The University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Reed Art Gallery presents the 2025 Fine Art Senior Thesis Exhibition, featuring the work of six Fine Art majors on three consecutive Friday evenings beginning Friday, April 18. The public is invited to view the shows and meet the artists during opening receptions to be held on each of these Fridays from 6 to 8 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. The Reed Gallery is located on the second floor of the University’s Center for Innovative Learning.
The work of Caleb Lovejoy and Remar Shirley will be featured Friday, April 18, followed by the work of Bernadette Anderson and Winter Garrett on Friday, April 25. The final exhibition, by Hannah Alley and Andrew Serfes, will be held Friday, May 2. During their respective shows, the artists will each give a talk about their work and their process.
The Senior Thesis Project is an intensive, two-semester capstone course for seniors in the Studio Art major. As a foundation for becoming a visual arts professional, students work toward developing a disciplined studio practice and honing their individual artistic voice, culminating in a cohesive body of work for an individual art exhibition at the end of the Spring semester. In addition, each student completes a comprehensive thesis paper detailing their artistic process, influences, inspirations, and the relationship between form and meaning in their work. The rigorous course of study is unique to most statewide BFA programs, allowing enrolled students to have an experience similar to a graduate school environment.
In the exhibition Making MEMEories, Caleb Lovejoy explores the validity of pop meme culture in a fine art setting. Combining his skills in traditional drawing and painting media with digital technology and a love of graphic design, Lovejoy’s work features his personal avatar, a Jabberwock derived from the Carolian mythos, often engaged in satirical narratives culled from popular meme culture, that serve as a commentary on the human social experience in our diverse cultural landscape.
Working in a traditional, Realist style of paintings and drawings, Remar Shirley hopes to reveal to viewers the often-overlooked beauty in the mundane through careful attention to detail and formal, classically inspired compositions. Focusing on still-life subjects, particularly fruit, Shirley’s exhibition, Juicy Stillness, uses color, value, and texture to celebrate the quiet beauty in everyday objects.
Bernadette Anderson’s exhibition, The Faewilds Explores the New World, presents a narrative featuring mystical creatures, invented by the artist, who occupy a fantastical, magical landscape. Combining her love of imaginary creatures with her interest in biology and the natural world, Anderson’s characters and landscapes are filled with vitality and textural details, manifested through her skills in drawing and painting in both traditional and digital media.
The Message of the Seasons will feature work created in a variety of media, including oil painting, watercolor, pastel, collage, and macrame weaving, by Winter Garrett. Taking inspiration from early Post-Impressionist painting techniques and their focus on the beauty of the mundane world, while being informed by modern spiritualism and folklore, Garrett’s work uses color, texture, line, and intricate compositions to immortalize the fleeting, mercurial moments that are the essence of our existence.
Hannah Alley’s show, Acceptance of the Self, explores the artist’s personal feelings of identity and emotion. Using desaturated values and a limited color palette, focusing on figural and symbolic subject matter, Alley creates digital paintings that explore how her past traumas and experiences have shaped her sense of self.
Andrew Serfes will present What Love Is. Utilizing narrative and visual storytelling, Serfes’ collection of paintings tells the remarkable and true story of his grandparents finding one another. Through expressive, emotionally charged paintings inspired by old photographs, memories, and the artist’s imagination, Serfes explores the themes of unconditional love, war, family, and race.
The public is invited to attend each of the Opening Receptions from 6 to 8 p.m.:
Friday, April 18: Caleb Lovejoy and Remar Shirley
Friday, April 25: Bernadette Anderson and Winter Garrett
Friday, May 2: Hannah Alley and Andrew Serfes
The Reed Art Gallery is located on the upper floor of the Center for Innovative Learning in the heart of the UMPI campus at 181 Main St. in Presque Isle. Regular gallery hours during the academic year are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sundays from 2 to 10 p.m. The Reed Art Gallery is closed on Saturdays and holidays.
For more information, contact Gallery Director Frank Sullivan at frank.sullivan@maine.edu or 207-694-1920.