Transcription of Suzette McAvoy for the show Artists & Education, #107
Dr. Lisa I first learned about the Center for Maine Contemporary Art several years ago, and was impressed yet again by the scope of art that we have here in Maine, all sorts of different art, but this specifically more visual. Last summer, I was able to go in there and experience a very unique lights, sounds … a very interesting way of looking at art.
Today, I’m privileged to have with me Suzette McAvoy who is actually the director and curator of the CMCA and has been since September of 2010. Suzette, it’s great to have you here. Why does Maine need contemporary art?
Suzette: Thank you. I’m so pleased to be here. Maine has had a relationship with visual artists since the mid 19 century, since Thomas Cole first came to Mount Desert and then a whole wave of landscape painters have followed him in his footsteps, and as they say, “All art is contemporary once.”
Our mission at CMCA is advancing contemporary art in Maine, it’s really to be a catalyst for this legacy of Maine’s role in American art, really sort of pushing the ball forward, always stretching what people’s idea of art is and can be.
Dr. Lisa: You were recognized in the July issue of ‘Maine Magazine’ as one of the 50 Mainers who admire, that we are supposed to admire and inspire. Of course. I always have been inspired … I’ve been inspired by artists and people who work in the art world. It’s hard for me to believe that the CMCA is actually been around for 61 years.
Suzette: Isn’t that incredible? It surprises me as well when I think about 1952 and what the State of Maine was at that time, and really there weren’t too many art institutions other than the Portland Museum and the Farnsworth was only four years old at that point. They started in 1948, and they’re our closest neighbor of arts institutions. Then of course, there were the college and university museums, but they certainly weren’t what they are today and weren’t so open to the public.
The fact that there was this group of contemporary artists who came together to found an institution that was really dedicated to contemporary art at that point in time, when contemporary art in America was actually a challenging area to be in, you had abstract expressionism and sort of European modernism, but this is pretty much right after World War two. It was surprising.
The fact that we have remained a constant in art community in Maine since 1952 is really extraordinary, and it speaks to I think the really vibrant and strong role that artists continue to play in the Maine community.
Dr. Lisa: As I mentioned in the introduction, last summer, I was at the CMCA which is in Rockport currently, and there was a very interesting exhibit that was a textiles I believe, a fiber arts exhibit in around the same time. There was an interesting exhibit on the top floor of the museum, and there were lights and sounds, and they were using electronics and it was … I can’t remember exactly what it was, sounds of the forest … Do you remember what I’m talking about?
Suzette: Yes. It was sound installation by Nate Aldrich and Zach Poff. Nate is a professor up at the University of Maine at Orono. One of the things that we do at CMCA is really stretch the boundaries of what art is and the mediums that it can be embraced. We always start looking for work that suggests a new way of thinking about the world of experiencing it, so sound art, performance, video work, even new ways of working with photography and sculpture and painting … all of those things that might ask people to think about and see the world in new ways, ways they haven’t thought about it before. It’s really engaging people in that new way of thinking.
Dr. Lisa: How do people respond? What do they say when you put out there this idea that sound could possibly be art or that performance, video … a video of a performance, that is also a visual art?
Suzette: Some people are initially resistant. But then, I think that one of our jobs as an arts institution that’s open to the public is to really make it an inviting opportunity for people to maybe get familiar with something that might be off-putting to them at first. That’s so wonderful about CMCA, is I think that we can offer that to the public. We have a very welcoming attitude there, it doesn’t seem off putting. I think that is sort of reflective of Maine in general. People come to CMCA and they see work that wouldn’t be out of place in New York City or in a more urban area. They, I think, find it more approachable somehow here. They seem … and because, also the artists are really part of the community here, and they don’t seem to be separate from everyday life. They’re really part of our life here.
I think that that somehow makes it more approachable to some people. I often try to go out and give gallery talks. We have our receptionists are very willing to engage people in conversation. To me, that’s really what art is. It’s really a conversation. It’s a way of communicating between people. It’s really visual language, but it’s a way to express things that aren’t necessarily expressible in words.
Dr. Lisa: I presume that you could have gone anywhere. You could have gone to New York or Boston, or another big city that had … or even Portland to be a curator, and to be a director of a museum. Why would you choose a smaller museum up the coast of Maine?
Suzette: I first came to Maine in the fall of 1988 to take the job as curator at the Farnsworth Museum. The Farnsworth at that time was a very different institution. It was much smaller, we hadn’t yet broken out onto Main Street, or the Wyeth Center wasn’t part of it.
I stayed there often on. I was there full-time through 1995 and then took five years off when my daughter was born, came back in 2000 and stayed until 2006. Through that whole time, I saw the institution really grow, and I also saw what it could do as a positive impact on the community, because the Farnsworth really was part of that whole transformation of Rockland, and consequently the mid-coast.
That was a really, I think a positive experience. The fact that there’s so many extraordinary artists that are in this mid coast area, you had Lois Todd and Alex Katz, and Kenneth Noland … Really, Robert Indiana, really internationally known artists that I was able to do exhibitions with, and to interact with on very personal level that I felt that in a big city, I probably wouldn’t have had that kind of access.
Here, people come to Maine and they’re more relaxed and more open to being approached and there’s less political maneuvering that has to be done to get to the artist at that level.
It’s been really extraordinary to be able to work with artists at the really peek of their career, but also to be discovering young artists that are up and coming like Danica Phelps, an artist that’s originally from Rockport, who now shows internationally, or Ethan Hayes-Chute, another young artist from Freeport that we’ve showed two years ago, who now lives in Berlin and is showing last at Marrakech Biennal or Steve Mumford who has a studio in Tenants Harbor, Maine who did a series in Iraq and Afghanistan, a series of work that we showed a couple of years ago.
There’s never been a time when I felt that there weren’t artist to be continually inspired by or to be discovered. People often say to me, “Aren’t you going to run out of people someday when you just start showing artist connected with Maine?” It just hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t seem to happen.
Every time I go to somebody’s studio, I always ask them, “is there somebody I should be looking at?” They always tell me somebody, and I go and check that out. There’s always somebody to discover and more art to see.
Dr. Lisa: I have noticed, having been to the CMCA Art Auction which happens every year in July?
Suzette: The end of July.
Dr. Lisa: At the end of July. I have noticed that there seems to be not exactly an equal number, but certainly a representation of younger artists, there are the more established artists, I know you’ve had Linden Frederick and others of his caliber, but then you also have some of the younger artists who are just more newly in their careers. Is this another way of making art more accessible?
Suzette: It is. One of the things that set CMCA’s auction apart is that it is an invitational. We actually invite a hundred artists every year. We try to find a balance between established artists and up and coming artists. That is really to introduce their work to a buying audience.
One of the things that we really want to promote is this idea of collecting art, of living with art. I’m a big proponent of what I call “The Slow Art Movement.” There’s this big thing now with slow food, but one of the things that I think is really challenging for arts institutions these days is to get the viewer to slow down enough, to really look at art, to really engage with it. We’re so used to getting images quickly these days and to making snap judgments and reading things quickly online and on the screen that physical engagement with a unique work of art really requires people to look over a sustained amount of time, and to slow down and to think about things, and to engage with it.
Living with art allows that kind of sustained looking, and that kind of engagement. It’s something that I really try to encourage people to do, is to acquire original works of art so that they can have that experience on a daily part of their life.
Dr. Lisa: You also have an interesting program at the CMCA called, “The Art Lab Program”. This is again, yet another way of bringing art to individuals, but to individuals who are younger.
Suzette: It is. One of the first things that I did when I came to CMCA in the fall of 2010 was to look around and say, “What are we missing here? What are we lacking?” I thought one of the things was, there’s really no place at CMCA right now where young family could come and really feel comfortable with their kids. We took one of the galleries and turned it into a classroom, a studio, a hands-on studio that we call, “Art Lab.” It’s really that idea of experimenting and experimentation with materials. That’s why we like to kind of lab idea that this isn’t about instruction where you are aware it’s a process that’s outlined with a known end-product. It’s about experimenting. That’s what art is really about, is that sort of open-ended, creative process.
Art Lab was established with this idea that there would be a place that people visiting could just drop in, and that there would be materials out there and that they could engage with what was there. Then, shortly after that, we started what we call, “Art Lab for All Ages.” It came from a very simple idea that we would just … and the first Saturday of every month, we would have it free of charge, drop in without registration so you didn’t have to think about it in advance, it wasn’t going to be parent-child like a lot of models, it was literally for all ages.
The project that we were doing that day was designed to be something that adults as well as kids would want to engage in, and it was a success from the beginning. We really did get all ages to turn up, and they continue to come. Anywhere from our neighbors across the street who are in their ‘80s, who are regular visitors to art lab, to two-year olds on their parent’s laps. We have grandparents and neighbors, and friends, and teenagers … Just this idea of creating community through creating art together has been a really positive outcome of the whole Art Lab Program that we have.
Dr. Lisa: Give me examples of some of the projects that you have people of all ages doing.
Suzette: One of the most popular ones is our ‘Mystery Bag Projects’ where everyone is given a brown paper bag with a number of objects in it. It’s usually a found piece of wood, some just little things that are collected around the home, and then they make sculptures out of them.
We also do monoprinting. There is a holiday card making project that everyone really enjoys. There’s a number of … One of the things that people really enjoyed was, there were these exquisite corpse cubes which are actually three blocks that are painted with a head, a torso or legs on each different sides, so that when you put them in different combinations, you have a different figure that is composed out of the three parts.
There’s just a lot of different mediums that we use. We tried to do 3D and two-dimensional projects. They’re all conceived by Marcie Bronstein, who’s our Art Lab instructor. She’s just great about continually coming up with ideas that people seem to really enjoy.
As I mentioned, the whole premise is to just put the materials there, and get people a model, a finished product and then just let them create in their own way and approach the materials in their own fashion.
Dr. Lisa: The Center for Maine Contemporary Art is outgrowing its space I should say. You’re looking towards the future and there are big plans in place. I know that a lot of things have to happen between now and possibly what happens in the future. I think you’re in a process of maybe trying to raise some money.
Suzette: Yes. We are. We’re about to launch a four million dollar capital campaign to acquire a building in downtown Rockland and to do renovations, and to move in we hope by 2015.
It’s really after a year-long study of looking at where we are and where we think we need to be in order to really fulfill our mission of advancing contemporary art in Maine. The building that we’re looking to buy is at 21 Winter Street in Rockland, and it’s right across the street from the Farnsworth Museum and adjacent to the Strand Theater. It really brings us into the heart of downtown Rockland.
A lot of the art energy in the mid coast has really move definitively I think to Rockland, and there’s a really vibrant downtown community there that we could be part of. There’s just going to be I think a synergy there between the Farnsworth and the Strand and the CMCA, and we’re sort of the third leg of the stool there of addressing performing art, more historical classic art, the established museum, and then emerging art and the next wave of feeding into that next generation.
We’re excited, they’re excited, and I think it’s going to be a really terrific next phase to our history.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out about … or maybe possibly donate towards your campaign. How can people find out about the CMCA?
Suzette: On our website, CMCAnow.org, right on our homepage is our vision statement. People can go to that to see what our plans are, and where we are hoping to be heading. There’s also a donate button there. You can always do that. We’re always looking for people to encouraging them to be members and to donate.
We have both our annual operating campaign, and then now this capital campaign that we’re going to be really going after over the next year.
Dr. Lisa: People can also find out more information about Art Lab and either how to donate or how to be involved?
Suzette: Absolutely. There’s a link there for Art Lab. You’ll see that we have Art Lab for Kids, Art Lab for Adults, and Art Lab for all ages. There’s also information about our upcoming exhibitions. We also have a Facebook page, Center For Maine Contemporary Art that we post a lot of photos and lot of information about all the programs that we do.
Dr. Lisa: I’ve been speaking with Suzette McAvoy, who is the director and curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and also one of our 50 Mainers to admire and inspire from the July 2013 issue of ‘Maine Magazine’.
Suzette, it’s really been a great pleasure to speak with you about art and making art accessible for all. Thank you for coming in.
Suzette: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you.