It was a cold, gray Tuesday morning, with the campus blanketed in snow, when I first set foot in the Lord Hall gallery to cover its latest art exhibition. Despite having opened not long before I arrived, there weren’t many attendees, save for one near the end of my visit. There, in the silent room, bathed in overcast light, stood just me and the artworks – collages of fabrics stitched to canvases, braided strips of multicolored paper and bundles of waste balled up with plastic wrap and string, some of them bearing an almost unsettling resemblance to cartoonishly-drawn human organs, either arranged on the floor like planets on the page of a textbook or hanging as chandeliers.
ORBITS, as the exhibition is titled, focuses on work crafted from repurposed trash and other discarded materials, and my first impression was certainly a mixed one. I have never considered myself an aficionado of abstract or modernist art, or someone easily capable of viewing most such works on the same level as the output of the old masters, so on the merits of the paper collages of Tom Jessen, spherical sculptures of Ian Trask, and fabric stitching’s of Isabelle Maschal O’Donnell, I resolved to suspend judgement until I could gain additional context at next Friday’s reception and poetry reading. This was to be attended by all three artists and the poets tasked by the University of Maine’s English department with composing reaction pieces to the art.
It is probably amiss of me to mention these poems so far down in the article, as in my opinion, they were the highlight of my first visit. Though starting off grounded in aspects of the artworks’ creation, the poets soon let their imaginations run wild; Leslie Moore, for example, sees a tempestuous storm in the fabric collage “High Tide” by O’Donnell that is nonetheless valiantly braved by a little redpoll – an original addition of the author, as there is nary a hint of red on the canvas. Jessen’s paper collage “High Tide” was touchingly interpreted by Matt Bernier as a metaphorical bridge, being built by a Maine farmer out of wood planks in various colors in an effort to reconcile with an estranged son. “Hands tighten around the woven threads […] clutching and crumpling […] pulling taught the slack cloth […] until each side of the fissure […] is tension separated by intention” is how Monique Bouchard began a wonderful poem about the fabric collage “Pavement Blossoms.”
In contrast to my first encounter with the works of ORBITS, the reception, held on Friday, Feb. 7, was much better attended, and I appreciated the chance to speak with all three artists and hear the reaction poems read aloud by their authors. When asked about where he sourced the materials that went into his spherical sculptures, Trask confirmed that they were indeed scavenged, with empty paint markers, for example, coming from an artist friend in Portland.
If I failed to see any overarching metaphor during the Tuesday visit, it was, as it turns out, not because I am a philistine; all three artists rejected the suggestion of a grand moral to their visual stories in favor of more down-to-earth motivations. Trask said that his works aimed to promote repurposing, as well as to indulge, as he put it, his “impish satisfaction in making trash beautiful.” Another interesting fact about Trask’s works is the way some of them are designed according to geometrical principles both for beauty and for ease of transporting between galleries. The intricate diagrams drawn on graph paper are presented next to the hanging sculptures themselves.
Jessen’s collages, which range from simple linear patterns on paper canvases to large snaking pretzel-like shapes, were the result of a spur-of-the-moment decision to quash indecision; he had long been putting waste cardboard packaging through a shredder to save space in a recycling bin, and had been intending to use the chaff in a future art project, but rather than wait for a grand stroke of inspiration, he one day decided to just stick it to a canvas in technicolor lines, resulting in the birth of “High Tide” and the start of the collage series. If there’s a message hidden amongst the tantalising specks of shredded text that one knows once spelled out famous brands, but can now no longer make any sense of, it is the celebration of the simple, meditative pleasure of repetitive work. Jessen concluded with the interesting fact that he experiments with deliberately distancing the artist – himself – from the creative process by rolling dice to determine which color of chaff he will lay down next.
Finally, O’Donnell, whose works were the catalyst for some of the best reaction poems, mentioned her fascination with the different types and consistencies of repurposed fabric. Formerly working in the medium of paint, especially semi-abstract floral paintings, she one day decided to instead put her childhood passions for stitching and quilting to canvas, marking a definite departure from both her old medium and style.
In conclusion, I enjoyed my experience at the ORBITS exhibit, and think that regardless of one’s view on modernist or avant-garde art, there is always something to be said for the desire to repurpose often non-recyclable materials that would have otherwise gone to waste, and an attitude that allows one to see the amusing and inspiring side in everything.
ORBITS will be running until March 14 in the Lord Hall Gallery. Admission is free to all regardless of UMaine enrollment.
