Calendar of Artists and Events

August

Dudley Zopp, Aug 12-31

Opening Reception, August 15th

Dudley Zopp's artist talk will be on Tuesday August 19th 7pm

Dudley Zopp, Bio

Dudley Zopp is a painter of abstract landscapes and an installation artist, with a strong interest in environmental and collaborative projects, most recently Walking in Time at Waterfall Arts in Belfast, Maine, and earlier at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Her work engages mediums and forms from large scale installations to small works on paper, but always joins a fascination with geological formations to an obsession for locating image through process.

Among her awards are a 2002 Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission and a Studio Residency by the Pouch Cove Foundation, Saint Johns, Newfoundland. The Boston Athenaeum, University of Chicago Library, Farnsworth Art Museum and NoxBox (Mainz, Germany) own works by her.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, she holds a B.A. and M.A. in Modern Foreign Languages from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and did post-graduate work in Painting and Drawing at the Allen R. Hite Art Institute, University of Louisville.

Dudley Zopp, Artist Statement
Geologics and Erosion Paintings

The Geologics and Erosion paintings reveal my passion for paint and my deeply felt connection to the earth. I have always been willing to let process determine image, and over time, I have developed a way of moving and layering paint that mimics the slow build-up and precipitous shifting of the sediments and magma that form our planet. In the abstract patterning of the paintings, I am exploring the ways rocks are formed and distributed in the landscape.

These abstract patterns are also objects of meditation, reminders of place and of the geological forces that formed our contemporary landscape. They provide the viewer a way of penetrating layers of memory, of going deep into one’s psyche to examine our place in the landscape and our way of being in the world.

My paintings are about time and where we fit into this present moment, knowing that our lives are bounded by a past measured in thousands of millions of years of geological time, and by a future measured in the slow growth of organic life, an unknowable future of which we are the accidental stewards.

Here's a multimedia slide show of Dudley's Aarhus installation featuring comments by Dudley and music by Massive Attack.

Dudley Zopp, Lincolnville, Maine 2008
Website: www.dudleyzopp.net
Blog: www.zoppnews.blogspot.com

September

Heidi Daub, Sept. 2-21

Opening Reception, September 5th

"Never Better" 19*24 (unframed) acrylic on paper 2008

From her studio days in the 1980's at Montserrat School of Visual Art, in Beverly, Massachusetts, Heidi Daub has doggedly maintained an independent and individualistic approach to her art that reflects a temperament derived from a thorough knowledge of and an adherence to the vocabulary of Modernism, complemented with an imaginative and innovative approach to her art that has not been seen in Maine for a long time. Indeed the paintings of Heidi Daub are arguably some of the most distinctive and intriguing that have appeared in and out of Maine during the last ten years. Her style, with its unmistakenable identity, make her paintings a challenge both to the eye and to the mind. Yet the elements of her paintings are simple and familiar, appealing equally to adults and children. But the meaning of her paintings, paradoxically, are concealed within those same simple and familiar elements and elude immediate comprehension. And that for the viewer is the challenge of her art.

Daub's paintings defy easy classification. Are they landscapes or narratives or a meshing of the two? Are they painted metaphors, symbolic narratives or even surreal experiences? Clearly she combines elements directly taken from the natural world, but there are unexpected surprises too. She often includes elements in her 'landscapes' that are usually found in still lifes. An irresistible narrative quality also informs her paintings and her motifs fairly beg to be 'read' as personal statement.

Daub has assimilated the characteristics of Modernism so completely to her own artistic purposes; she seems to have come to it naturally. She is one of a small number of Maine artists who work with it convincingly. She has created a style that is personal, idiomatic, and singularly hers. Nature is always her starting point, always her vehicle for expressing and shaping her personal visions. Her imagery is thus always recognizable as belonging to the world of appearances, regardless of the particular configuration she may give them. And though she employs the vocabulary of representationalism, her painted language is conditioned by the grammar and syntax of Modernism and abstraction. One of her gifts is her ability to combine representational and abstract elements without making the former obvious or obtrusive.

The art of Heidi Daub is unquestionably a rare experience, the kind we are not likely to see again for some time. Her ability to translate personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings into artful images that are at once rich in poetic associations and probing in enigmatic content are what make the paintings of Heidi Daub memorable and worth seeking out.

~Lyle Roger North

Website: http://www.heididaub.com

September - October

Mike Silverton, Sept 23-Oct 12

Opening Reception, Sept. 26th

When Lee and I moved from Brooklyn to Belfast six years ago, the urge to make art graduated from marginal to obsessive. An abundance of materials and the space in which to play with them, perhaps even my age –– if not now, never –– contribute to an explanation. Be that as it may, it’s mostly what I’m doing these days.

I was drawn years ago to Dada and Surrealism, especially to Marcel Duchamp’s insouciant aesthetic. I’ve written two cubic yards of poetry, some of which was published in magazines and anthologies, along with a tastefully anorexic chap-book, “Battery Park,” published by Russell Edson’s Thing Press in 1966. More recently, I narrate “Analogue Smoque” to Tom Hamilton and Al Margolis’ musical accompaniment on Pogus 21029-2, a two-CD production issued in 2003. The royalties to date are in the low teens.

In addition to having produced poetry readings for the New School for Social Research, New York’s municipal radio station, and the stations of Pacifica Radio, I’ve written reviews for the most part of modernist classical music on recording for print and Internet publications, including LaFolia.com, of which I am proprietor-editor. I also write about high-end audio.

As to what of mine occupies this fine little gallery, the art must speak for itself –– enigmatically, I hope.