The University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Reed Art Gallery is proud to present Headway/Heartland by Emilee Lord, from Friday, Nov. 4 through Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. The public is invited to view the exhibition throughout the show’s run and attend the Gallery Reception on Friday, Nov. 4 from 5-7 p.m., which is being held in conjunction with the First Friday Art Walk. The event will include a Gallery Talk with the artist at 5:30 p.m.
Headway/Heartland features 25 graphite, charcoal, and ink drawings and several small sculptures by Lord centered around the idea of homeland.
Lord grew up in Northern Aroostook County and has carried with her its stillness and its wild vastness—the windswept fields of snow, the evergreen forests, the winding country roads and big skies—and has incorporated this into her show. Headway/Heartland attempts to capture the essence of what it is to be a girl from the North Country, what it is to have left it behind, and how she might compress these experiences into maps of her Headway and maps of her Heartland.
“There are patterns in our field of vision, both internal and external, that allow us to reason about and begin to mark or trace our lands and our paths,” Lord said. “Drawing, as with cartography, attempts to translate this immensity of information into marks and gestures; lines, topographies, and travel plans. This series addresses homeland, mapping, patterns, memory and absence to talk about identity, belonging, and the traceable human gesture of marks we leave in our wake.”
Lord earned her Bachelor’s degree in Dance and Sculpture from Bennington College in Vermont in 2004 and her Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She has had exhibitions at a wide range of galleries and arts centers across the country—from California and New Mexico to Michigan and Illinois to New Jersey and Rhode Island—and as far away as Iceland. She has been awarded residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Vermont Studio Center, and in Sheridan, Wyoming and Reykjavik, Iceland.
“Unpacking this body of work was a treat,” Reed Gallery Director Hyrum Benson said. “As I unwrapped each piece, I was enamored by her line quality, her unified theme and the subtleness that she employs in her drawings. We are lucky to be able to feature Emilee Lord’s work.”
All are invited to view the show in November and December and to come out to First Friday Art Walk on Nov. 4 and take part in the free reception. Light refreshments will be served. Please follow gallery happenings on the Reed Gallery Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ReedArtGallery.
The Reed Art Gallery is located in the Center for Innovative Learning. The gallery will be open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. The gallery is closed during University holidays. For more information about this event, please contact Benson at hyrum.benson@maine.edu.