Theme of growth takes many forms at new art exhibition

The felt and linen creations of Leah Gauthier overlook Jackie Brown's ceramic sculptures at the USM Art Gallery's "Life Forms: Grow" exhibition.
Living plants emerge from decorative containers that Leah Gauthier swathed in felt with floral accents.

The ground in Gorham is frozen and covered in snow. But even in the depts of winter, it’s growing season at the University of Southern Maine Art Gallery.

The latest exhibition is called “Life Forms: Grow,” featuring work by four artists, each with their own distinctive style and preferred media. It opened on January 16, but attendance surged on January 23 for a reception with the artists.

“Being a group of local artists and local sculptors, they are driving a lot of our turnout, getting the word out through their shows and through this upcoming series that they have,” said Kat Zagaria Buckley, director of art exhibitions and outreach at USM.

The pieces on display were created by Jackie Brown, Leah Gauthier, Elaine K. Ng, and Ashley Page. They are part of a collective of 12 artists who agreed to hold joint exhibitions in different combinations over a span of several years.

The theme of “Life Forms” arose from group discussions in order to give so many independent voices a common direction. The concept was also flexible enough to allow a wide range of interpretations from basic biological functions to musings on the meaning of existence. The idea for the project came to Gauthier during a family trip to the beach.

“Art is a solitary practice. We were all in our studios, not really getting together,” Gauthier said. “This has been such a lovely community-building experiment. It really has formed friendships that we wouldn’t have had otherwise, so I’m very pleased with that.”

"Curious Clouds - small kalamkari, I-IX" by Elaine K. Ng were featured in the "Life Forms: Grow" exhibition at the USM Art Gallery.
Elaine K. Ng’s “Curious Clouds – small kalamkari, I-IX” overlook a table covered with the artist’s tools and reference materials.

The enthusiastic response spurred Gauthier into action, and she became their chief organizer. She envisioned each exhibition as a unique experience, complete with its own subtitle based on the interplay between the selected pieces. “Life Forms: Grow” at USM is the first in a four-part series.

As the shows were divvied up between artists, Gauthier’s work found a home at the gallery in Gorham. Pieces like “Unidentified Glow” find art in a potted plant. But instead of standard clay pots, Gauthier’s planters are swathed in colored felt with floral accents. Above them hang discs of painted linen with sunny names like “Dusk to Dawn.”

Ng also works with fabric. She paints delicate shapes onto sheets of cotton using metallic compounds as bonding agents. Called chintz, the centuries-old technique originated in India. Ng refers to traditional designs for inspiration, then lets her imagination evolve them. A cloud that may have been an afterthought to another artist becomes her focal point.

“They’re sort of lifelike. It’s why these clouds became the feature,” Ng said. “I saw them in the background, and they looked like little characters. They’re what drew me to it, these weird little cloud forms that you don’t see often.”

The pieces on display are part of a series that Ng titled “Curious Clouds.” The way they are presented adds to their airy quality. Three of her larger pieces hang loosely like banners, without frames to bind them. The clouds on their surface ripple in the breeze of passing visitors.

Visitors to the opening reception of "Life Forms: Grow" at the USM Art Gallery gaze at "Strata Series: Relic" by Jackie Brown.
“Strata Series: Relic” by Jackie Brown captures the attention of visitors to the exhibition’s opening reception.

Brown’s contributions deviate from the soft fabrics of her co-exhibitors. Her ceramic sculptures resemble mineral deposits you might find in a seaside grotto. One of the larger pieces in the “Terraform” series stands more than five feet tall. All its energy seems to be moving upward in spite of its obvious weight.

The size of Brown’s sculptures allows visitors to walk around them and see how differently they interact with nearby pieces at various angles. Brown hopes the tonal collisions are as exhilarating to see as they were to create.

“Whenever you’re collaborating on an exhibition or project with other people, you’re learning from how each other approaches the process, the decisions that you make along the way,” Brown said. “I’ve learned a lot through those conversations with the other artists.”

Visitors emerge from one side of Brown’s sculpture garden to find themselves facing what look like four open doorways. Each landscape triggers a different emotion based on its prevailing color palette. The view was the brainchild of Ashley Page.

From left to right, the doorways are named “Light a Smoke (inhale),” “Catch the Night Train,” “Wading,” and “Great Escape (exhale).” Page printed them on sheets of vinyl and plastered them flush against the wall. At the base of each one lies a scattering of debris that looks to have spilled across the threshold: charcoal, stones, seashells, and sand, respectively.

“It’s very much up to the interpretation of the viewer,” Page said. “I’m curious to hear other people’s opinions and thoughts of what they see in each one, or what is calling to them, especially with the materials at the bottom.”

Four images on vinyl by Ashley Page serve as the backdrop to conversation by visitors to the USM Art Gallery's "Life Forms: Grow" exhibition.
Resembling open doorways, the images by Ashley Page form a backdrop

Page works with a range of materials. Her other pieces consist of textiles, wire, beads, and even hair. One thing they all have in common is the open invitation to ponder their meaning by anyone who stops to look.

Visitors have two more weeks to experience “Life Forms: Grow” before the exhibition closes on February 15. But first, the artists will reunite to discuss their work at Glickman Library in Portland on Thursday, February 13, at 6 p.m. Zagaria Buckley will join them as host. From her office in the gallery, she’s lived with the exhibition and seen its impact.

“I hope that when someone comes through the show, they leave with a sense of reflection about what growth can mean, both in a personal sense and in a collective sense, and how growth is what we carry into our future,” Zagaria Buckley said.