During her 7-week residency with the USM Art Department in Spring 2016, well-known Maine community artist Natasha Mayers facilitated two significant public art projects: Welcome to New Mainers (Flags on Lobster Buoys) and the Gorham Community Map mural. Welcome to New Mainers is on display inside the Portland Jetport. Mayers engaged over a hundred USM and area students to paint these buoys with the flags of the 77 countries represented by Portland’s newest residents. The idea began with a banner for the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition painted by Mayers in collaboration with members of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA) and The Artists’ Rapid Response Team (ARRT!), an activist group Mayers founded in 2012. The first buoys were painted by students in the Portland Public Schools’ Multilingual & Multicultural Center’s program for the opening of the exhibition “400 Years of New Mainers” at the Maine Historical Society. USM students from many disciplines completed the first set for USM. Art students made a second set to hang in the Portland Jetport.
The students’ collective effort transformed a traditional icon of Maine-a bouy-and the sea, which many immigrants have traversed, and imbued it with new associations. Viewers themselves are travelers at the sites of these installations, passing through a syncopated rhythm of brightly colored bouys. This celebratory experience initiated by Mayers, Maine’s leading activist artist, is a great gift to and about the state of Maine. USM art lecturer Lin Lisberger and Jess Lauren Lipton of Creative Portland helped arrange the Jetport installation. USM art students Caitlin Warner, Farrin Hanson, Sara Jane Laughlin, Mackenzie Moore, and Kennedy Sheafe participated in the installations.
Residency gallery
