Past Exhibitions
Art Quilts Maine: A Retrospective
January 31 – March 14, 2025
The show features pieces by four Maine quilters Anne Walker, Rana O’Connor, Argenta Jeffrey and Celeste Poulin, spanning seven years of the group’s thematic challenges.
The artists are all members of Art Quilts Maine, a chapter of Pine Tree Quilts, which supports members in exploring contemporary quilt art, inspires creativity and individuality, and promotes the understanding, appreciation, and recognition of contemporary quilters in the state of Maine.
Each year since 2012, members of Art Quilts Maine have produced work in response to one or more themes. The resulting collection debuts at Maine Quilts, then tours the state for a year. Venues include libraries and galleries from Skowhegan to Cape Elizabeth.
Unlike the usual touring exhibitions, however, the theme for this new show at L/A Arts is built around ongoing engagement with the creative challenge itself.
Sam Onche: Homecoming
September 27 – December 20. 2024
Onche aims to weave together various narratives that reflect his experiences, the need for movement, the beauty of place, his respect for Maine’s artists and community, and themes of empowerment through fashion, culture, and loss. The exhibit features thirteen paintings, each standing alone and telling its own unique story. Viewers are encouraged to notice the symbolism in the elements and motifs Onche uses, which are integral to his storytelling. His use of saturated colors in distinctive combinations is intended to portray people in their most beautiful light. His passion for fashion and the way people express themselves is also evident in his work.
Robert Russell: Eclectic Thoughts
July 26 – Sept 7, 2024
“Eclectic Thoughts” showcases Russell’s original drawings, paintings, and collages and offers a glimpse into the mind of a creative visionary artist. His work, mostly rendered with Sharpie pens, includes many themes, from mandalas and “tower-temples” to mazes and geometric designs. Intricate and complicated, Russell uses bold abstract shapes and repetitive patterns to create mesmerizing pieces that demand the viewers’ time and attention.
Double Vision: Kitty Winslow & M P Landis, Individual & Collaborative Works
May 31 – July 13, 2024
Winslow and Landis are contemporary painters who share a fascination of mark making, line, color, and form. Their exhibit will include a collection of individual work, and a dynamic, on-site joint installation that will change continuously over the duration of the show, which ends July 13, 2024.
Serafim Yssolo: Life on Scraps
February 23 – May 17, 2024
Yssolo, a self-taught artist born in Moxico, a province of Angola in Africa, has developed a unique artistic identity deeply rooted in his early years as a graffiti artist. His works have been shown in solo and collective exhibitions in Africa and Portugal and have delighted viewers, gaining attention for their distinctive style and mixed media techniques, including oil and acrylic on layered canvas and the use of recycled materials.
Harnessing multiple artistic expressions, Yssolo creates vibrant, engaging pieces that exude energy and joy. His evocative work and accompanying prose (presented in both English and Portuguese), captivates viewers and invites them to enjoy a rich art experience.
To Lewiston, With Love
November 17 – January 19, 2024
Love takes on many forms and expressions, from simple acts of kindness to unsettling and oftentimes unresolved feelings of anger, grief and sorrow. In response to the recent mass shooting in Lewiston and as we work together as a community towards collective healing, LA Arts – the arts agency for the Cities of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine – is opening this call to individuals and organizations at the local, state and national level to express your thoughts in the form of a postcard.
We call upon all mothers, fathers, and children; teachers and their students at all levels; artists, whether novice or seasoned; wordsmiths; dreamers, thinkers, feelers and doers of all ages and backgrounds. Share your hopes and your fears, your remembrances and your well-wishes.
See the full open call…
A Blue: Daniel Minter and the Layered Narrative of Illustration
September 22 – November 10, 2023
“A Blue: Daniel Minter and the Layered Narrative of Illustration” explores the children’s book artistry of Coretta Scott King and Caldecott Honor winner, Daniel Minter. Using a visual vocabulary, Minter not only communicates the arc of the story, but expresses narratives within each layered illustration. Each image invites readers to explore the depth of the Black experience. Referencing the water, the crossing, the land, and desolation, Minter also tells readers how a people retained, remade, reimagined, and reclaimed themselves through their valorization to family, work, and love.
Michele Lauriat: Drawings from the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge
June 28 – August 18, 2023
By utilizing a range of watercolor and drawing techniques to build images, Lauriat creates mesmerizing landscapes alive with color, pattern, and geometric order. With a close personal connection to the Maine landscape, her exhibition at LA Arts will feature works inspired by the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, Maine.
Coyote For All Seasons
April 24 – June 16, 2023
Come follow Coyote throughout the year, discovering the many aspects of their lives that are hidden from human view.
Each month of the Coyote’s Life is portrayed through the creative works of renowned Maine artists.
Each artist has expressed Coyote in their own unique way, confirming for us that we all percieve them from our point of view.
The artist then makes use of their medium…and the diversity is intoxicating.
And what is so special about this diversity, is that it expresses once again that each Coyote is unique and expresses their unique presence in the world.
Eamon White: Full Circle
March 20 – April 15, 2023
The Full Circle Art Exhibit is about the cycle of knowledge and how the student can become the teacher. The show takes the viewer through my personal cycle of first becoming an artist through my teachers, and then how I eventually became the teacher sharing my passion for creating art. The show takes you through the journey of my beginnings as an artist, from my early high school work, all the way to present day digital poster and shoe customization projects. It also gives you a glimpse into my family influencers who were my father and grandmother. You will see my teaching style and what I taught to my students at a local high school.
Lesia Sochor: Reuse • Repair • Reconsider
January 17 – March 12, 2023
Waste was not a word or concept my childhood family could conceive of. My Ukrainian immigrant parents fixed, repaired and mended. It was a time when frugality was King and necessity was Queen. A time before credit cards, a time when less was less and that was OK. Consumerism was not yet eating away at the very core of our souls.
Inside the Bates Dance Festival: Images From the Studio and Stage by Photographer Arthur Fink
A ten year retrospective featuring over 40 images of dancers at work and play at one of America’s most beloved annual dance gatherings. A behind the scenes view through the eyes of a gifted photographer.
Arthur’s artistic expression was his multi-faceted, soulful curiosity and reverence for all of life, most especially for dance photography. Through his 10 years as the Bates Dance Festival photographer, he captured spectacular and everyday moments, all of which show the life of a dancer and the rhythm of this essential festival.
Arthur passed on April 21, 2021 and leaves a legacy of inspiration and passion for dance.
Renee Bouchard: Allegory of Prudence
The exhibition title Allegory of Prudence, is a reference to the painting of the same name by the Venetian Renaissance painter, Titian, in which the Latin inscription ex praete/rito / praesens prvden/ter agit / ni fvtvrv/actione de/tvrpet, written above
the figures in the painting, can be translated as, “from the past / the present acts prudently / lest it spoil
future action.”
Tom Jessen: Play
Tom Jessen, a multimedia artist, says of his recent work, “I’ve been noticing the objects around me more, especially the things that are normally considered “throwaway.” Many of these objects— milk jugs, tin cans, fabric scraps— I’ve had in my hands a million times without really paying attention to them. I started putting paint on them, bringing out certain edges or patterns within their form. I found that in doing so it transformed their normal identity. I enjoy this alchemical process, much of it dependent on recognizing these mundane objects out of context. There’s a healthy dose of whimsy and irreverence behind this gesture. “Making” is rooted in the act of play for me.”