Five Students Selected to Move Forward from Northern Final

Five more students are moving on to the Maine State Final of Poetry Out Loud.

After another amazing competition at the Northern Regional Final, Makaela Reinke from George Stevens Academy; Bethanie Brown from Waterville Sr. High School; Brianna Houseman from Searsport District High School; Joshua Elwood from Bangor High School, and Eloise Harnett from Gardiner Area High School will go on to the state final in Lewiston on March 23.

These five students came were chosen from among 17 school champions competing at the Grand Theater in Ellsworth. They competed through three rounds of live poetry recitation to be among the ten students who will recite in front of live television cameras on March 23 at Bates College.

The Maine Arts Commission wishes to thank the staff of the Grand Theatre, MPBN for their support, and most importantly all of the students that took part. We of course wish to thank all of the supporting teachers, parents and well wishers that came to the event to make it such an enjoyable afternoon.

News regarding the state final will appear shortly.

The Maine Arts Commission Offers Free Accessibility Workshops

Accessibility Matters!

Did you know that new guidelines for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act go into effect in March? Do you know how these changes will affect your organization? Do you know where you can go for more information on these guidelines?

The Maine Arts Commission has all the answers you need and the agency is heading out on the road, with a team of experts, to share this information with cultural venues and community organizations in Maine.

Sixteen percent of Maine residents report some type of disability, and that is a large, untapped audience. New guidelines for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act go into effect in March, and the Maine Arts Commission is gearing up to prepare local arts organizations to meet compliance standards. The agency will conduct three accessibility compliance workshops in Portland on March 27, Camden on March 30 and in Bangor on April 27.

The workshops are free to attend and will include information on programmatic compliance as well as issues related to architectural and sensory barrier removal. They will be led by Maine Arts Commission Accessibility Coordinator Keith Ludden, who will be joined by Architect Jill Johanning, and Independent Living Specialist Jeremy Libby from Alpha One Independent Living Center, Aisha Hixon, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Iris Network, and Elissa Moran, Director of the Maine Center on Deafness. Johanning and Libby will discuss architectural barriers and solutions. Moran will discuss accommodations for persons with hearing impairments, and Hixon will discuss accommodations for persons with low vision.

These workshops are expected to attract a great deal of interest and we encourage you to sign up today. To register, follow this link

For more information, contact Keith Ludden, Accessibility Coordinator , 207/287-2713,keith.ludden@maine.gov NexTalk ID: keith.ludden, TTY: 207/877-3878.

UMF Interns

The University of Maine at Farmington has a new initiative to develop opportunities for students in the Partnership for Civic Advancement. The program is intended to better organize and support community engagement activities for UMF students using "Quality of Place" as an organizing concept. The program focuses on a number action areas including sustainable tourism, landscape stewardship, local foods and arts and culture.

If your organization would like to offer a UMF student an internship opportunity (either this summer or during the fall semester), please go to the website and see if you qualify to be a Community Sponsor. You can also post your internship opportunity on the UMF website.

More information about the program can be found at: http://pca.umf.maine.edu/

Information about being a Community Sponsor is at: http://pca.umf.maine.edu/for-community-sponsors/

WERU Radio to Air CCED Discussion

Donna McNeil will join a conversation today on WERU radio that will discuss the agency's CCED grant. This is our major $50,000 community development grant which has a letter of intent deadline next week. Listen at 10:00 am this morning to learn more: http://weru.org/listen/live-streaming

Free Artist Workshop at Portland Gallery This Friday

Donna McNeil, Arts Policy and Program Director for the Maine Art Commission will provide a workshop for Maine artists at the Constellation Gallery in Portland this Friday.

Donna will explain what the agency provides in terms of programs, support and grant support. Donna will spend the most time discussing the grant offerings from the agency including the Good Idea Grant, Arts Visibility Grant, Innovation Production Grant and the Individual Artist Fellowship grant. Additionally, she will discuss how artists can work successfully with communities through our Artists in Maine Communities Grant as well as in education settings through our SMART (schools make art relevant today) grant.

Donna will not only discuss the particulars of the grants, but will offer a printer on electronic portfolios, what selection panels are looking for in submissions, how best to write a resume, letter of interest, artists' statement. She will also discuss Maine's Percent for Art program, how artists can translate smaller scale work into suitable pubic art projects and maneuver through the community and the committee hurtles. All information will be delivered with an eye toward enabling artists to be adept at any grant application, museum or gallery relationship, or public art competition.

The workshop is free and you can sign up by visiting the Constellation Gallery’s Facebook event page. http://www.facebook.com/events/227274130697563/ and click join to register. Space is limited and registration is on a first come and first serve basis. Email gallery@constellationart.com or call Tatia DiChiara at 207-272-8464 to register.

Five Students Selected to Move Forward from Southern Final

In an astonishing competition yesterday at the City Theatre in Biddeford, five students were selected from among 24 to move onto the state finals of Poetry Out Loud.

Students from high schools in the southern part of Maine competed through three rounds of live poetry recitation yesterday in the hopes of becoming one of the ten students who will recite in front of live television cameras on March 23 at Bates College.

Amidst staggering recitals five students moved to the top of the judges score sheets and were selected to move onto the state finals. Avery Laderer, Boothbay Regional High School; Ellyn Touchette, Gorham High School; Kiana Sawyer, Portland High School; Monica Frempong, Morse High School; and Tyler O’Brien, Merriconeag Waldorf High School were the successful students.

The Maine Arts Commission wishes to thank the staff of the City Theatre, our emcee Joshua Bodwell, MPBN for their support and most importantly all of the students that took part. We of course wish to thank all of the supporting teachers, parents and well wishers that came to the event yesterday to make it such an enjoyable afternoon.

We look forward to the northern final at the Grand in Ellsworth on Wednesday, February 15. We hope to see you there.

Public Art Unveiled at USM

Mark Wethli, Painter, Sculptor and Bowdoin College professor was celebrated Friday by a standing room only crowd at the Muskie Center on the USM campus in Portland. Wethli has just unveiled his large installation Civitas in the forum of the Wishcamper Center. The sculpture is a distillation of Lorenzetti’s “the Effects of Good Government” a fresco in the city hall of Sienna, Italy. The sculpture is indeed an “effect of good government” -- one of the many pieces of public art, including Wethli’s Civitas companion piece Locus in the entry of the Glickman Library, installed throughout the state of Maine through the Percent for Art program administered by the Maine Arts Commission.
Here are Mark Wethli’s remarks at the event:

...I’m honored to be here today, and more than honored that the University of Southern Maine has commissioned me to add not one but two works of public art to its campus; the one we see here in the Nichol Forum of the Wishcamper Center, and it’s companion piece, Locus, located next door at the Osher Map Library.

Long before I moved to Maine in 1985, the name and reputation of Edmund Muskie were among my earliest impressions of the Pine Tree State. The values reflected in Ed Muskie’s character and distinguished record of public service as Maine’s Governor, a US Senator, and Secretary of State are embodied in this building and its programs. One of my chief ambitions for this piece was to make it a worthy reflection of the values he stood for and the mission of the Muskie School of Public Service. I’m honored to have my work associated with his legacy.

Likewise, the Osher Map Library is an incredible gift to the people of Maine, and the world, a treasure trove for researchers, the general public, and not least of all, map lovers such as me. It is truly one of the gems of Maine’s intellectual and cultural life. My goal for Locus was to likewise create a public artwork that would honor this extraordinary archive.
_________

When the artist Mark Rothko was asked why there weren’t any figures in his paintings--just large fields of color—he answered by saying that you’re the figure. Long before I heard it put that way, I had the same ambition for my own work. As a public artist I want my work to set the stage for the life going on around it, to create a dynamic visual field in which people can engage their own thoughts and impressions, their lives, and one another. I hope to make visitors here more aware of the space around them and their place within it, of the meaning and purpose of being here, of what brought them here, of what they hope to achieve here, and to return that experience to the world at large.

Both Civitas and Locus greet us as we arrive, and each of them is hard to miss when we walk through the door. Like the homes and storefronts we walk by on a daily basis, I designed each of them to be a part of the landscape of their environment; to provide a lively backdrop to the
activities going on around them.

My ambition for each of these pieces is to create a space that actively places every viewer in the foreground of the events and activities that happen here.
__________

Having two works of public art in such close proximity to one another also gave me a unique opportunity to relate them in some way. While each piece speaks to the unique nature and purpose of its site, they likewise share certain formal similarities that bear comparison. The basic design of Civitas also appears in Locus, but refigured from a low-relief, three-dimensional construction to lines on a two-dimensional surface.

Locus’s abstract language—a network of lines reminiscent of roadways, air and sea routes, lines of latitude and longitude, and GPS satellite connections, superimposed on the silhouette of Buckminster Fuller’s innovative Dymaxion map (which also appears on the façade of the
Osher Library building)—is meant to pay homage to the history and language of cartography.

The formal language of Civitas—a dance of architecturally inspired forms that are meant to suggest both conflict and harmony—is meant to evoke the ideal process of civic life, community building, and the common good.

Just as map-making renders the three-dimensional world in two dimensions and public policy projects abstract principles into real life, so do Locus and Civitas represent and symbolize these processes through their structure and design.