retains evidence of the human hand.
Oliver’s paternal grandmother was an early influence in his life of making. She had to abandon her education as an artist in fleeing Nazi Germany with her philosopher husband on miraculously securing his freedom from Dachau very early in the war. The other strong influence was his Swiss mother, from whom he learned to appreciate clean lines that retain an emotional resonance. These early influences led Solmitz to earn an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Maine at Augusta, and a Master of Fine Art degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
Image: Untitled, 56 1/2 x 34 1/4 x 5 1/4 inches, cardboard, glue, hardware, paint, and wood
Hélène Farrar
Spiegel Gallery
January 9 – February 25, 2022
We are more complicated than we think we are. We are even more complicated than the stories we tell. We react and respond to the world without one breathe in between. We don’t see the someone right next to us. That someone could be carrying with them an entire room-full of trauma, a deep dis-connect to others, severe loneliness or a radiant joy that could be spread like wild fire. Where has it become our nature to engage before listening or looking? Revealing or attempting to engage with others about the difficult aspects of our human nature can make us feel vulnerable. There is far too much shame in looking at the “stuff ” we carry. Could humans act more compassionate if they could see what they and their neighbors carry? These artworks explore the weight of burden and create conversations about one’s perspective.
Hélène Farrar is known for her nature inspired paintings of trees, critters, flowers and birds. Her work reflects a deep connection to place, often of the woods surrounding her home. Personal “landmarks” act metaphorically as subjects for introspection, visual meditation, and quiet. Hélène works primarily in the ancient medium of encaustic. She shows her work nationally and has been invited to participate in many exhibits, some of which include the Saco Art Museum, the Fuller Craft Museum, the University of Maine at Farmington Art Gallery, and the Art Complex Museum. Farrar is a Teaching Artist at the Farnsworth Art Museum and has taught across New England, some of which includes the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the International Encaustics Conference. She received her BA in Art from the University of Maine in 1998 and an MFA from Goddard College in 2005. In 2021 she illustrated her first children’s book, “The Deer Man”. Farrar is represented by Archipelago Fine Arts in Rockland, Maine.
Image: Weight of Worry, 24 X 24 inches, encaustic on panel
Duane Paluska and Ellen Golden
Fineberg Family Community Room
November 18, 2021 – January 3, 2022
Ellen Golden has chosen drawing as her genre to realize her aesthetic goals. What makes her drawings successful is her use of great energy, the love of small, precise details, neatness, clarity, and the ability to express notable personal insights and abilities.
“My work flows from an intuitive and emotional response to a lifetime of experiences, travel and observation. I am interested in patterns within forms, the accumulation of small marks, the spaces in-between, the perception of space and depth, and the interplay of color. Each drawing emerges through a process of discovery. The drawings develop slowly with each mark a response to the ones that have gone before and each element a response to what has preceded it. The process is meditative and requires being fully present and open to possibility and change. The scale reflects the intimacy of the process and the experience of being present with the work.”
Duane Paluska (1936-2020) was director of ICON Contemporary Art for over thirty years. He also devoted considerable time to studying and teaching, designing and constructing furniture and buildings, and making paintings and sculpture. Characteristics of these interests are blended to influence the creation of objects. His sculptures have influenced paintings, and elements of the paintings have influenced sculpture. “Euclid rules.”
Images: (Top) Untitled, Acrylic on canvas on board, 2019, Duane Paluska (Bottom) Mr. Magic, 2 images 6×4 ink on paper 2021, Ellen Golden
A Traditional Buddhist Tale Illustrated by June Atkin
Retold by Sybil Taylor– Heian International Publisher
Spiegel Gallery
With one hundred Prismacolor Pencils making thousands of calligraphic lines, June Atkin illustrates the story of “The Wise Old Man” who teaches his quarreling pumpkins to be still. In the accord of shared silence, they realize that “We are all connected in the great… big… beautiful pumpkin patch.” “Pumpkins” grew from a union of friendship and roots.
Children of Jewish Psychoanalyst Fathers, June Atkin – illustrator, and Sybil Taylor – writer, both chose Buddhism as their modality of healing. Childhood friends, Sybil and June re-enter their “Land of Play” to create a book introducing children to meditation.
June, a graduate of The Yale School of Art, has taught book illustration and computer graphics at several colleges. She has exhibited drawings, etchings and paintings, nationally. The Horn Book Inc., a seminal publication on children’s books, included June in illustrators of the decade: Illustators of Childrens Books 1957-1966. She is an exhibiting member of The Society of Illustrators Museum in New York City. Currently, June Atkin Studio is located on a pier in Portland, Maine.
Image: The Sun Went Down Over The Garden, colored pencil
Please enjoy this reading of The Pumpkin Patch: A Traditional Buddhist Tale, Illustrated by June Atkin and Retold by Sybil Taylor.
Narration done by our very own Nancy Davidson.
Sean Alonzo Harris
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
November 18, 2021 – January 3, 2022
At the end of 2019, I traveled to Israel with staff and students from the Center for Small Town Jewish Life at Colby College to document their educational experience. We were an eclectic group from all walks of faith, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and nonbelievers. The trip focused on gaining a deeper understanding of the history, culture, and conflict between Israel and Palestine. This body of photographs captures moments of everyday street life in between and through our shared learning and reflection on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Nazareth.”
Sean Alonzo Harris is a professional editorial, commercial and fine art photographer concentrating on narrative and environmental portraiture. Over the past 25 years, Sean’s work has been featured in a range of national publications, advertising campaigns, and exhibitions. In these varied contexts, Sean’s work focuses on human experience and identity and examines how individuals visualize themselves and how they are portrayed. He has received several awards and grants for his work including, Good Idea Grant and Arts in the Capital Program, from the Maine Arts Commission, the Broderson Bronze Award, and the VanDerZee Black Heritage Award, from the University of Lowell. Sean was selected as one of the 60 most collectible artists in Maine and featured in Maine Home and Design magazine.
Image: We Were All Once Refugee, 21”x14.5”
PSBL
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
October 7 – November 12, 2021
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science”– Albert Einstein
The Photon, the invisible messenger of the electromagnetic realm. Using light, heat and radio wave these quanta “speak” to us via their language of radiation.
Inspired by the ingenuity and engineering of the scientific instruments created to collect, record, measure and transmit photons, we humbly offer these energy reflectors, emitters and diffusers.
The PSBL Collective formed in 2015 and has played with Aluminum, Acrylic, and LED’s in simple response to the exquisite experimental creations of scientific investigations of our natural world.
Image: PSBL plays with photons using mirrors, LED’s and light cavities, 12”x15”
Check out this video for a little snippet of the ultra-cool installation of Reflectors, Emitters and Diffusers by PSBL
Michel Droge
Fineberg Family Community Room
October 7 – November 12, 2021
Join us Sunday November 7 at 2pm Inspiration/Exploitation: Feeling the Deep Sea with Beth Orcutt, a Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
Michel Droge is a painter, printmaker, and educator whose work engages with the environment and the human condition in an era of uncertainty. Inspired by the landscape, mapping, and environmental research, their large-scale abstract paintings unravel existing grids and structures and make way for emerging ones. The paintings in Deep Sea are inspired by conversations with Beth Orcutt, Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science, who studies microbial life in deep-sea environments and the effects of deep-sea mining on the ocean’s ecosystems. These paintings are informed
by these sublime environments, mysterious life forms, uncharted territories, and conversations about the risks of human impact in these rarely seen primordial places. Michel is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation award, a co-recipient of a Kindling Fund grant, and three Maine Arts Commission grants. They have been awarded fellowships and residencies at Surfpoint, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnoaks Residency, The Tides Institute, The Joseph Fiore Foundation, The Stephen Pace House, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Their work has been included in national and international exhibitions, including The Cue Art Foundation, Bates College Art Museum, University of Maine, Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, Maine Jewish Museum, Boston University, and Brandeis University.
Image: Help Fear Truth, photograph, 36”x36”
Arthur Fink
Spiegel Gallery
Curated by Nanci Kahn & Bruce Brown
This retrospective exhibition highlights dance photographs by Arthur Fink. He had been a tireless proponent of photographing dancers in rehearsal and performance, especially at the Bates Dance Festival.
Arthur’s passion for beauty, art, and culture came naturally – an aesthetic educated and well nourished. He observed and learned from his internationally recognized Madison Ave. graphic designer father, Karl Fink, and his mother, Sona Holman Fink, a fashion editor for the international fashion magazine, Women’s Wear Daily. He balanced his artistic passions with his brilliant curiosity and mastery of his science. Arthur received his undergraduate degree in physics, from Swarthmore and was a doctoral candidate at Harvard, studying artificial intelligence.
His artistic expression was a multi-faceted, finely cut soulful curiosity. He had a reverence for all of life, most especially dance photography.
Arthur passed on April 21, 2021 and leaves a legacy of passion, inspiration, and the brilliance of powerful photographs.
Image: Help Fear Truth, photograph, 36”x36”
Victoria Elbroch
Spiegel Gallery
Victoria Elbroch’s trees are 1,000 years old, so it is fitting to dedicate this exhibition in honor of the 100th Anniversary of Etz Chaim Synagogue, Tree of Life. The Maine Jewish Museum hopes they will celebrate that many years in the future.
Extraordinary trees, especially ancient oaks, cast a spell over me. Their strange gnarly bark and peculiar anatomy awaken an uncontrollable urge to stop and draw. These majestic survivors are a metaphor for all I hold dear: wisdom, family, connection, shelter and resilience, and as a reminder of the fleeting nature of our lives in comparison to their lengthy life spans. Trees and forests worldwide are in a relentless confrontation with a warming planet. I can’t help wondering how much longer the oldest trees will be around, with toxins in the air, climate change upsetting the seasons and violent storms ravaging the country?
It is with awe and respect that I try to alter perceptions with my work, reminding all of us of the threats to, and importance of the natural world. I have read extensively about how trees communicate through their root systems using the “wood wide web” and look after their families to maintain forest health. They are themselves ecosystems supporting teaming, invisible life in the branches and under the forest floor. Through my work I try to encourage people to take the time to imagine both worlds, one above the ground and the other below, seated in the enduring landscape.
Anne Ireland
Fineberg Family Community Room
August 19 – October 3, 2021
Anne Ireland’s landscapes reflect her deep connection to the woods and waters of mid coast Maine. Covid travel restrictions were not a problem for Anne whose farm and nearby trails provided a wealth of material for these paintings. She uses sketches and photographs to record her immediate impressions on location and brings them to her studio. Capturing her initial emotional understanding of a place, she begins painting with a robust application of color to describe the light. Creating simplified shapes, the details are distilled to serve the power of the bigger picture. The painting then becomes its own reference as it evolves.
Anne Ireland grew up outside of New York City and spent every summer in Maine at her family’s saltwater farm on the New Meadows River where she now lives. After graduating from Bowdoin College and working in NYC Anne and her family moved to Maine in 1984 where she continued her education at the Maine College of Art. She has shown in galleries throughout New England and Florida and is in the collections of numerous corporations and hospitals. She is represented by Moss Galleries and The Gallery at Somes Sound. Anne maintains studios in Ft. Andross, Brunswick, Maine and Sarasota, Florida.
Phyllis Graber Jensen
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
Shalom, Sisters features 20 photographs of Jewish women and girls affiliated with Auburn’s Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center, a community Phyllis Graber Jensen joined when she moved to Lewiston, Maine, in 1992. She presents the lives of women in posed and candid moments, together and alone, some in the environment of the synagogue, others beyond it. The photographs create a collective portrait of Jewish women in Maine who are strong, warm, and spiritually and geographically tied.
Phyllis Graber Jensen is the director of photography and video for the Bates College Communications Office. She has worked for Maine Times and the Boston Herald, where her photographs received recognition from the National Press Photographers Association, the Boston Press Photographers Association, the Associated Press, and the Washington Journalism Review. Her commitment to storytelling has included multimedia projects about Lewiston’s public schools and its Jewish community, as well as three films screened at the Maine Jewish Film Festival and an essay anthology on the L-A immigration experience.
Toby Gordon
Spiegel Gallery
For Toby Gordon, painting is all about connection—to a chosen landscape, to the painting process, to herself, and ultimately to the viewer. Though observation plays a fundamental role in her work, she is less concerned with accurate representation than with the feel of being in a particular place at a particular time—the light, the air, the warmth, the cold. Whether painting in the field or her studio, her process involves a wordless interplay between the felt landscape and the materials. One mark leads to the next, and the action is set into motion. She paints, scrapes, and layers until the painting finally reveals itself, and the end result is always a surprise.
Toby Gordon lives and paints in Kittery Point, Maine. She studied painting and drawing at the University of New Hampshire and has taken workshops with artists Stuart Shils, Chris Liberti, Tom Glover, and Wendy Turner, among many others. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the George Marshall Store Gallery, the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery, the Portland Art Gallery, the Portsmouth Historical Society, and Drift Gallery.
Richard Wexler
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
In his photographs, Richard Wexler finds moments when people are busy with life. Their gestures, facial expressions, and postures immediately allow us to connect with them while also inviting us to create our own narratives. This connection requires no explanation; it crosses lines of culture, time, and conviction. It rests on something we all share, our human nature.
“Paris Street Dance” was shot over four years prior to the pandemic. The collection of images takes one on a virtual visit, offering a glimpse of life in one of the world’s most beautiful cities.
Richard’s first photographs captured life in the woods behind his childhood home in Baltimore. His interest in photography evolved during his years as a physician and medical director, variably landing on portraiture, landscapes, and the beauty of nature as revealed under an electron microscope. Living in Paris for extended periods upon retiring, Richard had hours to walk the streets, and his passion for street photography emerged. He lives in Maine and has studied photography at the Maine College of Art, Maine Community College, and in Paris with Valerie Jardin. He is a core member of The Bakery Photo Collective.
View a small sample of the pieces available for sale from this exibxit
Chris Beneman
Spiegel Gallery
Chris Beneman’s work combines architectural details and fragmented images as a way to build a unique urban landscape. In the printmaking work she uses hand cut stencils and collagraph plates to create monoprints which are sometimes cut apart and reassembled. Working in a space between intention and improvisation, these new shapes often become new stencils to be printed on top of and through. The acrylic paintings in the exhibit are a more direct way of expressing the same intent and allow for a nuanced exploration of neutral tones.
Chris is a graduate of Bates College and has lived and worked in the Greater Portland area since 1981. She has studied printmaking at Haystack, MECA, Mass College of Art, Zea Mays Printmaking, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (Ireland) and the Icelandic Printmaking Association. She has been a member of the Peregrine Press in Portland since 2005 and is also a member of the Boston Printmakers and the Monotype Guild of New England. Her printmaking work was featured in the 2019 book Singular and Serial, Contemporary Monotype and Monoprint, Schiffer Publishing and is in numerous public and private
Skowhegan School Artists
Fineberg Family Community Room
Juliet Karelsen, Guest Curator
May 13 – June 25, 2021
The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Artists exhibition at The Maine Jewish Museum features the work of fifteen artists who have attended the internationally renowned school since its inception in 1946. Curated by artist, Skowhegan alumni and Maine resident Juliet Karelsen, the show will span a wide range of Skowhegan time and include work by alumni and faculty starting with the 1950’s and up to the present. The exhibit will showcase painting, video, mixed media, sculpture, fiber art, ceramics, and a site-specific sculpture created especially for the show. Artists included in the show: Alex Katz, Ben Shahn, Julianne Swartz, Neil Goldberg, Lauren Cohen, Abby Shahn, Juliet Karelsen, Natasha Mayers, Gail Spaien, Gina Siepel, Talia Levitt, Naomi Safran-Hon, Rachel Frank, Shadi Harouni and Alex Bradley Cohen.
This exhibition is funded in part by the generosity of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Judy Glickman Lauder, Patty Davidson Reef and The Maine Jewish Museum.
strong>Tonee Harbert
Jody S. Sataloff Art and History Pavilion
Tonee Harbert’s work considers human intervention on the landscape. This developing series from New Mexico invokes history and interpretation by looking at what remains from scenarios that once held meaning or utility. Any purpose imposed on the land leaves a mark which can show a past narrative. These signs/signals inhabit our everyday world, where collectively they can take on the surreal quality of a dream. In the New Mexico landscape the three marks of existence (from Buddhism) come to mind — impermanence, emptiness and imperfection. Harbert uses a 1960’s vintage plastic “Diana” film camera to capture scenes which resonate with his own interpretation of, and experience of moving through the world.
Tonee Harbert, grew up in Oregon, and has lived most of his life in Maine. His photography has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, Portland Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Danforth Museum of Art, ICA at Maine College of Art, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. He’s been awarded a New England Emmy award, his work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, and in books and motion pictures. He is currently based in Roswell, NM.
Gerry Holzman – Artist in Wood
Spiegel Gallery
In the late 1990’s, while conducting a personal and intellectual exploration of my long-neglected Eastern European roots, I came across the photographs of Roman Vishniac, a chronicler of Jewish life in pre-World War II Europe. The powerful and provocative photographs in Vishniac’s book, A VANISHED WORLD, affected me profoundly. I was particularly impressed by the portraits of the various artisans–the blacksmiths, the cobblers, the carpenters–and by the bearded scholars with their long flowing coats and their omnipresent books.
For the past twenty years, I have been recording my response to this extraordinary experience. My responses in wood are unlike anything seen before. In some carvings, I have faithfully copied the individuals portrayed in the various photographic records but have placed them in an entirely different setting. In others, I have extracted the figures from within the raw walnut logs where they have dwelt for centuries. In a few pieces, I have simply presented the viewer with the vague outline of a provocative notion.
While these carvings present a window into a world that disappeared in the 20th century, I like to think my work in the 21st century offers vivid proof of Roman Vishniac’s conviction that this vanished world was definitely not a vanquished one. And perhaps, it reinforces an even more important message—“We’re still here.”
Penelope Jones
Fineberg Family Community Room
March 25 – May 7, 2021
Penelope Jones embraces architectural structure, surface texture, and color interaction in this exhibition of paintings, drawings, and collages. Her work is inspired by such disparate sources as Ukiyo-e Japanese paintings, boat slip structures, the snaking streams of Maine estuaries, and architectural details from the Alhambra Palace in Spain. She takes great pleasure in precise lines, angular and curved shapes, and spatial ambiguity.
Born and raised in upstate NY, Penelope Jones received a BFA from MECA and an MFA from Cornell University. After a stint living and working in Boston, she moved back to Maine, where she resides and exhibits her work. Since 1992 she has taught visual arts at Cornell University, Bowdoin College, Maine College of Art, University of Southern Maine and SMCC. She has been a part-time lecturer at Bates College for over 20 years.
These pieces from our Current Exhibitions are for sale. View a selection of work
Michelle Hauser
Jody S. Sataloff Art & History Pavilion
Meeting Hall Maine records for posterity the documentation of hundreds of meeting halls found throughout the state. This photographic project began in collaboration with Hauser’s late husband, Andrew S. Flamm (1967-2018). Hauser has continued on with their shared vision to adhere to centered compositions of frontal, side or back views and to sequence the typology of structures into groups. Grids and pairings invite comparison and also create an abstraction of architectural forms. At some sites three-quarter views of the halls were captured to evoke the experience of place. The exhibition also includes work that appropriates signifiers used in ritual activities taking place inside the meeting halls.
In 1981, Hauser forged lasting ties to Maine at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, leading her to return to Maine to paint, using a former Odd Fellows Hall in Mount Vernon. The hall served as an inspiration. Extending her studio time there was the catalyst for winning a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. It was where she and Andrew Flamm first met. They went on to open Odd Fellows Art and Antiques that specialized in vernacular photography and the Material Culture of American Fraternal Organizations which in turn sparked their idea for Meeting Hall Maine.
(Meeting Hall Maine is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.)
These pieces from our Current Exhibitions are for sale. View a selection of work
View Artist Interview Pt. 1 View Artist Interview Pt. 2
“My great-great-great grandmother Rachel Mendez De Leon’s (1834-1903) Portuguese ancestors moved to Amsterdam during the Sephardic Immigration in the 17th century because of the inquisition. That does not make me Jewish but my two grandsons are. I feel privileged to have been able to witness them turn from babies into real (wonderful) human beings. Seeing them grow up in the Jewish faith put me in a position as an outside observer. As a photographer, I am also an outsider looking in. I am a bystander documenting the world around me. These ceremonies and rituals I witnessed and photographed were strange and new to me. But they were also loving, warm and inviting. It has been a privilege to document them.”
Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest is a Fine Arts photographer living in Pownal Maine. He studied photography at the Portland School of Art, and at the Maine Photographic Workshops with Joyce Tenneson and Arnold Newman. The majority of his work can be classified as street/documentary and portrait photography. His work has been published in a variety of magazines and books and has been exhibited in the U.S, the Netherlands, Russia, The Portland Museum of Art, The Bowdoin College Museum, the University of Southern Maine and the Art Gallery at the University of New England.
Exhibition curated by Nancy Davidson, Resident Curator and Elizabeth Ruskin, Ceramicist and Art Collector
Exhibition Opening Scheduled for Thursday, February 4, 2021 12pm-4pm
Located in the Spiegel Gallery and Fineberg Family Community Room –
The exhibition features a selection of work from the Following Artists:
Sondra Bogdonoff – Weavings
Reid Brechner – Ceramic Paintings
Linda Gerson – Paintings
Joe Hemes – Illuminated Sculptures
Jamie Johnston – Wood Sculptures
Lin Lisberger – Wood Sculptures
Elizabeth Ruskin – Ceramic Sculptures
Meryl Ruth – Teapots
Adrienne Sloane – Fiber
Gail Spaien – Paintings
These works of art are for sale …for further information call Nancy Davidson (curator) 207-239-4774
Artist Statement
I employ art as a healing mechanism. Art allows people to understand that when they experience the phenomena of psychic trauma, that they are not alone. Psychic trauma is the universal response of humans to their impending death or the death of a loved one.
Art focused on traumatic experiences can become a catalyst for healing. After the acute stage has passed, humans bury pain deep in the psyche where it remains unhealed like a cut that becomes infected from within. Psychic pain, like an infection, can erupt at any time. Art provides a conduit to release and heal the phenomena of psychic pain, keeping it from festering under the surface.
The Stages
Facing death or the death of a loved one causes psychic trauma. This is a universal reaction for all people from the age of about seven on. Seven is when children begin to understand the concept of death. After World War Two, psychiatrists studied holocaust survivors and found that they reported specific experiences (phenomena) which impacted them.
First, the mind shuts down and everything appears white, blank, detached and floating. Second, is acute disorganization. The mind experiences fragmentation of memories, fears, mixed emotions of mundane issues from everyday life. Third, the disorganization decreases in time, but vivid memories reoccur, which can be visual, auditory, and visceral sensory.
Fracturing
The second stage of psychic trauma, acute disorganization, is most evident in the loss or potential loss of a loved one. It is like living in a fractured world. One tries to get back to some type of normalcy, but there is no going back. Survivors have to create a “new normal”, which can take a lifetime to achieve. To achieve a “new normal” one must survive being fractured while handling the mundane chores of everyday life, and one’s professional life in order to see what the future will be like.
Fracturing of Objects
Fracturing of objects that represent memories, dreams, and nightmares are shown in my current work on the pandemic. Fracturing is seen clinically in adults and children who have experienced sudden death of a loved one, received a diagnosis of a fatal disease for themselves or their child, or have lived with a chronic, but potentially fatal disease. People are embarrassed by it, dealing with the fracturing depresses them. It is a continuous burden that the mind works on to put the loss into perspective. By using fracturing in my work, I hope to show people that fracturing is normal, a part of the process that the mind goes through to survive and to heal. At night when we dream, our mind works to put things together. Around 3 a.m. when the world is silent, quiet, and before dawn, if one wake up from a “bad dream”, our mind is super active in thinking about all of the scary issues that are going on.
My studio is full of the images that you see. I am surrounded by the reality of the world outside. At this time to be able to function I am starting a new series called “Hope, Faith and Charity”. This is to keep me sane in a time of insanity. Be safe, be kind, and do your best. Before becoming a full time contemporary artist I was a clinical specialist in nursing in a variety of roles, including as a Public Health Nurse for the Maine CDC.I have worked with MRSA, active TB, and other infections. This is a new pathogen that scares the SH-T out of me. I am not sure why people won’t believe – but until they do COVID 19’s defeat will be long and cost many more lives.
Milly Bachrach RN, MN, MFA
November 27 – December 24, 2020
High Energy – Annette Kearney “I work in silence and I am now confronted with the need for words in reference to my work. As anyone who knows me can attest, silence is not my natural habit. This time of isolation from friends and family, this time of political unrest and uncertainly, have made me realize how essential silence is to my process. I work in silence. There is no radio or music. Dimension, color, shapes are considerations made in silence. In silence, I tend my garden. I take walks and photograph the seasonal changes of Evergreen Ponds. I work in silence and hopefully the work, thoughtfully curated by Nancy Davidson, speaks for itself.”
Annette Kearney has worked for years as a mixed media artist. She studied painting with her friend and mentor Polly Brown. Her degree is in political science and history.
Alice Spencer: For many years I have used handwoven textiles-their patterns, structures and stories-as a reference in my work. In this body of work, I draw on 19th century Uzbek ikat textiles. These glorious tie-dyed weavings were used primarily for women’s coats and featured repeated symmetrical motifs.
The patterns in my work are made, literally, from the ground up. I sun print the shadows of sticks, grass and weeds then choose parts of the prints to mirror-reflect and add to the first parts. The resulting bilateral forms are made into stencils. Each pattern in the work is built using multiple stencils.
I began making this work almost 4 years ago when I returned to my studio after several years of absence. We had a new president and the world around me felt precarious. Each day in the studio offered a kind of counternarrative, confirming the continued presence of balance, beauty and order.
The work in this show honors the Jewish artisans in 19th century Bukhara who were the master dyers of ikat textiles and the unsung collaborators in one of the world’s most vibrant textile traditions. Each painting in this exhibit uses indigo blue, the color for which they were best known.
September 17 – October 18, 2020
Hungarian-born Maine resident, Miklos Pogany, is a prolific artist with an impressive exhibition history and work in the permanent collections of many major museums. A master of multiple media, Pogany creates vivid works based on nature and the built environment, exploring and pushing the parameters of each medium. The artist describes his motivation as follows: “I react to wonder, desires, conflicts, meanings, memories, revenge, sexuality, love and death. I gather all these fragments and make some personal sense of it all. Pogany views his role as an artist to be that of both record keeper and conjurer, both to document history and to evoke wonder.
Pogany’s work is in the collections of museums throughout the country and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Fogg Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris).
In “What We Look At” Jane Sutherland and Alex Sax, mother and daughter, present a dialogue in art. Included in the exhibit are oil, gouache and pastel paintings of everyday objects, hand-made dolls, and portraits of woman artists by Sutherland. Works included by Sax are mixed media sculptures,drawings and paintings of everyday objects, flora and fauna, and animals from her historical fiction stories. The details of their observations reveal the complexity and often unnoticed richness of the world. This is the second collaboration between Alex Sax and Jane Sutherland. In 2002 they presented The Crane Project at Vassos Gallery, Silvermine, CT dedicated to saving these endangered birds world-wide. “What We Look At” is dedicated to women’s activism to recognize the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment securing equal voting rights for women.
Jane Sutherland is Professor Emerita at Fairfield University. From 1998 – 2014, she was the author of “Technical Q&A” in American Artist Magazine, and Artist in Residence at the Summer Seminars of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Colorado Springs. Sutherland received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and MFA from Universidad de las Americas, Puebla, Mexico, and is an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her art has been exhibited in the U.S. and in Mexico and is in many private and public collections. She resides in Southport, Connecticut.
Alex Sax teaches privately and part-time at the University of Southern Maine and Southern Maine Community College. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Weir Farm.Sax received a BA from Hamilton College and MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her temporary and permanent installations have been exhibited in New York, Connecticut and Maine. She resides in Yarmouth, ME.
“Pieces of You,” is a collection of work that draws on Meghan Nathanson’s impulse to piece together new life from what might otherwise have beendiscarded. Her work explores themes such as inner and outer freedom, body language and social justice, expressing her interpretations in the colorsthrough which she experiences the world.
Meghan’s journey as a visual artist began in NYC where she received training in figure drawing through the Art Students League of New York as well as painting at The New School. She currently works primarily in mixed media, transforming large, figurative pencil drawings into sculptural collage,applying the torn papers from repurposed wall-calendars onto the drawings in a painterly fashion. Some of her largest creations are composed of hundreds of pieces, each carefully selected, gently torn and massaged together with a polymer medium.
Meghan Nathanson’s Show will also include works by Special Guest Sculptor, Clara Cohan.
“This project started as an exercise in letting go of control. There was no planning. I went into my studio, picked out a piece of wood, and started carving long sweeping ridges. I saw a figure emerging. I picked up another piece of wood, and the same thing happened. As each figure emerge, it became clear that these entities had a collective purpose. They were representatives of diverse cultures, ethnic groups, animal-spirits, young and old…all coming together.>
Victoria Elbroch’s latest work is derived from comparing a human life to nature’s cycles. She draws trees encountered in world travels and is irresistibly drawn to the resilience and symbolism they represent. Rooted in the earth but reaching for the sky. She incorporates pods and seeds into her work as she continues to explore the aging process, the sharing of family stories and the embracing of time left. She feels fortunate to be in the autumnal, dispersal stage of her life span, rich in nature’s abundance with time to wander, appreciate, share and celebrate it’s bounty.
July 12
A noted Maine photographer… Since age 13 Robinov had been fascinated by photography and had as a long-term goal to grow from a “picture taker” to a photographer. His photographs tell stories which capture ”Moments.” During his lifetime he created projects and developed fund raising that have supported causes:The Maine Cancer Foundation. Cancer Community Center, Spring Harbor Health, Jewish Family Services and many more. We miss Jerry but share many “Moments” during this exhibition.
August 29 – October 25, 2013
Harold Garde, Maine Master painter and printmaker, showing in Portland for the first time in 20 years. Addendum is a good title for this exhibit, says Garde, who jokes about searching for his birth certificate to find the expiration date. His body of work, spanning 60 years, is in permanent museum collections throughout the country, highlighted by a comprehensive retrospective and a permanent installation at the Museum of Florida Art.
Featured in the gallery of the Maine Jewish Museum is a group of never before shown large non-figurative canvases completed this summer in Garde’s Belfast, Maine studio.
Complementing the canvases will be a selection of Strappo monotypes. Smaller in scale and more intimate, these pieces will be presented in a manner that allows the viewer to appreciate the slick plastic surface that is the hallmark of prints made with the Strappo technique which Garde developed, named, and teaches.
Read Nancy Davison’s interview with Harold in Portland Magazine
November 12 2015 – December 30, 2015
Menorahs created by Maine Artists: Rush Brown, Anita Clearfield, Rich Entel, Randy Fein, Laura Fuller, Jim & Holly Gallante, Ani Helmick, Jamie Johston & Sondra Bogdonoff, Nanci Kahn, Lin Lisberger, Elizabeth Louden, Nancy Nevergole, Lisa Pierce, Toby Rosenberg
November 27 2020 – December 24 2020
“I work in silence and I am now confronted with the need for words in reference to my work. As anyone who knows me can attest, silence is not my natural habit. This time of isolation from friends and family, this time of political unrest and uncertainty, have made me realize how essential silence is to the process.
I work in silence. There is no radio or music. Dimension, color, shape are considerations made in silence.
In silence, I tend my garden. I take walks and photograph the seasonal changes of Evergreen Ponds. I work in silence and hopefully the work, thoughtfully curated by Nancy Davidson, speaks for itself.”
Annette Kearney has worked for years as a mixed media artist. She studied painting with her friend and mentor Polly Brown. Her degree is in politcal science and history.
November 27 2020 – December 24 2020
Laurie paints abstract expressionist landscapes on unprimed canvas with a touch of collage. She uses watercolor and other water-based mediums to achieve her colorful paintings. She combines the unpredictability of the wet paint with very controlled lines and shapes.
Laurie Russo-Smith is a 69-year old Jewish woman. She has lived, traveled, and studied art all over the world. Her work has been inspired by a love of landscapes and seascapes…the Swiss Apls, the Berkshires of W. Mass and the coast of Maine. Laurie now lives and works full time as an artist in Saco, Maine.
November 27 2020 – December 24 2020
This is your last chance to own a menorah by Lisa Pierce. Lisa has been exhibiting her animal menorahs at the Maine Jewish Museum and New York Jewish Museum for many years. We are fortunate to offer the last 3 available for sale.
September 3 2015 – October 3 2015
More than 1,000 Portland ‘weavers’, 75 spinners, and 20 organizations worked together to create an Abraham’s tent for the Welcoming the Stranger multimedia installation opening at the Maine Jewish Museum, September 3, 2015, 5pm – 7pm.
The exhibit highlights the treatment of immigrants in Portland during the 1920’s with their treatment today. Artist Jo Israelson, a Portland native, has spent 2 years researching the history of the House Island Quarantine and Immigration station and how the city “welcomed” those who arrived there.
Jo Israelson is nationally known sculptor, filmmaker and site specific installation artist. She grew up on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine. Her art often focuses on a little known moment in history that reflects a larger issue within a contemporary context. Her exhibit will highlight two distinct but parallel immigrations: the Jews arriving in Portland a century ago and the Somali immigrants arriving today. Members of Maine Fiberarts will provide expertise and assistance in the creation of the community based weaving that will become part of the installation. www.joisraelson.com www.thestonepath.wordpress.com
All images copyright of the artist, unless otherwise noted; reproduction not allowed without express permission
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