PAM Announces Peace Artist-in-Residence Program
by Karen Wainberg
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We are looking for people to help with the project and expect it will be a
rich and meaningful experience for all who take part. Volunteers can help
with cutting and priming wood panels, assisting in the classroom, taking
photographs, driving artwork to various locations and hanging art exhibits,
gathering visual resources about different cultures (games, patterns, dress,
alphabets, etc.), graphic design for announcements, and more. Please call
Peace Action Maine at 772-0680 if you want to learn more about the project
and/or to volunteer.
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We are pleased to tell you that 2004 will be the beginning of a yearly
Artist-in Residence program at Peace Action Maine. Natasha Mayers, a
committed Maine activist and artist, has accepted our invitation to serve
this first year. The project is funded in part by the Maine Community
Foundation and we are awaiting word from the Maine Arts Commission to see if
they also will be granting money for the project.
We believe that bringing people together through the arts has great strength
since it connects people at the heart. The arts are powerful in addressing
the fundamental issues facing the human family, and, together, artists and
communities can explore deeply-rooted societal issues in new and innovative
ways. Artists can engage, educate and motivate communities to tackle
problems through projects that serve as a focus and a rallying point for
community action.
The art projects for this year will involve elementary school children in
Portland's culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms and young people
in the Youth Building Alternatives program at Portland West. A traveling art
exhibit, ŚWe Belong Here, Too," will be created from the students'
self-portraits. Peace Action Maine will be working with the Portland School
Department's Multilingual and Multicultural Program and the staff of
Portland West. We will report on the specifics of the projects as they
develop.
The development of the Peace Artist program reflects our belief that a
crucial shift is taking place in worldviews. We begin to see a movement away
from rewarding separateness and "power over" to one based on a belief in
interconnectedness and cooperation. One of the central questions we are
asking ourselves as peace and justice activists, is how can people from
diverse communities begin to break down the barriers that keep us separate?
We see this project as an important step toward building trusting
relationships and a stronger peace movement.
Artist Natasha Mayers is widely known for her work supervising school and
community murals from Maine to Nicaragua and El Salvador. She recently
supervised a very large community mural in Auburn, designed and painted by
400 people. She has been a Touring Artist with the Maine Arts Commission
since 1975, and has worked with the psychiatrically-labeled since 1981. She
has taught in soup kitchens and prisons, in a school in Nigeria and on the
Passamaquoddy reservation. Natasha supervised the murals hanging in the
Reiche School in Portland and one painted for the Center for Cultural
Exchange by fourth grade ESL students. Natasha has made artwork and/or
organized exhibits about the disappeared, U.S. policy in Central America,
homelessness, mental illness, domestic conflict, the Gulf War, Afghanistan,
Iraq, environmental issues, nuclear proliferation, and more. Last year she
organized the sign-painting before the International Women's Day March in
Portland. Her work was seen this past summer in the Portland Museum of Art
Exhibit, "Mapping Maine: Four Contemporary Views". Her "State of War"
series was shown at the Aucocisco Gallery in Portland.
Back to Peace Talk Index,
Winter, 2003 - 2004