From Sunday, April 7, until Wednesday, April 10, artist Abigail DeVille’s Lunar Capsule (2023), an interactive sculpture, will go on view at the Houlton Higher Education Center in Houlton, Maine. This collaboration between Bowdoin College and the University of Maine at Presque Isle at the Center offers an exciting complement to a breadth of special programming in association with the upcoming eclipse on Monday, April 8.
Artist Abigail DeVille’s Lunar Capsule will provide an opportunity for audiences to record their stories as they gather in Houlton for a once-in-a-generation celestial event. The interactive sculpture harkens back to the first manned lunar landing in July 1969, but also invites dreams of the future. Visitors are welcome to view the sculpture and to sit inside it to record their stories about life in Maine, including their eclipse experience.
DeVille will weave a sampling of the stories into an audio installation as part of her upcoming exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine: Abigail DeVille: In the Fullness of Time (Saturday, June 29, through Sunday, Nov. 10). The exhibition is a continuation of Bronx Heavens (2022–2023), organized by the Bronx Museum, and curated by Eileen Jeng Lynch, Director of Curatorial Programs at The Bronx Museum.
As Abigail DeVille writes about her work: “Human beings are time capsules of all of human history. Our genome contains the coding of the last 500 years of ancestry imprinted upon us. We silently traverse centuries in our daily perceptions of self. Are there ways we can travel through immediate and recent events with the inherited knowledge contained within us? What are the unanswerable questions of our existence, and what binds us together inextricably? In the Fullness of Time seeks to collect, examine, and disseminate the ruminations and stories that tie together a local region with diverse perspectives. The same elements of stardust, the universe’s building blocks, are in our bodies. We are little lights, dimmed, concealed, flickering, and shining brightly through the darkness of everyday living.”
The installation of DeVille’s Lunar Capsule made possible through the efforts of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Houlton Higher Education Center provides an exciting opportunity to reflect upon the relationship of human beings to the cosmos and to our own communities here on earth. Community members of all ages are invited to participate.
The Houlton Center will be open during the following hours now through April 10:
Thursday, April 4, 8 a.m.-7 p.m.
Friday, April 5, 8 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 6, Closed
Sunday, April 7, 8:30-11:30 a.m.
Monday, April 8, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Tuesday, April 9, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Wednesday, April 10, 8 a.m.-7 p.m.
For more information about viewing the capsule at the Houlton Center, contact Ken Ervin, (207) 521-3100, ext. 3, kenneth.ervin@maine.edu.