LOOKING AT ART IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

THE STATE HOUSE COMPLEX IN AUGUSTA, MAINE

By Laurie Meunier Graves

For a small state, Maine has an astonishing wealth of art museums and galleries, and the art ranges from surrealism to seascapes, from abstract to traditional. We have our very own Maine Art Museum Trail, complete with a website (www.maineartmuseums.org) and map. This trail includes seven museums and goes from Ogunquit, located in southern Maine’s banana belt, to the frozen north of Bangor. Several years ago, the trail was even featured in the New York Times.

However, while the trail comes close to Augusta, Maine’s capital, it skirts it as coyly as most people from away do, and it’s not hard to see why. Augusta is not quaint, has no prestigious liberal arts college, and no seaside. Sprawled on either side of the Kennebec River, it is a factory town bereft of its factories, and what used to be a bustling downtown is grim and gray. The Senator, its best restaurant, is tucked among fast food places and strip development, and the Olive Garden, at the other end of the city amidst more strip development, usually has a waiting line. Not a very promising place for good art, but, sometimes, art makes its way to unexpected places, even to a city like Augusta.

Not long ago, I was in the State House Complex in Augusta, and I came across some paintings and photographs that not only made me stop and look but also made me come back for another viewing. Some were in a temporary but ongoing exhibit that focused on different regions in the state; others were part of the permanent collection. All of it was first rate, and there was a wonderful diversity of style and subject. Yes, there were seascapes and landscapes, but there were also abstract and surreal paintings as well as photographs. My only complaint is that although the temporary exhibit is sponsored by the Maine Arts Commission, there was no information about it at the front desk in the Capitol Building where the temporary exhibit is displayed, and the Maine Arts Commission website gives little specific information about it, either. And what a shame! Such fine art deserves publicity and advertising so that people can purposely view the paintings and photographs rather than just stumble across them. Here, then, are highlights of some of the art I saw at the State House Complex.

Upstairs in the Burton M. Cross Office Building, as part of the permanent collection, hangs Alan Magee’s Stone Triptych. A placard informs the viewer that Magee was inspired by the pebble beach at Pemaquid Point in the late 1970s. “That small stretch of shore has, for over twenty years, never failed to offer some new and sublime harmony of form and color…The beach stones seemed to contain ideas that I need to think about…their wildness paired with a delicacy and precision.” With that last description—wildness paired with delicacy and precision—I would argue that Magee has hit on the qualities found in most good art—writing, painting, dance, theater—and it is certainly present in his piece.

Stone Triptych is a large painting of, well, stones. Some artists focus on the big picture, the larger landscape, but Magee shows how a focus on the small and specific can be just as absorbing. The stones in this painting are rendered so precisely that it seems as though at any moment, they could tumble out of the picture. First you notice the texture and the speckling, and your hand can almost feel the rocks. Next come the colors, soft and muted, grays and browns. Finally the order and the disorder, the large rocks on top of smaller rocks, which sit in a jumble on what looks like some kind of stone ledge, which in turn has vertical stripes. Large on small on even larger. It feels as though you are looking at Ur-rocks, the rocks that have always been there and that will continue to be there long after you are gone.

Across the room from Stone Triptych is Marguerite Payne Robichaux’s Mountain Suite: Spaulding, Cranberry, Blue, and this painting is also part of the permanent collection. Mountain Suite comprises three large panels that come together to make one panoramic picture. As the title suggests, three gray mountains loom in the background. A fringe of green woods runs across their base, and water and long fields with rolled hay extend from the trees. They all come together to form a procession of rock, forest, and countryside. Soft gray, green, and brownish yellow give the paintings the look of a landscape seen in a memory or a dream. Mountain Suite presents an almost mythic notion of Maine, a place where the wilderness and the countryside stand side by side. There are no people, no structures, no animals. Instead, there is the landscape, and that is enough.

The temporary exhibit is displayed in the Capitol Building, and even though I couldn’t find any information about it, the artists all seemed to come from the coast. The painting Bird Carver by David Orrell caught my attention on both visits. In it sits a big, hulking man who appears to be half-human and half-wood. He wears a green shirt, a white apron, and a blue baseball cap. Two crows stand by his wooden feet. This is no quaint local character to charm the tourists. Rooted to his spot, he looks moody, sullen, and hostile. He’s carving a bird—it appears to be a crow—and his expression gives you the impression that he’d rather you didn’t watch him as he carves. With his gleaming knife gripped in his big, strong hand, he looks like a Down-East Geppetto. Will his carving come to life or will it remain a wooden bird? And, what about the crows by his feet? Were they once made of wood?

Also of note in this exhibit are Joe Haroutunian’s vibrant abstract paintings; the excellent, mixed media Pillar, a surreal painting by Tim Gaydos; and Leslie Bowman’s ethereal black and white photographs, with their focus on structure and pattern.

Although I wish that this exhibit were better publicized, I must admit that I am very happy to see art in public places. To me, it sends the message that art is important, and it deserves to be where working people walk past it everyday. This is a message that cannot be overstated, and I hope art of this quality continues to come to the State House Complex.

 

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