Ripple Effect

If you’re in Portland, ME a week from today, go to see Ripple Effect: Monoprints by Karen Adrienne, Kris Sader & Barbra Whitten. I know Barb Whitten through Camden Falls Gallery, where she is an indefatigable gallery assistant. Turns out she’s a wonderful printmaker, too.

“For as long as I can remember, I have loved words,” Whitten said. “What gives these mysterious collections of marks, arranged in specific and particular ways, the ability to represent sounds and transmit ideas through time and space from one person to another?”

Barb and her co-exhibitors are members of Circling the Square Fine Art Press . This is an open-access cooperative in Gardiner, ME, population 5,800. You can take printing classes in Rochester, NY (including linoleum block printing from my very own painting student, the multi-talented Victoria Brzustowicz). However, I know of no cooperative presses here in our county of 750,000 people.

Later this year, Circling the Square will collaborate with Estampería Quiteña in Ecuador in a printmaking exchange entitled A Sense of Place.  These two fine-art presses will create limited edition prints that will be exhibited simultaneously in both Ecuador and Maine, with a companion catalog documenting the project and the work.

All of which speaks to the remarkable art culture in the state of Maine. Small state, big art scene.

Ripple Effect  will be at PhoPa Gallery at 132 Washington Avenue, Portland, ME, from April 22 to May 30. The opening reception wil be Friday, April 24, 5-7. An artist talk is scheduled for Sunday, May 17, at 3 PM.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.