Affinity by Stephen's Brook

In Mural of Maine’s Workers, Governor Dreamed He Saw Jong-il - NYTimes.com

2011-03-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

In Mural of Maine’s Workers, Governor Dreamed He Saw Jong-il - NYTimes.com

The life of African art shows its face in Portland, Maine - The Boston Globe

2011-03-03T16:49:00.000-08:00

The life of African art shows its face in Portland, Maine - The Boston Globe

Artist Roy McLendon Jr., Living the Legacy

2011-02-28T14:15:00.000-08:00

Art of Roy McLendon Jr.

By Victoria Mares

Roy McLendon Jr. is the son of African-American artist Roy McLendon Sr., one of Florida’s 26 black artists known as “The Highwaymen,” that initiated the Indian River art movement in the 1950’s. (Jan.19, 2011 blog). Even though Roy Jr. is not considered one of the original 26 “Highwaymen” he clearly remembers that from the age of 8 years, he was painting alongside his father, and with his mother’s encouragement.

“I was born an artist,” said Roy Jr. when I met him and his wife Carla McLendon, seated in front of their white tent/gallery at an outdoor art and crafts show in Florida.

“I’ve been painting for 45 years. I am not considered a “Highwayman” because I was not in the original group. But there are those in the group that don’t have 10 years on me, because I was painting with my father as a kid.”

Roy Jr. enters shows around Florida; and like his father, his work is inspired by Florida’s stunning, atmospheric landscapes that are unencumbered by concrete and high rise buildings. However, Roy Jr. has his own distinguishing style.

Director and owner of Affinity Arts, Stephen Oliver M.F.A. said of Roy Jr.’s work,

“His art has clarity and depth. He establishes a mood and he handles the light well. I like the cultural references that are subtle but they are about the people that live in the environment. There is a dignity in that, a dignity in the people and in the work of a well-trained artist. The dignity comes from persevering.”

The “Highwaymen” art is not a genre of painting readily found in the art history curriculum of academia. Critics and curators continue to analyze whether or not the style of painting should be considered “fine art.” Then of course that is the way of the art world. However, the story of the Highwaymen, including one woman, is an American art story and a story about African Americans surviving economically and spiritually through art. Roy Jr. recalls his upbringing in a house where his father painted, sold his art every day, and other black artists were in their daily life.

“Harold Newton lived across the road. And I say the road because at that time it was dirt. I recently said to my Dad, I remember someone painting on the side of their house. My dad told me, 'yes it was Harold and he painted on his mother’s house.'”

“ In high school I would paint little paintings to make money. Then, I decided to spend more time on them. So, when my father and I went out to sell, Dad sold for $25 to $30. I said I wanted $35. Dad asked why I was asking that much. Then, I would get it. I raised the level. Customers would ask, how is mine different. I decided that when I saw a painting that I had painted, I wanted to say, ‘That is my painting.’”

There are “Highwaymen” artists that Roy Jr. remembers and still considers special. He recalls that Robert Butler took no job other than painting, and “took good care of his family, his more than 9 kids.” After the 60’s when more jobs opened to African Americans, some artists stepped out of the art world, one even becoming a fireman.

“Butler has stayed out there and continues with his art. My own father is still painting. He’s good and he is quick. Today I would say he’s one of the top two (of the original “Highwaymen"). I would say (the late) Harry Newton was number one."

Being both good and quick was a requirement of turning out enough paintings to actually make money back in the ‘50’s and 60’s when the black artists were selling their work the way they could, along public highways and door to door. There was one other alternative, African American artist turned art dealer, Al Black.

“I remember Al Black when he came to our house. Al sold for other artists including my father. He only sold for “Highwaymen. He would come to the house and say, ‘What you got?' He saw “McLendon Jr.” on one of the paintings when I was 17. He said, ‘I’ll take them too.’”

Roy Jr.’s father was a mentor and a teacher in a time when the southern world beyond their home in Gifford, Florida and around Ft. Pierce was not known as friendly to aspiring black artists. They lived in their own art world and school of art, and sold mostly to the segregated white world. There was one exception in this race defining environment.

“Back then, you had to measure yourself against (Albert Ernest) Beanie Backus, a white artist,"said Roy Jr.

"My father once took a young artist that wanted to paint to see Beanie’s work. He did the same for me. Once Bean had finished a painting, at night he would put it in a window and put a light on it. My Dad took me to see Beanie’s work. I saw some things in it I wanted to be able to do. There is only one artist that Beanie actually taught, (the late) Alfred Hair. Some people say that Al and Harold Newton taught all the (Highwaymen) artists; but they didn’t teach. You learned from the stuff they did. Bean was more a friend than an actual teacher.”

“Back then things were very segregated, you have to understand. Once my Dad was trying to finish a commission by Monday. It was on the weekend when we went to the store for the paint he needed; and it was closed. Dad said ‘Its okay. I will go down to Beanie’s’. I told him, Dad, that man is white. He ain’t gonna give you no paint. This was the 70’s . Stuff like that had not happened yet; not here.”

“We went up to Beanie’s place. He was back in the kitchen. His studio was in the front. My Dad yelled. ‘Hey Beanie, I need some paint, the store is closed. I got this commission to finish.’ Beanie yelled back, ‘take what you need; just let me know what it is and settle up later’. He never came out of the kitchen”.

“Once Beanie sent someone to my father to do a commission that Beanie couldn’t get to. For Beanie color was not a problem. He hung out in Jamaica whenever he could. He was a friend."

The former home, now gallery and museum of A.J. Backus is on the Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail that goes through Gifford, Florida. Backus’ home and gallery in the 50’s and 60’s also served as a salon for artists and writers of all colors. There, color was not an issue in a time when relaxed, racially mixed gatherings were an exception to the segregationist rule. On a weekend, there was jazz music, friends and artists. The late writer Zora Neale Hurston, a contemporary of Langston Hughes and a friend of Beanie’s might stop by. Currently, “Highwaymen” art work is offered for sale in the Backus Museum and Gallery.

Gallery Director Carla McLendon, right and Judith Farley, left

Roy McLendon Jr. has a gallery “Highwayman Art, Another Perspective,” in Vero Beach, Florida. His wife Carla is the director and also manages the website where he tells his own story very well. Their home and gallery is not far from Gifford, where Roy Jr was raised. His parents Roy Sr. and Annie B. McLendon were migrant farm workers, and had travelled north to work in New Jersey when Roy Jr. was born. They returned home to Gifford, Florida where their neighbor, Harry Newton was already painting, and Roy Jr.’s father seriously began his art career.

“What makes a “Highwayman,” said Roy Jr. “is that they painted between 1950 and 1980; they painted on Upson board or Masonite; they used crown molding for a frame, their business was in their home, they were African-American and they sold their paintings themselves.”

Roy Jr. is one among many of the sons and daughters of the old school of artists that have entered the art world, some with art school degrees and art careers. In his gallery Roy Jr. paintings sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars, along with more affordable prints and a line of high quality, note cards. He still paints so that he can look at a piece and be proud to say, “ that’s mine.”

“I have a piece in the studio now that is $7500. I like the lighting, the water… I might not sell it. I would just as soon keep it.”

The original “Highwaymen” like Roy McLendon Sr. have been inducted into the Florida Artist Hall of Fame, and their work has been honored by former Governor Crist. Some original "Highwaymen" continue to paint, exhibit in galleries and art shows. There are museums that own collections of the work. "Highwaymen" art commands high prices and is highly collectible. Some of the "Highwaymen," including Mary Ann Carroll have pages on facebook.

Roy Jr. accepts commissions and sets up in fine art shows. Sometimes he stops by to paint with his father. On Sunday he is pastor of a community church and his wife is the choir director. He is still stops for a majestic Florida sky, a blazing purple Jacaranda tree or a community setting in a lush environment and rushes back to his easel with the image fresh in his mind, just as he has done for 40 years. It is as his father and other "Highwaymen" continue to do, as well as some of their progeny and perhaps strangers anywhere in the world that are inspired by the paintings and bravely artful lives created by 25 gifted men and one woman of the Indian River school of painting, "The Highwaymen" of Florida.

The Florida Legacy of the Highwaymen Artists

2011-02-18T08:23:00.000-08:00

Art by Mary Ann Carroll

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward toward eternity. Daniel Barenboim
Go to www.florida-arts.org/programs/halloffame for a complete list of 25 African-American men and one woman, that became popularly known as The Highwaymen.

by Victoria Mares-Hershey

While in Florida at an arts and crafts show, I became aware of the Indian River school of painting. African-American artists, living smack in the middle of a time of racial violence against black people in the south, cut their road with art to become founders of Florida’s contemporary art tradition. On either side of 1950, 25 African American men and one woman, on the west coast of Florida started painting color-saturated, dramatic, often surreal natural landscapes of the Indian River Valley around them. Much later, they were described as “the Highwaymen,” a name that falls far short of their identity as artists. Originators of the “ Indian River school of painting” comes closer to the roots of their work.They lived in and around the Gifford, Florida and the Ft. Pierce area, where they turned their backyards, homes and garage spaces into studios. Most of the artists were in their 20’s when they started painting to sell, some had painted in their teens and one, at the age of 10, had sold a painting to his teacher for $25.

Art by Roy McLendon Sr.

To put the time period in which they started into context, it was 1947 when Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers thereby breaking the color barrier in major leagues baseball in America. The following year the armed forces were desegregated by President Truman; and the NAACP legal campaign with attorney Thurgood Marshall won victories in the Supreme Court for voting rights, education and interstate transportation desegregation. Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriet, who were ground-breaking, Jim Crow shaking, civil rights leaders in Florida were killed in 1951 when the Ku-Klux-Klan placed a bomb under their bed on Christmas Day. Harry had fought for equal pay for all teachers, investigated southern lynchings, conducted extraordinarily effective voter registration drives, started the Florida chapter of the NAACP and advocated for Floridians facing unequal justice. It was 1955 when fourteen year old Emmet Till was beaten and shot to death in Mississippi by white attackers. In the same year Martin Luther King Jr. made headlines with the Montgomery bus boycott. A thousand troops were dispatched to quell the violence directed at students desegregating the schools in Little Rock in 1957.

Art by Alfred Hair

At the time galleries, art shows and exhibitions were closed to black artists in Florida and the rest of the south. In spite of the brutal realities of race violence, these black artists with audacity and finesse packed their paintings into the back of their vehicles and sold them along the open highway, also knocking on doors of white businesses and private homes. They began painting on what they could afford, the Upson board or Masonite used in construction and framed them in crown molding. Their work documented a Florida that was fast disappearing to concrete and development: atmosphere created by blazing colors, trees heavy with red or purple flora, the greens, blues and neutrals of marshes and sea shore, dazzling white birds, magnificent skies, the moods of moonlight on unoccupied waterfront and riverbends. Except for two artists, most were self-taught, learning by observation and over time, sharing their best skills and techniques with each other. They painted because they could, loved the natural Florida environment in which they lived and needed the money from the sales to support themselves and their families . The $5 dollars to $25 a painting, whatever its size helped many of them to stay out of the citrus groves, meat packing plants and hard labor that paid $5 or $6 a day when they could find it. Whether it was for the love of art, the natural environment, the money (a necessity of life), the liberating life of an artist, or a combination of these, “the Highwaymen” and highway woman were cutting a path in the wilderness for opportunity and dignity for themselves and their progeny. Between 1950 and the 1980’s, it has been estimated that these 26 artists produced some 200,000 pieces of work. As artists, they were largely unknown and unrecognized, even by the purchasers of their work until the 60’s when white writer Jim Fitch first saw the art in 1964 and wrote about it in the arts magazine, Antiques and Arts Around Florida. He wrote,

“ I've identified nearly twenty of these artists still living. They are, for the most part, unknown and have not received credit for their contribution to Florida's art tradition. In fact, it was these artists who were the bare bones beginning for Florida's resident/regional art tradition. Further, their paintings met a growing demand for regional Florida art and served to encourage what has become the Indian River school of painting, perhaps the only school or movement within the state that is recognizable as such.”

Fitch, described the painters he met as “The Highwaymen,” for the way they sold their paintings. “ The Highwaymen” name stuck, better than ‘the Indian River school of painting.”

Even in 2010 and 2011, exhibits of their paintings by many of the artists still living and working, are described as work of “The Highwaymen.” Now their paintings, both vintage and contemporary command hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars and are highly collectible. Their artwork is recognized as the beginning of Florida’s contemporary art tradition. South Florida Community College Museum of Florida Art and Culture hosts a “Highwaymen” collection. On its website, SFCC states about these artists,

“ Their artwork is recognized as the beginning of Florida’s contemporary art tradition…” “The Highwaymen are unique in all of art history because:• a single artist and one community can be identified as being responsible for their beginning and growth, and • all the participants have been identified and most are still painting."

In 1994, the 26 original artists popularly known as “The Highwaymen” were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Paintings by some of these artists have been exhibited in The White House, Washington, D.C. and in the Florida Governor’s Mansion.Their legacy is huge, including that given to their own family. In doing research for her thesis, "Painting Across Generations,” graduate student Elissa Rudolph discovered that these founders of the Indian River school of painting encouraged their children and family members to paint, and become artists.

From February 2011 through August 2011, The Florida House in Washington, D.C. has an exhibit of the work of the artists, more popularly known as "the Highwaymen."

Learn more about "The Highwaymen," their history, and current exhibits of their work as well as appearances by the artists by searching The Highwaymen LLC, and
www.highwaymenartists.com for the artists own website. There are books on the artists, and by the artists on Amazon.com

Next Blog: On the road, meeting Roy McLendon Jr., artist and son of “Highwayman” Roy McLendon Sr.

Sculpture and Fiber Arts by Affinity Artists

2010-10-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

New Assemblage Sculpture
by Stephen Oliver
at
University of New England's Art Gallery's Sculpture Invitational Portland, Maine until October 31, 2010. Don't miss it!

Coming up!
"By Stevens Brook"

Fiber and watercolor work by Victoria Mares at Gallery 302, Bridgton, Maine opens with wine and cheese reception, November 12, 2010.

Michelle Obama tells international audience why the arts matter

2009-09-28T17:41:00.001-07:00

Michelle Obama tells international audience why the arts matter

Posted using ShareThis

2009-07-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

The Fire Inside -continued

Thank you to “Know Justice, Know Peace” sponsors:The Center for Ethics in Action
Affinity Arts
Michael Wilson, ARC

Affinity Arts, in a collaboration with the Alliance for Responsible Communities (ARC), invited about 20 artists, musicians writers, creative arts people to the Affinity Arts studio and retreat on June 28 to spend a day working in the arts around the theme, "Know Justice, Know Peace." This is the second in a blog series profiling the people that attended the event. It drew a diversity of people across, age, race, ethnicity, careers, talents and accomplishments. Their presence and conversations put a "Fire Inside" the old mill, home of Affinity Arts.

Hashim Ali is executive director of the Amistad Arts Collective (www.amistadcollective.org). He is a single father, a published and performing poet and spoken word artist who also has expertise in working with youth of all backgrounds that are struggling to find a right path to build a life. Hashim led the preparation for the arrival of the Amistad Freedom Schooner to Maine last year. The mission of the Amistad Arts Collective is "to promote diverse ways of expressing and communicating human experiences through the arts while being dedicated to improving the quality of life and fostering communication between all people."

The schooner is a replica of La Amistad, a Spanish slave ship that Mende tribesmen sailed into Long Island Sound in 1839 after taking over the ship from the slavers and trying to return home to Sierra Leone. The men were freed by a Supreme Court decision in which the former President of the United States John Quincy Adams represented the 55 Mende men. The Amistad Freedom Schooner now travels the world as a floating classroom.

About the Amistad history, Hashim has said,

"So this shows to me people, no matter your color, people who believe in human beings, coming together and working for a goal."

For Bernie Vigna, R.N., Sierra Leone is home to the Mende people and also the home country of his twin boys, Peter and Paul. Bernie and his wife adopted them in Sierra Leone only a few years ago. The boys joined the couple's big family in Bridgton where there are also a goat or two. Bernie is a nurse and a musician of African drumming. He has studied drumming and instruments in Africa, makes his own drums and leads drumming circles. In sharing his gift and genius Bernie has drummed in numerous groups, for theatre productions and for a conference, "Living with Cancer, Healing from Within." His unique instrument sat quietly against a wall during this day of discovering "Know Justice, Know Peace." Someday soon, we can only hope, his drums will reveal and he will share what may have been created out of this day .

Gola Wolf Richards of Denmark could initially be described as philosopher/philanthropist/psychologist/CEO.

However, he is a man of many facets, intimately acquainted with the world’s ways from the human being's worst behaviors to extraordinary accomplishments,and limitless possibilities. As the conversation began, ideas emerged on personally committing to justice and fairness in all of one's acts. Hashim said it is easy to consider justice and fairness when thinking personally...making sure one's own children will have opportunity, enough food.... But perhaps the challenge is always making sure one is thinking about justice and fairness for other people's children. Wolf quietly asked if morality must be at the center. The question drew vigorous discussion in the search for answers. On his website blog Wolf has written this,

"...more and more people of good will must come to understand that Understanding the nature of change, changes the nature of understanding. In order for individuals to self-cultivate global change, contemplating principles for superior character development offers the broadest pathway for enlightened human development. And, on the road to peace, only courage to reach the highest truth leads deep enough to attain the goal.”

I hope Gola Wolf Richards will take the time to describe his own search for justice and peace on this blog; or you can check out his words, thoughts, advice and philosophy for life and peace on golawolfrichards.org.

Mike Wilson, who has worked for Portland Housing Authority for over 20 years paced a bit as the conversation became seemingly theoretical. He said,

“I just see what goes on, how people are affected (by lack of justice and peace)everyday…there is no time.”

Next Blog: Mike Wilson

2009-07-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

2009-07-12T15:49:00.000-07:00

The Fire Inside July 1, 2009

Thank you to sponsors:

The Center for Ethics in Action
Affinity Arts
Michael Wilson, ARC

While the rain swollen Steven's Brook rushed past the windows of the 162 year old mill that is home to Affinity Arts, the energy of 11 different lives converged to examine the phrase, "Know Justice, Know Peace." Their wealth of differences ignited conversation, and they searched to find any common threads. Gola Wolf Richards offered that "morality" must be a part of the search to "know justice, know peace," in every arena of life, economics, philanthropy, politics, law, environment, international relations, community service, personally. The day was off on a roll. There was a fire inside.

Affinity Arts, in a collaboration with the Alliance for Responsible Communities (ARC), had invited about 20 artists, musicians writers, creative arts people to the Affinity Arts studio and retreat on June 28 to spend a day working in the arts around the theme, "Know Justice, Know Peace." The process of talking to discover each other and where to enter discovery of “Know Justice, Know Peace” took the entire day. Bernie Vigna's beautiful African percussion instrument reclined silently against a wall, perhaps listening to create music another day.

Among the people participating that day, three make their home in Bridgton, Maine, others in the Western Mountain towns of Denmark and Sweden Maine, Augusta, Portland, Cape Elizabeth and Old Orchard Beach. None of the participants, from writers, visual artists, and musician/nurse, to psychologists/philosophers, videographer, spoken word poets, and designer/architect are one-dimensional in their life pursuits, experience, talents or roles in life. The backgrounds and intermingled ethnic and cultural roots are African, African American, European, Native American, Mexican. All event participants have touched and continue to touch, influence and make a difference in human lives across the globe and around our neighborhood corners. This blog will highlight some of them over the next few days. Hopefully, some of the participants will be inspired to become a guest writer on the Affinity blog.

The profound weight of the challenges of our time in Maine, America, the world seemed palpable as participants contributed their personal strands to the conversations, created and scrutinized ideas and each other.

Tilla Durr of Sweden, Maine arrived early. She is a tall, blond writer/advocate who, at age 65, has been actively involved in getting the Brick Church, a theatre venue in Lovell, Maine up on its legs. She also has started a food pantry that is staffed and run by people that actually use the pantry. Once in the studio she lit in with gusto questioning each person that entered the room with, in essence, “ who are you and how did you get here?”

Tilla Durr grew up in a the middle of the Civil Rights Movement era in Montgomery Alabama. Her father was a lawyer, born and raised in Montgomery; and he was a deeply committed supporter of the movement even while his Montgomery family held close the oppressive culture of southern white superiority. Both Clifford Durr and his wife Virginia,Tilla's mother, were viciously attacked by the forces of McCarthyism during the 1950's. Tilla's father had a heart attack while his wife was being questioned by the Eastland Committee of the Internal Judicial Committee on Un-American Activities for her participation in the interracial Highlander Folk School where Rosa Parks studied non-violence and advocacy for civil rights. Tilla's family car was fire bombed. Yet the family home was a center for activists looking for safe haven and volunteers coming from all over the world to witness and participate in the fight against the terrorism of segregation. In the synopsis of Tilla's book-in process, "In Search of The Golden Rule," she brings to the reader the past and current realities,the gravity of a life lived as ethics in action. It is not for the faint of spirit; it is life lived with both hands holding on for life, for results, for justice, peace and for joy.

So, as participants sat down on June 28, Tilla was looking at each one to penetrate any façade which she was not going to spend time penetrating for no good reason. She has a memory of her father Clifford that should be shared here, and gave permission to share from her synopsis a description of her father's conversation for a visitor.

"Alabama," my father told his small audience," may be a briar patch, but it's my
briar patch." He would then flick his match, light up his cigarette, slowly
inhale, squint through his spectacles and say with some degree of bitterness,
"You know, what I can't stand most is a goddamned liberal. Now I'm not saying I
hate liberals, it's just the goddamned ones I can't stand."

"This qualifier was usually followed by a long sigh of lament and the comment, "Well,
at least in the South I know who the bastards are."

"My sisters and I learned early on in life that the measuring stick between a "liberal" and a "goddamned" one was the self-acknowledged liberal's ability actually to live by
the code he or she preached."

To discover more about Tilla Durr and her family, see " Bearing the Cross," by David Garrow, a Pulitzer prize-winning book about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Leadership Conference.

More on July 14 from " Know Justice, Know Peace," a conversation at Affinity Arts, Bridgton, Maine. Affinity invites guest writers from the conversation.

An Affinity through Peace and Justice

2009-06-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now." African Proverb.

Affinity will partner with ARC, the Alliance for Responsible Communities to host an invitational day of artists, writers, musicians, performers, working around the theme "Know Justice, Know Peace," On June 28 from 12 noon to 4pm. Our space is very limited, but if you are interested just respond to this blog or to vmares33@gmail.com

"Know Justice, Know Peace" is being designed as both a joyful and serious day of artists thinking about the creation, maintenance, substance, feeling, sound of Peace and Justice. We will work together or individually, and come together with what we have created, if only a thought, at the end of the day. We are asking that artists donate or pledge a piece of their work for an exhibit and open house at Affinity in August. A percentage of those sales in August will go to ARC, a 2 year old 501(c)3 non-profit committed to a mission to develop and mentor multicultural, change agent leaders and grassroots social change groups for a democratic society. ARC's website and information is at www.responsiblecommunities.org.

Why "Know Justice, Know Peace"at Affinity Arts?

I began to think about an invitational day of artists thinking and creating around this subject after David, a young man in Portland was shot by police in May, 2009. So much violence occured in the world in the same month. This young man was an artist, and came to Maine with his family as a child refugee from Sudan. He carried so much on his shoulders from a young age. His family is large, and most of the older siblings have earned the college degrees their parents wished for them. I saw his mom receive her GED several years ago in a huge ceremony in Portland a week before another son received his degree in economics from Wheaton College. However David's life ended by violent death, it is death which has no respect for where it occurs. Whether in the country that his family had escaped to raise their children in safety as so many other families, it is still a violent death. Is it a short journey to violence, or a long one, by whomever is carrying the weapon? What are we human beings thinking when any one of us loads our guns? Is it the first option or the final one? How do we know? Words in our news, in all venues of our lives today where immigration is discussed, are too often vicious, accusing, condescending without ever knowing one person in that group. The vile words keep us from looking at violence and injustice squarely in the gut, splaying them out and examining their innards to extract the disease that can affect all sides, everyone in denial. Words can become a form of violence; and lately we have seen them as a precurser to violence against the perceived "other," as a shooter, this month, gunned down innocents in the Holocaust Museum here in America. We are a nation of immigrants, in a country that has been "multicultural" from its beginnings. I think of so many young people trying to find peace and justice and having to struggle even harder against the socio-political fury against "other." Yet, they are America's next wave of strength, workforce, talent, problem solvers, mothers, fathers, public servants.

We think of the holocaust in Darfur, the millions dying of war in Congo, and more, but can we take action to discover the journey to "Peace" from where we sit? Peace in the classroom, in the home, in city hall in the public streets. How do we "know" justice so that it is the principle of our democracy that triggers an outcry, a corrective action whenever there is even a whisper of it being threatened, taken from anyone. What does it look like, sound like, feel like walking down the street when one truly knows there is peace and justice as present as the air we breath? How do we begin at the place of knowing justice, knowing peace, before taking off to make peace with a weapon or a war; to consider justice that does not come with assumption of guilt by profile; or the fear that one will not get justice because of profiling?

On our Artists Day of "Know Justice, Know Peace" we will work on it...and tell you, show you what it looks like through artists' skills.VMH writing at Affinity Arts

Affinity Arts, a dream to make a difference

2009-06-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

We are at the foothills of Maine's Western Mountains.

Affinity Arts is a dynamic work in progress in the last wood mill in Bridgton, Maine. The picture below left is the patio area in front of the entrance to Affinity's woodworking shop. The varying sounds of the brook rushing by the foundation below is a great place to sit with a drawing board, laptop or guitar. To give you insight on the vision that is creating Affinity Arts, let me introduce you to its owner and creator, Stephen D. Oliver, MFA. The photo above right is his assemblage "A Furniture Maker's Dream."

“MY LIFE AND WORK FOCUS ON HOW ART AND DESIGN CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. I AM ESTABLISHING AFFINITY ARTS AS A CREATIVE RETREAT AND INCUBATOR.”

You can view two pieces of Stephen's creative work that are installed in the 8th Annual Garden Invitational in the Art Gallery of the University of New England, Westbrook campus. The exhibit shows the work of exceptional Maine sculptors; and most of their pieces are in the garden that surrounds the jewelbox-like glass gallery at the back of the UNE campus property. A visit to the Art Gallery for this show and others is worth an afternoon. www.une.edu./artgallery

At the Art Gallery, Stephen's "A Furniture Maker's Dream" is to the left of the interior doorway. This piece expresses the artist/designer/architect's love of his craft as a worker of wood, a trained, fine furniture artisan who would like to spend most of his time designing and making fine furniture. The lower level of the old mill that is Affinity holds his woodcrafting and design shop; and he dreams of working with artisans from all over the world and down Maine roads.

Affinity links across the globe and across cultures:

Last year Stephen worked with a group of people, originally from Sudan, to design a new, energy efficient, self-sustaining secondary school for Southern Sudan. The group spent an entire day at the mill, wandered by the brook and stood on the rocks, enjoying the green environment and thinking about building this school for the future of a Southern Sudan, to help it recover from generations of wars.

Two years ago Stephen worked with Oscar Mokeme at the Museum of African Culture to design and create the new space for the museum in the heart of the Portland, Maine Arts District. It has the angles of a ship and the colors of Africa on its walls.

Every First Friday Art Walk in Portland will find the Museum offering special programs along with wine and cheese; and the last Friday of the month there is a special program on the significance of the mask in African cultures. www.museumafricanculture.org

Just this week, Affinity Arts hosted Oscar Mokeme for lunch in the studio after his presentation at the summer Brown Bag Lunch program in Bridgton, which happens every Wednesday from June through August. I am one of the co-organizers of the weekly event. Joining us at Affinity for some impromptu artists and writers conversation were Joan Hunter, writer and writing coach and owner of writing retreat, Fifth House Lodge in Bridgton and Susan Gassett, a Boston theatre director and playwright who has semi-retired to the Western Mountains. I think our conversation brought her right out of that "retired" reverie. More to follow, I hope.

As the short summer continues racing toward fall, Affinity will continue to be the place I paint and write; Stephen will continue on his dream's journey and many artists will pass through here, to work, be inspired, inspire others and sprout new ideas that cross all roads of life.

VMH