The opening reception for three exhibitions opening at the Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery in the Shaffer Art Building will be 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 8 in the Shaffer Galleria, located adjacent to the gallery.
The exhibitions are "A Walk on the Wild Side: Selected Works from the Kate Manko Collection of American Folk Art"; "Rembrandt's Palette: Pigments from the 17th to the 21st Century" and "The Impassioned Image: Selected Expressionist Prints from the University Art Collection."
"A Walk on the Wild Side" will feature more than 60 objects of animal life folk art, including bears, moose, elk, deer, squirrels, snakes, turtles, fish, frogs and a wide variety of birds. The works, many of which are highly inventive and playful, reflect their makers' desire to capture the animals' individual characteristics. The pieces were created out of a variety of materials, including wood, metal, seashells, beads and leather. Others were created entirely from deer antlers, canvas, discarded oil drums and bottle caps. Many of the art objects were found in camps throughout Maine and date from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries.
The works in the exhibition come from the collection of Kate Manko, a junior speech communication major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Manko and her parents, who are both folk art dealers, have amassed the collection over the past 20 years.
Edward A. Aiken, director of the Lowe Art Gallery, curated the exhibit, which is sponsored in part by the Office of the Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts.
"Rembrandt's Palette" is a traveling exhibition from the Art Materials Collection and Study Center of the National Gallery of Art. The exhibit illustrates the history, method of manufacture and evolution of pigments used in the 17th century and found in the paintings of Rembrandt van Rijn. Scientists and scholars have extensively studied the pigments used in Rembrandt's paintings, research that has been critical to the authentication of many of his works.
The exhibit was organized by Michael Skalka, a 1982 graduate of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies. Skalka is the conservation administrator of the Art Materials Collection and Study Center of the National Gallery of Art. The center was founded as a result of a 1994 gift by Edward and Zora Pinney, who donated their collection of artists' materials-some 7,000 items-to the National Gallery of Art.
"The Impassioned Image" is a collection of works on paper, artists' books, drawings, photographs and prints housed in the University Art Collection. Expressionism developed in Western Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was inspired by a broad range of sources, including the work of Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh and art from Africa and Oceania.
Echoing the Romantics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Expressionists celebrated the spiritual and irrational, but unlike the Realists and Impressionists, whose art was based on observation of the real world, Expressionists looked inward. The things of the world-plant, animal, human or landscape-were valued for their potential as symbols of larger forces, such as the cycle of life and death.
Expressionist artists stressed printmaking, including woodcuts, lithographs and etchings. The exhibit's collection of 32 prints displays the different techniques Expressionists used to convey their art. The works were selected by Aiken and graduate students from a larger traveling exhibition that the University Art Collection lent to museums and galleries throughout the United States.
The Lowe Art Gallery is open Tuesday and Thursday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. and Wednesday, noon to 8 p.m. For more information, call 443-3127.
