Exhibit Opening: Garry Mitchell, Andy Graham, and Natasha Mayers

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.”

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.

Natasha Mayers

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.