Two and a half months in the making but it’s finally here! The video of Nugamshi’s Lewiston, ME visit.  Nugamshi is a celebrated Saudi Arab artist that was part of our curated show “Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston.� Back in January he participated in our artist in residency program, with a featured open studio in the heart of Lewiston, Lisbon St.  It was a good time, with good people and it led to a good video.  Check it out, you might even be featured.

Best,

José Luis Herrera

Marsden Hartley, 1908-1909

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art and 217 Films announce the world premiere of the new Marsden Hartley documentary Visible Silence:Ìý Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet.

This movie is a production of Connecticut-based independent film makers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton of 217 Films.   Written by Maglaras, the world premiere of this hour-long documentary will be held at the Olin Arts Center at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College in Lewiston, Maine on Thursday, September 25 at 7:00 pm and 9:00 p.m.217 Films and the Museum are making the event free open to the public as a gift to the citizens of Lewiston, Maine in honor of their most famous son. Admission is free but tickets are required. For reservations or more information call 207-786-6135 or email olinarts@bates.edu

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art is home to the world’s largest collection of Hartley artifacts, ²¹²Ô»åÌýVisible Silence features many pieces from this extensive archive of Hartley’s personal effects, including drawing and photographs.  This documentary includes more than 45 of Hartley’s paintings and drawings — from his earliest work as a child to the last painting found on the easel in his studio in Corea, Maine the day he died in 1943.

Hartley was deeply attached to his hometown of Lewiston and to the Androscoggin River, and locations in and around these areas play a key role in the film.  Hartley traveled extensively, but always returned to Maine and, at the end of his life, considered himself “Maine’s Painter.� He requested his ashes be strewn along the Androscoggin when he died; and this important and poignant moment is dramatized in Visible Silence.

The world premiere of 217 Films first Maine-made movie, Cleophas and His Own, based on a story by Marsden Hartley, was held in Lewiston in 2005. Visit the 217 Films site for the film:

The scene of the greatest economic and cultural metamorphosis of our time, China is not only at the center of the world’s attention but has arguably the most vital, imaginative, and uncontainable art scene in the world.The Rising Tide investigates China’s meteoric march toward the future through the work of some of its most talented emerging artists, whose work reflects the country’s rising influence as an economic, political and cultural force in the global arena.

In recent years, Chinese artists, especially those working in photography and video, have gained international recognition for their powerful works capturing the social and aesthetic confusion created in a rapidly changing society. To the Chinese avant-garde, materialism is all pervasive, and the dominant consumer culture has altered people’s mentalities. Interestingly, their work, influenced by Western ideals and art practice, remains distinctly Chinese in its content and aesthetic.

Produced within the dual context of globalization and urbanization, the work of artists Cao Fei, Xu Zhen, Yang Yong, Wang Qingsong, Chen Qiulin, Birdhead, and Zhang O examines the collision between the present and the future, and the confusion and ambiguity that characterize the new China. Their work is often a stunned attempt to deal with the dynamic and tectonic forces transforming China. The Rising Tide captures this momentous time in China’s history while exploring the work of artists, who comment with intelligence, wit, foreboding and nostalgia.

View movie trailer:

Kate Gilmore, video and performance artist, is a 1997 graduate of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College. She received her MFA in 2002 from the School of the Visual Arts, NY, and currently resides in New York. Gilmore is the 2005 recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship for Performance.

Her work was included in PS1/MoMA’s Greater New York 2005 ²¹²Ô»åÌýOpen House: Working in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; and in shows at Plus Ultra Gallery, White Columns, Bronx Museum of Art, Exit Art, Islip Art Museum, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT.; Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music, Tokyo, Japan; and Kunstraume Auf Zeit Gallery, Linz, Austria.

In a recent statement, Gilmore explains, “For the past few years I have been making installations that incorporate video, performance, and sculpture. Through the use of humor, these installations attempt to address the fears and insecurities of daily existence. Using my self as the main character and various types of women’s personalities as inspiration, I create specific narratives that speak to the struggles of everyday life and the different methods we use to make sense of it all.

In each video, I play a character that is confronted by precariously built environments or chaotic situations that force her into awkward and compromising positions. Determined to make sense of the space despite the endless obstacles, each character repeatedly attempts to control this utterly uncontrollable environment.”

Gilmore is this year’s featured speaker in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art’s “Alums in the Arts” lecture series, supported in part by the Friends of the Museum. Previous speakers include Darsie Alexander ’88, curator, and Joshua Holdeman ’91, of Christie’s New York.

My Love is an Anchor, video still

The program explores the museum’s role as a resource and nexus for explorations of art and visual culture — a “laboratory” for the visual arts that serves the college and the community.Featured prominently is the composed of art and documentary materials by or about this pioneering American modernist, a Lewiston native. The collection, donated 50 years ago, gave the museum its start. Museum director Mark Bessire discusses Hartley’s influence, which is evidenced in part by how many of his contemporaries were attracted to Maine because of him — artists such as Carl Sprinchorn, who is also featured in the program, and Vinalhaven pop artist Robert Indiana, who has devoted years to creating the painting series “The Hartley Elegies” (which will be the subject of a museum exhibition opening Oct. 1).

Also examined is performance art at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, which is the academic home of William Pope.L, one of the country’s preeminent performance artists. A segment depicts his students engaging their unwitting peers in a dialogue on race and the effects of globalization as part of a piece called The Black Factory, which has toured the East this summer.

Founded in the 1990s as a way to heighten awareness of Maine’s rich history in the visual arts and design, the links the state’s seven best-known art institutions. In addition to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum, they are: the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland; the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick; the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville; the Ogunquit Museum of American Art; the Portland Museum of Art; and the University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ installment is the sixth in the MPBN series, which debuted in 2003. The purpose of the series, according to executive producer Barbara Noyes Pulling, is to “provide a video showcase of the wide variety of artistic talent, high-quality art collections and top-notch museum facilities in Maine, [which exist] in outsize proportion to the state’s small population.”

Olin 105

The Series opens with Getting Home by Zhang Yang, China (Mandarin, with subtitles in English). In this soulful and humane comedy, Zhao, a middle-aged construction worker, struggles to fulfill a dying co-worker’s last wish to be buried in China’s Three Gorges region. Setting out with his colleague’s body in tow, Zhao travels hundreds of miles across extraordinary countryside, encountering a number of colorful adventures and characters—and even discovering love in some unlikely quarters. Director Zhang Yang’s humorous and moving tale of friendship offers a powerful, and sometimes slapstick, commentary on the value of community and human connectivity in modern China.

$5 general admission, free for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students.

8 p.m., Friday, September 11 in Olin 105 and Sunday,
September 13 in Olin 105

Zhang Yang, China, 2007

8 p.m., Friday, September 18 in Olin 105 and Sunday,
September 20 in Olin 105

Teona Strugar Mitevska, Macedonia, 2007

8 p.m. Friday, September 25 in Olin 105 and Sunday,
September 27 in Olin 105

Sandra Kogut, Brazil, 2007

8 p.m., Friday, October 2 in Olin 105 and Sunday, October 4
in Olin 105

Victor Arregui, Ecuador, 2008

8 p.m., Friday, October 9 in Olin 105 and Sunday, October 11
in Olin 105

Nan Triveni Achnas, Indonesia, 2007

8 p.m., Friday, October 16 in Olin 105 and Sunday, October 18
in Olin 105
Sandra Gugliotta, Argentina, 2006

8 p.m., Friday, October 30 in Olin 105 and Sunday, November 1
in Olin 105
Teresa Prata, Mozambique, 2007

8 p.m., Friday, November 6 in Olin 105 and Sunday, November 8
in Olin 105

Marat Sarulu, Kazakhstan, 2008

8 p.m., Friday, November 13 in Olin 105 and Sunday, November 15
in Olin 105

Naghi Nemati, Iran, 2007

8 p.m., Friday, December 4 in Olin 105 and Sunday, December 6
in Olin 105
Faouzi Bensaidi, Morocco, 2006

8 p.m., Friday, December 11 in Olin 105 and Sunday, December 13
in Olin 105
Renato Falcao, Brazil, 2002

To view trailers of all the movies:Ìý