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"XX Large" Landscapes at Lincoln Street

Opening this Saturday (December 5, 3:00-6:00 PM reception) at the Lincoln Street Center in Rockland is, as Ed Sullivan would have said, "a really big show." For you clueless kids (under 50) who haven't heard of Ed, ask your parents, or, if they're not around, turn to today's even more trusted source of information—Wikipedia.

The show's title is Diverse Approaches to Landscape in Sizes Small to XX Large. The subtitle: How Big is Your Living Room?

"We ask that question mostly in fun," said Mike Dworkin, the show's curator, "because of the range in size of the work, which approaches extreme at both ends of the continuum—not necessarily to suggest that all of the work is designed to be living room decoration."

The XX show is also large in that it spills over from the usual Lincoln Street gallery space. Ancillary exhibition space in the building was needed to accommodate the work of the show's seven artists.

Dworkin’s most recent curatorial effort for the Lincoln Street before XX was the Maria Nevelson: Homecoming exhibit this past summer.

In XX, Dworkin’s work represents the large and small extremes of scale in the show, along with some in the midrange. What his work does not represent is anything resembling what one might expect in a traditional landscape painting.

"About the closest I come to doing what you could call a 'Maine landscape' is that most of the materials I've been using I gather near where I live, right here in Maine.”

Dworkin, a Rockland resident, has a penchant for picking up natural and man-made detritus from the road while walking or driving, and has taken dry sticks and branches out of the woods to become horizons in his landscapes. Although it is common today for artists to use found materials in their artwork, Dworkin's work tends to have a minimalist leaning—often he deems a found object the finished piece as is.

One of the largest pieces in XX is also the most functional—and potentially most decorative. Scott Cooper Tilton painted his colorful mega-seascape, Mouth of the Keag, on a freestanding nine-panel wood-framed folding screen. It is over seven feet tall and between 12-15 feet wide, depending on how one folds its panels.

Tilton, of Rockland, has worked in Maine's woods and on the water much of his life, cutting lumber, lobstering, and running an oyster farm for ten years. Skilled at carpentry, Tilton fabricated the room-sized screen himself.

Tilton says that the view depicted in Mouth of the Keag came from looking out his "office window" at the oyster farm, meaning being aboard his boat. "What inspired me to paint in the first place was being on the water, seeing the sun … the light reflected off the water."

Laid off for the winter from his current place of employment, Tilton is contemplating making the leap to full-time painter. Working nearby during Tilton’s interview, Dworkin said, "If anyone out there actually comes to the opening reception, maybe over a glass of wine and a cracker with a chunk of cheese, you could set Scott straight with a few words of friendly advice on the futility of that particular career move."

"Not that his work isn't worthy," Dworkin adds. "It was seeing his large screen that gave me the idea to do XX in the first place."

Angela Anderson-Pomerleau, the director of the center, after agreeing with Dworkin that Tilton's screen was fine impetus for a small-to-large themed landscape show, was herself eventually asked by Dworkin to contribute to the exhibition. She is showing paintings in the small to medium-large range.

Anderson-Pomerleau, a Rockland native, does oil paintings “inspired by eighteenth century romantic painting, pop art, and the New York School of abstract expressionists.” Earlier in her career, she lived in New York and modeled regularly for Philip Pearlstein. Although she continues to show in both Maine and the New York area, she may be better known in the mid-coast for her singing, songwriting, and guitar playing.
Anderson-Pomerleau says of her deeply colored, yet subtle, artwork, "I still go to art history, dreams, songs and poetry for the beauty that I want my work to reflect. The world is tough enough … I seek the escape hatch of softness … pillows against that harsh reality.
Another Rockland artist in XX with a New York connection is Rebecca Raney, born in Manhattan, where Raney's mother was living, having moved from her hometown—Rockland. Raney completed that circle over ten years ago.
Raney's largest landscape in the show requires no wall space to exhibit. It is an acrylic, with a protective polyurethane coat, painted on the top of a table, depicting Gorde, a town in Southern France. Aside from the landscape, there are symbolic elements woven into the image, including wine—and opera—glasses, a lace tablecloth, and a violin, for which Raney let the wood grain of tabletop function as coloration.
Raney’s small pieces in the show are tiny jewel-like paintings of  Rockland’s cityscape (and prints of the paintings on ceramic tiles).
Also showing smaller scale artwork is Catinka Knoth, known for her fresh and accurate watercolors of Maine scenes. Knoth is a fixture at the Rockland Library, offering weekly art lessons for children. In XX, she displays a group of imaginary landscapes painted on blocks of wood she collected from the street after renovation on a bridge in New York.

Otty Merrill maintains studios in Tenant's Harbor and Falmouth. In XX she is showing watercolor monotypes and giclee prints of oil paintings. The influence of Merrill's years as a potter can be seen in the touch and finish of her work, reminiscent of rich ceramic glazing.



Otty Merrill, Lavendar Field, Giclee Print 3/3 25"x 51"

Heading back toward the larger end of the scale are Angela Warren's paintings, which give the viewer a sense of entering an emotional-psychological landscape reflective of the actual landscape we are making for ourselves today. (Feel free to interpret that any way you like--anyone who has stuck with me this far is okay in my book.) Warren, from Bangor, is an MFA student at MECCA in Portland.

XX is on view at Lincoln Street until December 31. Call 594-6490 for more information.