Last week I wrote a post about opportunities to get involved in Portland’s abundant civic organizations and volunteer groups. This week, I’d like to highlight one of those city committees I’d mentioned — the Portland Public Art Committee, which happens to have an opening right now.

Portland’s public art collection is scattered around the city’s public spaces, in the city’s schools, squares, parks, and streets. It ranges from historic statuary to bus shelters, seasonal light sculptures, growing landscapes. Each year, the City of Portland sets aside one percent of its capital improvements budget to preserve and grow the city’s public art collection, according to the Committee’s direction.

So this is a great opportunity for a volunteer who wants to enrich the quality of Portland’s public spaces with better design. The appointing committee of the city council is looking for people with skills that can benefit the city’s collections, including (but not necessarily limited to) curators, architects, artists, developers, scholars, and people with career experience in fundraising or in charitable foundations.

Somewhat relatedly, here’s a 1974 film from the National Endowment for the Arts about the construction of downtown’s “Michael” sculpture, and the artist John Raimondi‘s year as the Artist In Residence at the Portland School of Art (known today as Maine College of Art). It’s a fascinating look at Portland as it was 40 years ago, and it’s also a great demonstration of how public art can unite a community.

It’s funny to think that the high school students in this film might be big-wheel patrons of art in their own right today. It’s also striking to see downtown Portland in the early 1970s as a bombed-out expanse of empty lots struggling through the city’s darkest days of urban renewal — today, the same location (seen in the background of the final minutes of the film, in the scenes where the sculpture is being installed) is a vibrant district of modernist mixed-use buildings.

Photo: “Polarity” by Sandy Macleod, located at Fish Point on the Eastern Promenade. Photo courtesy of the artist’s website.

Part of what makes Portland’s First Friday Art Walks so much fun is that they have no epicenter. As the crowd surges along Congress Street, with smaller group investigating eddies in the Old Port, the Place To Be shifts from one locale to the next. One sure thing: if you stroll enough, and walk through enough doors, wonderful things will happen.

Last night, the December Art Walk that leads up to the holidays, there was an extra energy in the air. You could sense it at Congress Square: on one side, the line snaked into the State Theater for The Fogcutters present Big Band Syndrome (Lauren Wayne posted a video of the finale of the show); the other side of the square featured the Portland Museum of Art (free on Friday nights) and their hypnotic show on classic Shaker artifacts. Meanwhile, in-between, Art Walkers trundled up the stairs of the Flat Iron Gallery, in the pie-slice-shaped Hay Building, to sip and chew and ruminate on Art, Life, and Living in Portland.

Another wonderful thing, as always, took place at Otto Pizza, a few steps down Congress Street. Your correspondent was among the many who stood happily on the sidewalk, waiting in line to purchase a slice of what many consider to be the finest pizza north of Boston (and now Otto is in Harvard Square, too!). When it comes in as ideal and manifold a presentation as Otto offers, pizza can crystallize the creative economy.

Outside Otto, the sidewalk mambo was wending its way down Congress Street to Space Gallery, with many a stop along the way. Inside Space, one of First Friday’s mainstays, there was music, there was art, there was laughter, there was drinking, there were jostling crowds and a buoyant sense of pleasure in the air. There was also an Alternative Gift Market where you could buy donations to a wide range of curated non-profits and deliver them in a selection of limited edition, hand printed cards designed by artists Beth Taylor, Erin Flett and Jacqueline Dubois.

If you prefer your art au plein air, you could step outside of Space onto the sidewalk, where an open-air truck had pulled up to the curb. Just climb the ramp into the truck’s back to observe the paintings hanging within.

The crowd kept surging, now on to the Maine College of Art. Every year, MECA combines their First Friday participation with a huge holiday sale of items by college students and alums. This year, three floors were given over to a cavalcade of holidazzles, and so the crowds were especially strong here. Among the (hundreds of?) tables and booths, there seemed to be a particular emphasis on recycled treasures: playing cards converted into wallets, umbrellas converted into aprons, stamps converted into earrings.

For those who needed to retreat from the gleeful cacophony of MECA, there was quieter contemplation at galleries where one could, for instance, admire scale models, photos, and blueprints celebrating the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Or, upstairs at Cross Jewelers, you could sample “tastings” of various hot cocoas. Then back out into the street and more galleries, more stores, more music.

Until, in the words of Samuel Pepys, one has turned First Friday into First Saturday, “and so to bed.”

Photos by John Spritz

Getting in and out of Portland by air has always been easy, but with the opening of the new terminal at the Jetport it’s become kind of thrilling. It’s still a short drive to get there with very little traffic and the parking flow and capacity has been improved, but beyond the convenience, the newly expanded airport now feels like a place. The main component of the new structure is a blue, glass-skinned box. The generic “modern-ness” of this form is actually a head fake for the soaring geo-thermally heated space within.

But let’s back up. Even the large, letter spaced sans serif signage on the blue box announce “there are designers here.”  And when you get out of the long hallway that leads from the curbside drop off area to the new terminal, the space opens up dramatically and your eyes naturally go to the ceiling. The ceiling is genius, both as architecture and branding. What you see is an engineered 21st century interpretation of the Maine camp vernacular with massive beams and cross-bracing mixed with some Maine shipbuilding steelwork. All at once it reads as wood and steel, as craftsmanship and design, as tradition and innovation, as technology in the service of comfort. All these things we associate with Maine and with Portland all artfully morticed together in the service of keeping the snow out. The press release from the architectural consultancy Gensler that managed the project provides a lot of detail on the materials used, the upcoming LEED certification and  Voluntary Airport Low Emissions (VALE) grant used to fund the geothermal system.

When you drive away from the airport now at night you see the glowing green light of a massive LED wall sculpture in the main terminal space—another surprise that belies the glass box. If there is any criticism to be leveled about the architecture as experience it would be that it is perhaps a more inspiring experience for departing passengers than for new arrivals who still find themselves exiting through the low-ceilinged older terminal.

So the Jetport has doubled it’s gates and improved its passenger flow, but equally if not more important, they have taken the often generic form of the airport and created a space that feels uniquely like you’re in Portland, like you’re in Maine, and it’s a little different here.

Bonus fact from wikipedia: A survey conducted in June 2011 by travel web site Cheapflights found PWM to be the most affordable airport in the region (beating Manchester and Logan), and the third most affordable in New England (behind Bradley and T. F. Green).

The First Friday Art Walk has entered a new phase in its life cycle as the flagship of Portland’s creative economy. Since July, designer Jennifer S. Muller has been producing a beautiful broadside map and program distributed the previous Thursday in The Portland Press Herald. The way the heavy, uncoated stock of the piece absorbs the ink makes it look more hand made than commercially printed, which is just the right touch for the Art Walk that aims to stoke local commerce through the propagation of fine art.

And building on the uproarious success of the What Cheer? Brigade at the SPACE Gallery Block Party, tonight’s festivities include New York’s Asphalt Orchestra for more street band fun. (Thank you, Portland Ovations) Programs? Marching Bands? And soon food carts? This is beginning to sound like a sporting event for creatives!

Some of tonights highlights include: a performance at 4:30 in Congress Square by The Milkman’s Union presented by the Portland Music Foundation to highlight this year’s Portland entries in the NYC’s CMJ Music Marathon; the opening reception of Good Design is Good Business: The Elements of Branding, the 2011 AIGA Maine Annual Exhibit at the Lewis Gallery, Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square; an exhibit of photographs from the Portland Ballet’s “Who’s Your Dancer” project will be  on view at the KeyBank Monument Square branch; and the work of at least one Portland mayoral candidate is on view!

On par with its sea bounty, Maine is well known for its blueberries and other gifts from the ground. This produce doesn’t magically appear at local farmers’ markets, farm stands, and in the dishes of our award-winning restaurants. Despite technological advances, Maine farmers must still wake up at the crack of dawn, till the land, tend to the animals, and remain vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

If I sound a bit vague in my description of the plight of agriculture in Maine, it’s because I have never worked on a farm. The same can’t be said for the folks at Open Waters Theatre Arts. Their ongoing project to illuminate agricultural truths for Mainers who have never herded a pack of Holsteins, Of Farms and Fables, grew from a meeting between Open Waters Director Jennie Hahn and Jordan’s Farm co-owner Penny Jordan. With changing land use, economies, and populations in Maine, Hahn wanted to contribute to a question nagging many in our fair state – what is the future of agriculture here?

During the summer of 2010, artists from Open Waters engaged in a work exchange with three local farms – Broadturn Farm, Benson Farm, and Jordan’s Farm. The four artists traded 12 to 15 hours of weekly labor for the opportunity to speak frankly with farmers about their experiences.

The resulting conversation morphed into a full-length play with the help of playwright Cory Tamler. (Some photos of the exchange are also on display at the Public Market House.) The drafting process included copious feedback from the farmers to ensure the play resonated with earthy truths. “We wanted to find themes in these conversations that might be relevant to both farmers and a wider audience,” explained Hahn about the work involved in gleaning one play from such a huge wealth of material. “The major thing we kept coming back to was the idea of farm transfer between generations – both within families and broader society. How do we transfer the lifestyle and the knowledge of farmers?”

With the script completed and the play cast with a mixture of experienced actors and experienced farmers, the curtain will rise from October 27^th through the 30^th. While the collaboration has been largely funded through donations and grants, Of Farms and Fables has set up a Kickstarter account to pay some lingering necessities and make sure that artisans who contribute their time and talent receive fair compensation.

There are a little over two weeks left on the Kickstarter campaign, and Of Farms and Fables is more than $3,000 short of its $5,000 goal. Pledging money to the project will get backers a variety of benefits and prizes, all viewable on the site. Tickets for the Of Farms and Fables play will be sold on a pay-what-you-can basis, so there’s no excuse not to show your face. Preferably while munching on some fresh root vegetables, pulled right out of the Maine soil.

Above: Director Jennie Hahn runs with the bulls of Benson Farm during the Of Farms and Fables Work Exchange Program.

For the intrepid Portlander (including your devoted editor) next Saturday promises to be even more immersive than usual. From 9 to 5 I will punch in at the Portland Stage Company on Forest Ave. and have my head filled with “Maine Ideas Worth Spreading” at the second annual TEDxDirigo conference. Then, at quittin’ time, the more than 200 conference attendees and speakers will pour out onto the street and find themselves just half a block from the second coming of the creative Portland carnivale that is SPACE Gallery’s Block Party. For the next three hours, the Portland Arts District will be filled with creative manifestations of all kinds. Think FirstFRIDAYxSteroidos!

And interesting for us that this is the second year that LiveWork Portland has been around to cover these events. TEDx Dirigo wasn’t on our map (literally) last year because it happened in Brunswick, at the Frontier Café near Bowdoin College. This year they hope to triple the attendance by hosting it in Portland. We were particularly enamored by the steamroller stunt at last year’s block party, and while no steamrollers are on the menu for this year’s event, there is a much longer list of individual artists and groups staging installations and performances than last year. And although they only come from Providence instead of Brazil, this year’s party band, the What Cheer? Brigade, is a 19 piece sometimes marching brass band that “mixes the sounds of Bollywood, The Balkans, New Orleans, Samba and Hip-Hop, with the intensity of a punk rock band.” Wow!

When I think about it I imagine a day of extreme cultural and intellectual density. The kind of experience you expect to find only in big cities. But these things are possible in Portland because of an unusual balance of factors—call it “small density”—that puts lots of smart people in proximity to each other without crushing overhead or soul-destroying commutes. And all that extra time and energy fuels a community of non-profits robust enough to stage ambitious events like these—sometimes two or more in a day. Portland is itself a “Maine idea worth spreading.” Pass it on!

Today, poetry’s relationship with the public feels complicated. Its roots in English and American cultural history are massive and continue to sprout new offshoots, but poetry’s presence in our public literary consciousness over the past thirtyish years has sunk below the waves of prose. I find this state of affairs less depressing than exciting and fascinating. The imperative to revive poetry in the public eye gives us a chance to harness creativity and social technology in ways that will change poems for good. Both the city of Portland and the state of Maine are about to take a major step in this direction.

Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (MWPA) is a Portland-based nonprofit that works to “enrich the cultural life of Maine by supporting writers and the literary arts.” This past month, MWPA teamed up with Maine’s new poet laureate, Wesley McNair, to introduce “Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry.” The initiative will give Mainers frequent opportunities to read poems written by the people who live here: a series of poems to be published weekly in newspapers across the state. You’ll find the first poem, “April,” by Stuart Kestenbaum, the first week of May in over twenty-four papers that range from The Portland Sunday Telegram to the Aroostook Republican, which extends the project’s radius almost 300 miles toward the northeast Canadian border. As a poet who often hears people sigh, “I just don’t get poetry,” I felt deeply encouraged when I heard about Take Heart. If you’re not writing your own poems or earning a college degree in literature, chances are you have limited contact with poetry written today. Sneaking poems under the noses of average readers will begin to break an amplified silence that has made poetry feel so alien to our daily rhythms.

MWPA’s crucial support for McNair’s project represents a unique collaboration in the history of Maine’s laureateship, which was legislated in 1995. Until now, laureates received no financial support or capacity to launch new poetry initiatives. Oddly enough, Augusta just didn’t write those details into law. Joshua Bodwell, Executive Director of MWPA, said he “wanted to fill that void.” Portland is the MWPA’s headquarters, but the nonprofit is a statewide literary organization and so decided to offer an unofficial home-base for McNair during his five-year term. Bodwell has allotted him the space, funding, and grant-writing capacities of nonprofits and has established the post of “Special Assistant to the Poet Laureate,” a young poet’s dream job, now enjoyed by David Turner. McNair and Turner are building a library of poetry written by the poets of Maine, located in Portland, from which the Take Heart series will be curated. In its readiness to make McNair’s vision a reality, MWPA represents an understanding that our creative community will blossom further when Portland-based organizations recognize and connect with the broader region that influences the city.

With MWPA as the project’s support system, McNair will choose poems of the highest quality crafted by Maine citizens. Quality, in this instance, means remaining accessible to a broad readership without sacrificing the complexities of life that poetry must illuminate. What I find most exciting about Take Heart’s selection is the sheer range from free verse to metered, rhymed, and received forms; from Maine’s classic poets like Edna St. Vincent Millay and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to remarkable contemporary poets who you’ve never heard of; and from visions of our very own Casco Bay to mindstreams that escape the borders of geography. McNair wants the “diversity and regions of the state to be reflected” in the project, yet he also realizes that limiting the entire subject matter of the series to Maine content “would limit the true richness of our poems.” Instead of poems that beat lobsters and blueberries and Baxter St. Park to death, we’re going to find works loosely arranged around a diverse yet Maine-centered psyche. “If a poem about a region is good,” says McNair, “it’s not only about that place… it’s about all places.” Most of all, the poems will lead us to honor our “emotional and intuitive self,” which McNair beautifully argues is “the deepest self that we have.”

Thanks to MWPA, you can read McNair’s galvanizing and eloquent speech about Take Heart from the April 20, 2011 poetry celebration at the Blaine House in Augusta. It’s available for download here.

Photos by Irvin Serrano and Dan Habib.
Pictured above (left to right): Joshua Bodwell, Wesley McNair, and David Turner.

What do you get when glitter and literature collide?

“Glitterati – A Sparkling Literary Ball,” Portland Maine’s first festivity of its glamorous kind.

Tomorrow evening at The Port City Music Hall local writers and readers will celebrate the region’s vibrant literary scene in glitter-smeared high heels, LED flashing bowties, or whatever pizazz the partygoers can muster. The event is in support of The Telling Room, a nonprofit creative writing center that undergirds Portland’s literary culture.

Glitterati offers the community a chance to mingle with Maine’s foremost authors. The bar and buffet will feature Portland’s world-renowned restaurant fare. Entertainment includes a poetry performance by Munye Mohamad and tunes by songstress Emelia Dahlin. Silent and live auctions will give guests the opportunity to support The Telling Room’s free writing workshops taught by local writers for youth, immigrants, and refugees. Amongst the glitzy garb and blinding disco balls, Pandora LaCasse’s installation piece of glimmering, buoyant orbs will set the mood.

Pandora is well-known around these parts for her enigmatic public art installations commissioned by the Portland Downtown District, a not-for-profit facilitator of Portland’s economic vitality. Each winter, using LED lights, stainless steel and spring wire frames, and a creative sense of place, Pandora bedecks various sections of the city with floating shapes of colorful lights that look to me like fireworks in mid-explosion. They dangle in park trees, illuminate the streets, and cascade down building facades. At night, the festive dreamscapes seem to hover like jellyfish or shards of my imagination. Maine College of Art recently created this video about Pandora’s Maine-based career.

At Glitterati, Pandora’s installation will be the first thing you see upon entry—a forest of six or so red and white glowing orbs set high on stakes. They will linger on a shadowy platform above the bar. Other sparkling Pandora globes may dot different corners of the dancehall, depending on how she reacts to the space when setting up the piece tomorrow morning. Pandora’s dynamic relationship with place, and specifically with Portland, informs all aspects her career.

She says Portland is a unique bastion of the arts. While it’s “a small enough place to find your niche,” the community is deeply interested in creative work. Pandora regularly receives personal praise via letters and conversations around town. “It’s great to live and work in a community that supports you,” she continued. “I have had people say they’ve moved to Portland because of my work… because it shows that the city is engaged with art.” Since working within Portland’s support system, Pandora now receives offers from around the country.

Portland’s proximity to amazing natural landscapes is a major perk for Pandora. Working in tones of “mystery and humor,” she draws inspiration from the spatial elements of the Maine coastline and inland wilderness. Blueberry fields or a gold root next to a gray stone, for example, cultivate a visual vocabulary that she translates into abstract visual experience.

Now you can party with Portland’s most “glitterary” crowd in the midst of Pandora’s newest installation. Be there tomorrow, Thursday April 7, from 6 pm to 10 pm. The details you need are here.