Expand Your Horizons (and have a lot of fun!)
at the Museum's Special Programs for 2011,
including... Tuesday Night at the Museum!

Lauren Fensterstock is a Maine-based artist and curator whose recent work draws from the history of garden design to explore the impact of cultural position in the perception of natural environments. Lauren’s installation, Incidents of Garden Displacement, is an opening exhibition at the OMAA this year and her work has been exhibited nationally. We will learn more about her working methods, philosophies of art, and her “garden” in paper, charcoal, and mirrors which reflect the blue sky and ocean of Narrow Cove. Lauren also serves as Program Director of Maine College of Arts “MFA in Studio Arts.”

Click here to visit Lauren Fensterstock’s website.

Collecting natural and manufactured detritus on beaches, artist Susan Schultz carries all to her ceramicist’s studio to be replicated as porcelain still-life sculpture. She says that three things influence the sites where she finds the objects: “…human influence, the passing of time, and nature’s influence on itself.” In her May 1 to July 31st exhibition in OMAA’s Small Gallery we can see the disparate objects combined and creating a new history—one which too often reflects our culture’s detrimental effect on the environment.

Click here to learn more about artist Susan Schultz.

Come learn the hows and whys and the dos and don’ts of collecting art from a panel of experienced arts professionals and art collectors, featuring Mary Harding, Curator of The George Marshall Store Gallery, York; Andy Verzosa, Director of the Aucocisco Galleries, Portland; and Owen Wells, private art collector, Portland. Moderated by Ron Crusan, Director of the OMAA.

Maine artist Kate Beck’s work is included in the OMAA exhibition “The Question of Drawing.” Her work reflects her interest in “(the) pure aesthetic of line as an element of both color and substance with a wide range of thought and feeling.” The artist will speak about her work in drawing and the significance of drawing in a contemporary art context. An artist with many group exhibitions, Kate has had recent solo exhibitions in the Pelaver Gallery in New York City and at Icon Contemporary Art in Brunswick, ME.

Click here to visit Kate Beck’s website.

This 2011 movie helps us to imagine what the White Mountains area was like when railroads brought visitors to the grand hotels, adventurous people first climbed the highest peaks, and artists created America’s first landscape paintings. The evening includes the film and a discussion with producer/director Andrea Melville, who has over 20 years of public television experience, including two Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston/New England Chapter, as well as two National Telly Awards and two International Columbus Awards.

In the first years of the Museum, artists, friends, and acquaintances of Henry Strater supported the Museum with personal gifts to the collection. Come hear OMAA Director Ron Crusan speak about the origins of the collection and share in the vision of Museum founder Henry Strater, who in large measure was the creator of the collection in its early stages.

Two master draftsmen meet to discuss drawings hanging in the OMAA galleries, from Henry Strater through today. DeWitt Hardy first came to Perkins Cove in the summer of 1960 on a scholarship to the Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture sponsored by Robert and John Laurent. He has become one of the top Maine painters and is recognized nationally. Kate Doyle’s well-known contemporary oil paintings have their roots in her drawing skills. Kate has won a number of awards and scholarships and has exhibited in galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad.

The OMAA will be the first venue to show this new film featuring artist Beverly Hallam, her life and art. Hallam is known for her large still-life floral paintings, but in the 1950s she experimented extensively in monotype, collage, and acrylic paints. A trained photographer, most recently Ms. Hallam has been working in computer art and graphics. Interviewed in the film are her long-time friends art dealer John Payson, curator Vicki Wright, producer/director Richard Kane, and producer/interviewer Carl Little, author of the book “Beverly Hallam: An Odyssey in Art.” The film, from the Maine Masters Series, was produced by the Union of Maine Visual Artists.

Click here to visit the website of Kane-Lewis Productions.

Join Museum Director Ron Crusan in a conversation with Boston-based artist Ben Aronson, who is part of a multi-generational artist family. His father David is part of the group of artists known as The Boston Expressionists, along with Karl Zerbe, Hyman Bloom, and Jack Levine. The group’s tradition and unifying themes of social realism and expressionism are carried through in Ben’s work. Critic Donald Kuspit recently wrote that Ben’s paintings “…convey a social narrative exquisitely painted and emotionally haunting”.

The artist recently concluded a successful solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City. Ben and David Aronsons‘ work will be on exhibit at OMAA from August 27 to October 31st.

Click here to learn more about Ben Aronson.

For many years, American artists from Thomas Eakins and John Sloan to Alice Neel and Jack Levine have shaped a vision that addresses the human condition. Author Carl Little will survey a rich tradition of empathic art that includes the photographs of Dorothea Lange and the Katrina paintings of David Bates. With exceptionally well-researched content that is rich in art history and wonderful stories about the various artists, Carl’s lectures are always greatly anticipated at the OMAA.

“What is Art? What is friendship? What is value? What is duty?” These are the questions that playwright Yasmina Reza poses in the multilayered Tony Award-winning play Art, which tells the story of two friends who have differing views about a painting that one of them has purchased. York Readers Theater, founded by David Newman and Joe Dominguez, has performed dozens of plays in the past eight years for enthusiastic audiences in Southern Maine. The reading features actors Clifford O’Connor, David Newman, and Matthew McTighe. Directed by David Newman.

Click here to visit York Readers Theater's website.

Click here to learn more about Yasmina Reza.