All Hung Up

Pat Sharp's Serene Stream- just one of her pieces being supported by her grant from the Maine Arts commission-and it's in the show!

The Working Artists Show got all hung up on Weds evening at the Kennebunk Library. To pick-up the last of the work I drove to Rockland and met up with Pat Sharp who drove down all the way from Milbridge.

Pat is an interesting woman, full of humor and stories. She seems to have done everything in her lifetime to have made a living on art. Murals to racehorse paintings. She told me she even paid for her husband to take painting lessons from Carolyn Wyeth while she babysat the kids. She should have taken the lessons instead!

Inferno-Jamie Wyeth

While in Rockland, we just had to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit at the Farnsworth Museum/Wyeth Center and Jamie Wyeth's exhibit "Seven Deadly Sins". I was amused by the "carny" approach to the work. 25'-30' banners were hung on either side of the Center's (an old converted church) stairwells complete with circus/carnival lettering expounding the astonishing "eye popping" exhibit.

Jamie Wyeth's approach to his artwork is so expressive and illustrative. The video of him working was a treat...him sticking his brush in his mouth, squinting and poking at the canvas. Much like the seagulls he was painting...pecking and thrusting his bits of watercolor paint. The best piece in the show was "Inferno" the cardboard "canvas" large enough to "feel" the heat from the makeshift furnace; with the seagulls flying into your face beaks open obviously crying and screaming.

Jamie's Seven Deadly Sin "Greed" painting made me recall a greedy seagull I had met while walking the beach with the farmpug, who did what dogs do on beaches. Oops! No bag in the dispenser! But I did have an empty bag from Dunkin Donuts. I used the paper bag and left it on the sea wall to retrieve after my walk.

Jamie Wyeth's Seven Deadly Sin painting-"Greed"

Lo and behold, there descends a seagull. Spying the bag he snatches it and prepares to taste his snack on the centerline of the road. I give chase. He hops back many paces each time moving the bag. Finally he takes the bag, with contents, depositing it into the surf far away from me. I hope he got his "just desserts" when he finally got into the bag.

I digress, go see the exhibit in Rockland, worth the trip, nice town, good places to eat, friendly people. And stop by the Kennebunk Library to see the MEIC 2009 Working Artists Show while you are passing through Maine! The show is there for the entire month of July!