The stellar – and in one case, quirky and eccentric – summer exhibitions at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland have been up since end of May. Getting to them this late is (fortunately) a function of the incredible diversity and volume of art that crowds galleries and institutions each summer in Maine. Luckily, there’s still a month left to see them.

MEMORY LANES

At first glance, we don’t know whether Los Angeles-based Shinique Smith’s “Memories of youth streak by on the 23” is graffiti, calligraphy, collage, poetry or abstract expressionist art. The answer is that it is – gloriously – all those things. The title refers to riding the #23 bus in her native Baltimore and captures the sensation of glimpsing herself in the building windows as it rushed past. Viewers, too, will participate in this dimension of the work as they see their own visages in the mirrored elements of this 28-foot-long wall sculpture in the lobby.

But “Memories of youth” also reverberates with gestural expression that animates the surface with a very urban kind of energy. Clearly her brushstrokes here bear affinities to the graffiti art of the 1980s (as a teen, Smith engaged in tagging with a group of graffiti artist friends). But there are also allusions to Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, both in the scroll-like format that encourages us to read the piece from one end to another (rather than take it in all at once) and in the spontaneous movement and the black color of the strokes, which resemble marks made with brushes dipped in ink.

The latter evoke Smith’s early exposure to Eastern mysticism – she often accompanied her mother, Vkara Phifer-Smith, to the Tibetan Meditation Center in Maryland – which led to her eventual exploration of Japanese calligraphy and its similarities to graffiti. The piece is also punctuated by colorful patterns, hinting at another maternal influence (her mother was a former fashion editor and designer of sculptural crocheted clothing). There’s a lot here to take in, as well as along the adjacent corridor, which features a group of smaller works, each titled with a line of poetry and, in their entirety, forming a progressive free verse.

NOT SO SWEET HOME

Maine artist Nancy Andrews’s “Homebodies” may be an acquired taste. The reactions of various friends have ranged from barely suppressed hilarity to yawning boredom to outright dislike, if not outrage. Your response will likely depend on how open you are to its various messages. The show is definitely a provocation that humorously, yet sharply, critiques our idealized views of female domesticity and male-constructed concepts of femininity.

“Homebodies” is profuse with phallic and vaginal forms, cutesy Hummel figurines, toile patterns and fussy fringes. There are common household objects such as ironing boards and felt tablecloths in acid colors, as well as Kara Walker-like silhouettes with strange things collaged onto bodies (a severed finger, a buxom cleavage, buttocks, what looks like a scrotum). On one wall are porcelain plates painted with clearly objectified women and scrawled with breathy, Miss America-type aspirations (“To see the world through modeling and acting”) or illicit desires (“I like to have sex in random places”), while on another wall are a series of pornographic centerfolds of women with faces and parts of their bodies whited out, but sexual organs still visible. Elsewhere a figurine seems to emerge from a foreskin.

In this show, the domestic environment is upended, surreal, even violent. Andrews tackles a delirious array of themes, including sexual submission and exploitation, possibly alcoholism (there are toiles patterned with beer and spirits as well as packs of cigarettes), so-called “women’s work” (albeit employed in explicit or suggestive imagery, like one of many phalluses that protrude from between the legs of figurines), loneliness (on one shelf, the figurines face the wall, turning their back on the viewer, as if even these kitschy collectibles shun us) and much more.

The show feels free-associative and feverishly hallucinogenic; not unusual, perhaps, for someone who spent a long period of time in ICU for a life-saving surgery and experienced post-ICU syndrome and ICU delirium. Which means it can also feel, at times, like too much to take in. But its inventiveness also deploys humor as it persistently dismantles society’s sexist shibboleths. Personally, I found it at once disturbing and wacky … but also consistently inventive and fresh.

LABOR TROUBLES

Another Los Angeles artist, Chilean-born Rodrigo Valenzeula, aims squarely at the exploitation of workers through inhumane labor practices, though the larger themes focus on, as his statement reads, “a point of contact between the broader realms of subjectivity and political contingency.” If the work of Andrews can feel challenging emotionally, Valenzeula’s is physically discomfiting.

There are two bodies of work here. For both, Valenzuela collects found objects and creates bizarre tableaux that he then photographs. For his “Weapons” pieces, he then mounts these images on large boards covered in timecards that have been smeared with black ink. Other tableaux in the “Afterwork” series are composed of mechanical devices that often emerge out of fog.

On one level, these tableaux look like the sorts of jerry-rigged contraptions we see in the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki (“Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Spirited Away”) or Tim Burton (“Corpse Bride,” “Nightmare Before Christmas”). We half expect them to begin moving, talking and dancing.

But the tableaux – cluttered with apparatuses that look menacingly sharp and painful, or like instruments used to inflict torment and suffering – also feel like torture chambers. The allusions to the treacherous, limb-devouring machinery of mechanized production remind us of on-the-job dangers faced by underpaid factory workers (sometimes children) around the world. In this realization, the comic nature of the tableaux’s cobbled-together elements (nails, screws, spikes, cogs, grips, drill bits, pipes, tacks, cutting tools) falls away to transmit something more sinister.

In the “Afterwork” photos, the vapor that floats through the scenes feels like toxic chemical emanations or the steam generated by machinery that is hot and combustible. The rooms feel stiflingly claustrophobic and airless. These works are creepy OSHA nightmares that are life-threatening to the imaginary people who must operate them daily while trying also to avoid injury or other damage to their health.

Also at the CMCA is a 40-minute video work by Ellie Ga. Unfortunately, the day I visited, this was not yet installed, so I cannot comment on it here (though I’m sure it is just as fascinating and challenging as other exhibitions currently on display).

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com 

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