Portland Paste

There is a new kid in town: Portland Paste. Check them out! Very much in the spirit of what we've been trying to achieve; Political art action at its best!

CMCA Draw-In

Today we conducted a "Draw-In" at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine, during the Steve Mumford lecture. In attendance were myself (Kenny Cole), Julie Rose, Brian Reeves, Mark Roman and Natasha Mayers. Natasha and I began our action by standing outside and handing out Robert Shetterly's statement to anyone willing to read it. It ended up being a sold out event and I personally witnessed several people getting turned away because they had not reserved seating for the talk. We sat quietly and drew for the hour long presentation and were able to ask a few questions afterwards. Our cause was a difficult sell to this "support the troops" crowd, but we did our best. Mumford proved to be a smooth talker who could contradict himself without skipping a beat. His case, from my perspective, was as follows: he is essentially a realist painter who developed an interest in war, went to see it for himself, but only found lots of bored soldiers. When questioned about depicting the horrors/Iraqi victims of war he replied that you can't depict it if you don't see it, that to do so would be dishonest propaganda, just not what realist painters do. His only regret was that he did not see enough action...maybe next time? Let's hope that there are a lot more wars...eventually I'm sure he'll get around to finding those damned evasive horrors!

Image by Julie Rose