“In the Smithy” (detail; 2011), a multimedia image by Greg Shattenberg.

A Maine artist who uses diverse media to explore the use of language as a visual element, Greg Shattenberg shows prints and drawings in a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art exhibition that opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, April 10, in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The museum and its events are open to the public at no cost. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays during the academic year. For more information, please contact 207-786-6158 or museum@bates.edu.

Greg Shattenberg: Prints and Drawings is on view in the museum’s Synergy Space through May 30. Showing through the same period is the college’s annual Senior Exhibition, this year featuring art by 11 studio art majors working in photography, ceramics, painting, drawing and other media.

Shattenberg, of Auburn, is an accomplished printmaker who, over the years, has experimented with a wide variety of printing methods — from woodcut, etching and lithography to photographic processes such as collotype and color copy transfer. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ exhibition comprises works from the last 20 years that showcase his use of letterpress techniques to complement his images.

As a young artist studying painting and drawing, Shattenberg felt frustrated when he couldn’t realize his original ideas for images, and felt constrained by the conventional processes of image making. In response to these dissatisfactions, Shattenberg introduced writing into his drawings.

He recalls, “It was unsettling to look at the piece and realize the writing was more interesting than the drawing.”

In the process he has since developed, Shattenberg introduces text improvisationally after completing an image, building upon and adding to the context of the artwork. Through the careful selection of language, form and typeface, he explores the use of printed words and phrases as aesthetic elements as much as for their emotional or narrative contributions to his imagery.

He readily admits that combining language with imagery presents its own set of constraints. Language is inherently cerebral and its presence in Shattenberg’s images creates a tension with the visual sensuality of his drawings and prints.

“Images with language are an impossible fit,” he says. “They do not naturally go together and do not function singularly.” There’s also risk in printing text on top of artworks, because the wrong creative solution can ruin a carefully worked image.

For Shattenberg, however, the practice of layering text on top of imagery is a dynamic and revitalizing process in which the opportunities far outweigh the risks.

Little, winner of the 2000 Acadia Arts Achievement Award, has authored several books on art, such as Edward Hopper’s New England (Pomegranate Communications, 1993) and The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent (University of California Press, 1999)

Little also writes for regional and national publications including Art New England and Art in America. He contributed an essay to the catalog for the exhibition Bernard Langlais: Independent Spirit at the Portland Museum of Art in 2002.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Little will focus on Langlais’ current exhibition in the context of his greater oeuvre. The exhibition Medium and Abstraction, curated by Erin Gilligan ’09, focuses on a selection of Langlais sculptures from the 1950s and ’60s that show a particular influence of the New York avant-garde. The inclusion of wooden assemblages by Louise Nevelson and portraits of Langlais imply a larger context of influence for his work, which Little will discuss.

Langlais, born in Old Town, Maine, in 1921, embarked on an art career at a young age. His early work is predominantly paintings and collages. In 1956, Langlais and his wife bought a summer cottage in Cushing, Maine. While completing renovations, Langlais began experimenting with wood, and developed his self-proclaimed “painting in wood” technique. He is most famous for whimsical animal sculptures and tableaus created with a fusion of painting and wood carving.

Also featured in the museum are the exhibitions Landscape Drawings from the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection and Our Positive Bodies: Mapping Our Treatment, Sharing Our Choices. The Hartley exhibition showcases ink and graphite drawings by this famed artist born in Lewiston, Maine, who wished to have a memorial collection in his hometown.

Marsden is known as a pioneer of American modernist painting in the early 20th century. Our Positive Bodies originated in Nairobi, Kenya, and focuses on “body mapping,” a palliative process through which life-sized silhouette self-portraits of women affected by AIDS are used to divulge feelings and memories.

The Langlais and Hartley exhibitions close on Oct. 3, while Our Positive Bodies remains up until Dec. 11. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and closed on major holidays. Admission is free.

For more information, please call 207-786-6158 or visit the museum Web site at www.bates.edu/museum.xml.

The gift establishes the Joanna D. and Henry L. McCorkle Works on Paper Collection at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art. “The great strength of the McCorkles’ collecting is the overwhelming number of excellent works by Maine’s finest artists,” said Genetta McLean, director of the college’s musuem. “This is a wonderful gift to the Lewiston-Auburn community, and we are pleased to have it here.”

The McCorkles have been collecting art in Maine for 15 years. Their enthusiasm for art and passionate collecting was documented in an exhibition Carried Away: the Joy of Collecting Art in Maine, which drew a record number of visitors to the college’s musuem in summer 1999.

“The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art is one of New England’s hidden treasures, the newest of Maine’s Art Trail museums and a bright place to show and see the creative spirit at work,” said Henry McCorkle. “Jody and I are honored to add to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Musuem’s growing collection of works on paper and to include examples by outstanding artists new to Maine, like the marvelous drawing Little House Near the Bay by Anne Minich.”

Visitors are invited to see works from the McCorkle collection Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m., at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, 75 Russell St. Guided tours for schools and other groups are welcome and the public is welcomed at no charge. Call 207-786-6158 for more information.

Arthur has been acknowledged internationally as the leading authority on contemporary American realism and figurative painting. His books and exhibition catalogues include Richard Estes: The Urban Landscape, Realist Drawings and Watercolors and Realists at Work: Studio Interviews and Working Methods of Ten Contemporary Realists. He has curated numerous exhibits, including America 1976, a bicentennial project sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior that opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and toured American museums for two years. He also has organized mid career retrospectives of the paintings of Jack Beal, Richard Estes and Alfred Leslie.

Arthur, former director of the Boston University Art Gallery, has served on advisory panels for the National Endowment of the Arts, U.S. Dept. of the Interior and the National Science Foundation. Since 1975 he has advised private collectors and museums in the United States, Europe and Japan in the selection and purchase of works.

Notations of Color: Oil Sketching in Maine features small-scale oil sketches by more than 40 American landscape painters of the late 19th and 20th century, including George Bellows, Robert Henri, Neil Welliver, Joel Babb, Ann Lofquist and Lewiston-native Marsden Hartley, according to Genetta McLean, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art and curator of the exhibit.

In addition to works from the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art’s collection, the exhibit has works from other public and private collections, including the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Colby College Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Ogunquit Museum of American Art and the Portland Museum of Art.

This exhibition was generously funded by Fleet Charitable Trust and friends of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art.

The public is invited to enjoy this exhibition free of charge. Special Saturday parent-child landscape painting workshops will be held during the course of the exhibition. The Museum of Art is open Tuesdays-Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Schools and other groups are welcome by appointment. For more information or to schedule a group tour, call 207-786-6158.