Part Two of Public Art Lecture Series

Jean Shin makes art out of other people’s trash. The New York-based artist told a crowd at SPACE Gallery in Portland that she has also asked people for their sports trophies, dinner plates, lottery scratch cards, even the clothes off their backs. Shin’s talk, sponsored by Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance, was part of the Public Art Event Series celebrating 30 years of public art in Maine, funded by the Maine Arts Commission. Shin’s work involves the tactility of everyday objects that are often discarded or go unnoticed. She collects these elements, then deconstructs and repurposes them to offer a new perspective. For Celadon Remnants, a public art piece installed at the MTA station in Flushing, Queens, New York, she collected three tons of pottery shards from Korea (more trash), and created multiple mosaics that reflect the fragmentation and rejoining of Korean immigrants in the United States. About the public’s response, the artist said, “The conversation in the community really is the meaning of the piece for me.”
A 1999 alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Shin currently has a one-woman show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Arts for Transit

It could be New Year’s Eve revelers, veins of a maple leaf, one hundred ravens on a fence or a stack of suitcases; these are all images incorporated into public art you might see while riding the subway in New York City.
Amy Hausmann, the assistant director of the MTA’s Arts for Transit Program, elaborated on these and many other works on Friday night to a good crowd at SPACE Gallery in Portland.
Hausmann’s lively talk was the inaugural event in the Maine Arts Commission’s Public Art Series that celebrates 30 years of the Percent for Art Program. Maine has been funding public art installations at most publicly-funded constructions for thirty years, a few years longer than either the MTA or the City of New York.
It was exciting to see all the possibilities that public art can offer. For more, don’t miss the next lecture, also brought to us by the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance. Jean Shin, New York-based artist who was commissioned by the MTA for a work, Celadon Remnants, will be speaking Saturday, June 6, at 6 PM at SPACE Gallery.
And for even more, check out the rest of the series!
Photo:Cara Slifka