BOWDOINHAM

This Saturday September 13, during the town’s annual Celebrate Bowdoinham Festival, the show “Our Town, Our Bridge in Photographs” opens at the Merrymeeting Arts Center. The show features an emerging artist from Bowdoinham and an experienced artist from Gardiner.

Olivia Sullivan (age 9) knew what she wanted to do when she saw a show in Philadelphia of photographs of a single town on a single day. She thought the idea was perfect for her hometown of Bowdoinham Maine. Olivia met last winter with the Merrymeeting Arts Center’s Lee Parker who thought Olivia perfectly embodied the center’s motto of “art for everyone” and its encouragement of emerging artists. Sullivan decided on a month long focus for the photographs which would be taken in June 2014. Word spread through the town. The 60 photos were collected in special boxes in public places and then Olivia and her mother Jessica Sullivan mounted them. Photographs range from shots of the defunct railroad line to the boat landing. The young artists’ photographs complement a series of photos of the iconic Bowdoinham green bridge by Gardiner artist Robert Saunders.

Saunders and his wife came to town in the early 1980s to visit their dear friend the late Carlo Pittore of Bowdoinham. He has worked in many media including mail art with Pittore (their mail art was featured at the 1983 Maine Festival in Brunswick). The green bridge in the village fascinated Saunders who took 4 rolls of photographs after a lunch with Pittore. The bridge images became a book “As a Bridge Across Space and Time.” Saunders works with color copies of the original prints.

On a visit to the Merrymeeting Arts Center which has exhibited many works by Pittore, Saunders offered his bridge series of photographs for exhibit. “A piece wrapped in friendship with Carlo,” his fourteen photographs start with the bridge in the distance. Then the artist focuses closely on the bridge’s structure, 12 shots were made going through the bridge with green girders intersecting against the sky. Mounted on “bridge green,” Saunders painstakingly cut the photographs in places to let the green come through.

The show will stay up until November 15th.

The Merrymeeting Arts Center embraces “art for everyone” through exhibits, education and events. Fall Gallery hours are 10 am to 1 pm Saturdays and also by appointment. Further information can be gotten at merrymeetingartscenter.org.

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