Natasha Mayers
mayersnatasha@gmail.com
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2006 University of Maine at Lewiston-Auburn, Atrium, Signs of the Times
2005 University of Maine at Presque Isle, Bearing Witness
2003 Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, Maine, State of War map paintings
2001 Railroad Square, Waterville, Towards a regional road map of Maine
2000 Southern Ohio Museum, Portsmouth, Ohio, photographs of pole paintings And road map paintings 2000 Davidson and Daughters Gallery, Portland, Maine, Towards a regional Road map of Maine
1998 Davidson and Daughters Gallery, Portland, painted columns, acrylic and vinyl tape
1998 Downtown Gallery, Washington, painted columns
1997 Gallery House, Nobleboro, Social Fabric (monotypes)
1996 Gallery House, Nobleboro – with Katherine Bradford
1994 Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, Inside/Outside drawing series
1994 College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor: Blum Gallery, monotypes
Selected Group Exhibitions:
Feb 28 – March 28, 2008. Untraceable is an exhibition of artists’ responses to political control, violence and torture. The exhibition is curated by Cooley Gallery director Stephanie Snyder, and is inspired by the work of Reed College political science professor Darius Rejali, an internationally recognized expert on modern torture and the author of Torture and Democracy (Princeton, 2007). Untraceable explores the invisible and covert forms of violence that have come to characterize both modern torture and political oppression. The exhibition includes painting, photography, sculpture and new media.
The group exhibition is curated by Stephanie Snyder, Curator, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, with contributions by Stuart Horodner, Curator, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, Georgia and Mack McFarland, Exhibitions Coordinator, Pacific Northwest College of Art.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Nubar Alexanian
Hans Haacke
Adam Helms
Emily Jacir
Natasha Mayers
Walid Raad
2007 Weather Report: Art and Climate Change, curated by Lucy Lippard, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
some of the participating artists included: the Yes Men, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Marjetica Potrc, Chrissy Orr, Mary Miss, Pierre Huyghe, Agnes Denes, and Helen and Newton Harrison
2007 Censorship, Brecht Forum, NYC
2007 Portraits of Guantanamo, Amnesty International, Lincoln St. Center for the Arts, Rockland
2006 Innovative Techniques/Alternative Surfaces in Printmaking,
Maine Print Project, UMA, Augusta
2005 2005 Biennial, Portland Museum of Art
2005 Warflowers: From Swords to Plowshares, USM, UMF, Camden Library,
College of the Atlantic (Blum Gallery), 44 artists curated by N Mayers
2004 Naked, June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Portland (curated by Katherine Bradford)
2004 The Personal is Political, Area Gallery, University of Southern Maine
2004 Family Values, installation with 3 Monkeys Collective, in New
England/New Talent, Fitchburg Art Museum
2004 Eliminating Racism, Galeyrie, Falmouth, Maine
2004 Drawing is a window, Chocolate Church, Bath, Me.
2003 Mapping Maine: Four Contemporary Views, Portland Museum of Art
(with Yvonne Jacquette, Sam Cady, and Eric Hopper)
2002 Preserving Memory: American‘s Monumental Legacy, Smithsonian
2002 9/11: Prelude to an Apocalypse, University of New England, Portland
2002 Past, Present, Future(50th Anniversary Invitational), Maine Center
for Contemporary Art, Rockport, Maine
2002 The Day We Saw the Edge of the Earth, Firehouse Gallery, Damariscotta
2001 Reactions: Public Response to 9/11, Exit Art, NYC
2001 Library of Congress permanent collection: Witness and Response
2001 Sense of Place: Visual Arts and the Environment, Chewonki Foundation
2000 Domestic Culture: Home in Visual Culture, Institute of Contemporary Art ,
Maine College of Art, curated by Mark Bessire
2000 On Paper – Maine Art Gallery with Jacquette, Bradford, and Hildreth
1999 Past Personal/Present Personal- University of Maine at Augusta
1997 The Eccentric Image – Icon Gallery, Brunswick
1996 Skowhegan at 50 – Maine Coast Artist Gallery and Maine College of Art
1996 Mother Tongue – A visual dialogue originating in Amherst, Ma, and exhibited in many locations, curated by Mary Bernstein (Queens Center for the Arts, 2007)
1994 Lure of the Local - Curated by Lucy Lippard, UC at Boulder
1994 10 x 10 show, Portland (also in 1995 – 2000)
1990 Home installations in Congress street storefronts in Portland
1989 Farnsworth Museum 40th Anniversary Show
1987 Inside/Outside: Private Art show, USM UMO Hampshire College
1987 Maine Coast Artists, Rockport: since 1975: Works on Paper, Promising Younger Artists, Skowhegan Graduates, Maine Women Artists
Awards:
Abbey Mural Workshop Fellowship, National Academy of Design, 2008
Great Spruce Head Island 2011, awarded fully-funded residency
Peacemaker Award, Peace Action Maine, January 28, 2006
Americans Who Tell the Truth, travelling exhibit of portraits by Robert
Shetterly of historical and contemporary Americans who “have had a
profound impact on American life”, now includes a portrait of Natasha
Arthur Hall Award, 2005, “for an artist whose work, community service
and commitment to their craft that inspires others around them to reach to
their highest potential” (criteria: a history of creating positive change
through the arts throughout the state of Maine; fostering quality artistic
expression and the integration of the arts into daily life; inspiring others to
use the arts as a tool to bridge gaps in their community)
Millennium Artist, a national residency program of the National
Endowment for the Arts: Artists and Communities: America Creates for
the Millennium (a White House project), 2000, 3 months in Portsmouth,
Ohio (only artist in Maine to be chosen out of 90 in Maine who applied)
Individual Artist’s Fellowship 1998 Visual Arts Maine Arts Commission
Maine Alliance for Arts Education’s Bill Bonyun Award in 1995, for
community arts, presented at Portland Museum of Art
New England Foundation for the Arts, Artists Projects: New Forms
Award for utility pole-painting project for 20 poles painted by me in
February 1996-( painted 45 poles)
Maine Humanities Council Century Project grant for documenting pole
project in 1996
Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts funded residency by Maine Arts
Commission in 1993
Zorach scholarship to Skowhegan School of Painting in 1976
Mural Making Residencies and Teacher Workshops and Community Murals
As Maine Arts Commission Visiting Artist: (some highlights of the 500+murals)
2009 Lubec Arts Alive in Lubec, “arting up the town”,working with community to paint a bicentennial mural, portraits of beloved members of the community, visual street signs, storefronts, and more
2009 Bicentennial Mural project with Whitefield School 7th grade and community members
2009 Upward Bound students, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me.
2009 under auspices of VSA (Very Special Arts), worked at Spurwink School, Cornville, with severely emotionally-disturbed youth
2005 Tile project with 150 Portland residents, making clay tiles that are cast into bronze and inserted into the sidewalk on Congress St., Portland Mayor’s Office and the Public Art Committee (working with Portland Coalition for the Psychiatrically-Labelled, Center for Cultural Exchange, and Portland Parks and Recreation at Reiche School)
2005 American Hero/ine Portrait project, Whitefield School 5th grade, Whitefield Historical Society with grant from Maine Humanities Council
2004 Changing Face of Maine, Peace Action Maine, artist-in-residence, Riverton School, Portland, traveling exhibit of self-portraits by culturally-diverse 5th graders (portraits and bios travelled to rural schools)
Auburn Great Wall community mural 692′ long, City of Auburn and
Lewiston/Auburn Arts…
Artists in Communities project; Millennium Artist in Portsmouth, Ohio,
for 3 months, Southern Ohio Museum
Whitefield School, pole-painting project with 4th-5thgrade; History of town and people’s life stories painted on 17 Central Maine Power utility poles
Heifer International, New American Sustainable Agriculture Project,
Lewiston, Maine, mural
Calais Middle School Champlain mural for Visitor Center
Brunswick Area Arts and Cultural Alliance
Androscoggin Gifted and Talented Program (Bau Graves)
Mesalonskee Gifted and Talented Program
MECA Summer Program (Pleasant Street Park mural and Congress St.
University of Southern Maine Summer Art Institute
Center for Cultural Exchange ………………Reiche School, Portland
Spindleworks………………………………..Gardiner Community Mural .
Lewiston-Auburn AIDS Coalition…………. Tanglewood 4-H Camp
Hall-Dale Middle School……………………Aroostook Arts Institute
Gardiner High School………………….. …..Saco Middle School Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Reservation.. Plummer-Motz School Winthrop community murals four years…….Gray, Raymond schools
Community Arts Organizer: (some highlights)
Maine Draw-a-thon (2010): 40 Maine artists came together to draw images of how they want their war dollars (taxes) spent, as part of the Bring Our War Dollars Home campaign, with Kenny Cole and Union of Maine Visual Artists, followed by: Draw-In at the Maine State House, where the artists presented their legislators with hundreds of ‘zines created at the draw-a-thon, and drew passersby requests for how they would like their taxes spent, and artwork was delivered all around the offices. Press conference with artists, poets, musicians, organizers, followed by: Drawathon at Space Gallery, Portland, Veterans Day, 2010, in which 44 artists came together to draw how they want their war $$ spent and portraits of veterans and how they would like to spend that money. Drawathon III (January, 2011), silkscreened posters.
Lubec Arts Alive 2009, a model of community revitalization through the arts. Twelve artists from the Union of Maine Visual Artists went to Lubec for a week to “art up the town”. They brought their energy, vision, skills, and willingness to serve. Some of the artists involved were Robert Shetterly, Kenny Cole, Rose Marasco, Karen Adrienne, Diane Dahlke, Barb Sullivan, Alan Crichton, and Brown Lethem. They painted people’s portraits, a historical mural for the bicentennial, iconic signs for the town, and decorated storefronts, Community members helped paint the mural and signs, conducted interviews as portraits were painted, photographed and filmed, and fed and housed us. We gave slide shows, held a public viewing of the portraits, and had a sign sale to raise money for the next year’s events.
Columbus and the New World Order art show
Home installations on Congress Street in Portland storefronts to call attention to homelessness issue, 1990 (for Portland New Year’s)
Inside/Outside: Private Art show at University of Southern Maine, University of Maine at Orono, Hampshire College
Organized an extensive exhibition schedule of mental health consumer art;
Mural-painting projects in the tunnels of AMHI (state mental hospital)
4th of July parades in Whitefield
The most effective art that I do might be in my hometown. For every 4th of July parade in Whitefield (for at least 20 years) we make a float about current, potentially divisive issues, like global warming, tax cuts for the wealthy, clear cutting, our addiction to oil, Gulf oil spill, etc. We always provoke laughter, thought, and puzzlement. We find that humor and creativity disarm people and get them to pay attention, like having grown men in diapers try to lift the national debt. Or a gas-guzzling SUV that eats protestors, and life-size camels dancing through the eye of a 17 ft. needle.
Other Work Experience: (highlights)
Salvadoran Artists Association (ASTAC), work, studied and lectured at the University of El Salvador
International Arts for Peace (Children are the Future) 3-weeks in U.S.S.R. to supervise the painting of the first public painted bus in the Soviet Union
Boston Arts for a New Nicaragua, first U.S. Artists Brigade invited by the Ministry of Culture to paint 17’ x 80’ mural in Granada
Peace Corps Volunteer, Gombe, Nigeria; taught art and literature
Public speaker:
Convocation speaker at University of Maine at Lewiston-Auburn, 2007
Presenting slide show and talk about my work, Art and Social Responsibility, Social Activism in the Classroom, Art and Community, Women, Art, and War (USM), Making Art about Conflict (Creativity and Social Change, UMF), at 35 schools, conferences, etc.
Set Designer:
Gravel, Grovel, Gorilla, Aw Henry, The Complete History of Whitefield – Sets for three original plays by Art Mayers
Arterial - Choreographed by Sam Costa, Ram Island Dance Company
Art Circus at the Maine Festival, Bowdoin College: created the House of Real Horrors – Six rooms of politically-motivated art about United States policy in Central America
Performance Art:
Maine Story Project at the Maine Festival: It All Comes Out in the Wash
Fusion grant from Real Artways, Hartford, collaboration with Mark
Melnicove on Resolutions – Directed play and designed the set
Red, White and Blue vs. Red and Black at the Portland Museum of Art
with Mark Melnicove, 1985
I Dream the Dream You Dream – Multi-media performance with
Melnicove at the Maine Festival in 1984
Education:
1967 Sarah Lawrence College, BA
Academy of Art, Rome, Italy, junior year
1968 Antioch Graduate School of Education, Yellow Springs, Ohio, MAT in
Social sciences
1974-6 Unity College, studied painting with Leonard Craig
1975 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Publications:
Beem, Edgar Alan ,Maine Art Now, Dog Ear Press, Gardiner,
Me., 1990 Abby Shahn and Natasha Mayers, Natasha Mayers and Kathy Bradford, and Inside/Outside: Private Art
Beem, Edgar Alan, Maine Times:
Natasha Mayers Making a Difference Through Art, Dec. 25, 87
Two Stars of the 3rd Magnitude, June 11, 1982
Prayer and Protest, Aug. 5, 1988
Barak, Marcy Black, What’s in a map? PortCity Life, May/June, 2003
Ensign, Betty, Still Life, Sarah Lawrence Alumnae Magazine, 2001
Farr, Maureen, I’m a Community Artist and Activist Artist-interview: cover
story: Preview! February 1st-28th, 1994, p. 8-9
Gold, Donna, Maine Profile, Maine Progressive, Oct. 86
Gold, Donna, Natasha Mayers Unplugged, Kennebec Journal, Jan 7-8,
1995 color feature
Graves, Laurie Meunier, Mapping Maine: Four Contemporary Views,
Wolf Moon Press, 2003
Isaacson, Phillip, Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland:
New Kid in Brunswick, Protest in Portland, 1985
Imminent Bloodshed, Sweat and Tears at Rockport, 1987
To be a Fly on a Gallery Wall to Hear a Talk among Prints, 1996
Drawn to the Dark Side of the Human Spirit, Sept.29,200
Klein, Deborah, Community, Artists and Communities: America Creates
for the Millenium, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and NEA, 2004,
P.62-3, 118.
Lippard, Lucy, “All at a Glance”, in Mapping a City, by Nina
Montmann, Yilmaz Dziewior, Galierie fur Landschaftskunst
the Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2005-6
Lippard, Lucy, The Real Ronnie Horror Show Comes to the Fair,
In These Times, Sept. 4, 1985
Lippard, Lucy, Lure of the Local - Senses of place in a multi-centered
Society, New York: The New Press, 1997 p. 192, 289-91
Lippard, Lucy, High Notes, Inner Vision: Contemporary Visionary Art:
Outsider Artists with Disabilities, catalog Off-Site Santa Fe
Arts Commission, 1997
Martin, Lucy, Arts Enrichment at Whitefield School, Community Fills
Void Left by Budget Cuts,” Maine Progressive, 1981
Mayers, Natasha, Demo-Tactics, How to ’92, Alliance for Cultural
Democracy 1991 published as insert in Z Magazine and by itself
(edited by Lucy Lippard)
Mayers, Natasha, Inside/Outside: Private Art catalog introduction; with
essays by Lucy Lippard, Margot Clark, Bunny McBride, Stephen
Petroff and others, 1987
Mayers, Natasha, Home/Homeless, catalog introduction, 1990
Morison Leslie, Art in the Street, Casco Bay Weekly, Jan.11, 1990
O’Brien, Heather, Case study 1: Natasha Mayers, Activist Art: Moving the Artist, Shaping the work, thesis at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 2010
Petroff, Stephen, Art for the Homeless Finds No Home in Portland,
Maine Progressive, Feb. 1990
Portland Museum of Art, Mapping Maine: Four Contemporary Views,
Summer, 2003
Ryan, Susan, Five Political Artists in Maine, Artists in Maine, vol.II,no.
Vision Magazine cover lithograph vol. 1
Articles about the Pole-Painting Project in Whitefield:
Beem, Edgar Alan, Whitefield, Downeast magazine, summer 1999
Beem, Edgar Alan, Yankee Magazine guidebook, article about the
Poles, 1999 publication date
Ensign, Betty, “Whitefield History Project creates Pride in Community,”
Lincoln County News, July 4, 1996
George Robert, “Pillars of History-Maine youngsters paint the town with
their past,” Boston Globe, New England section feature in color,
Sunday, Dec. 31,1995
Gold, Donna, “Stop, Look, Listen,” Maine Times, Jan. 13, 1995
Gold, Donna, “Utilitarian Art,” Arts of Hope, Hope Magazine
(Humanity Making a Difference), Aug. 1996, p. 93
High Performance, A Publication of Art in the Public Interest;
“Portfolio” – three photos and caption about poles,
Summer 1996, #72, p. 26
Kennedy Kate, “Natasha Mayers: Of Sentiment Action and Utility Poles”
Appeared in both Arts Every Day - Journal of the Maine Alliance
of Arts Education, Vol. 8 no. 2 Winter 1996
Learning Magazine - Successful Teaching Today – “From the Field”
p. 65 Vol. 2 31 Aug. 1997
Lippard, Lucy, Lure of the Local, New York: New Press 1997 color
Plate 8, p. 192, 289-291
Maine Humanities Council “What People Did Before TV,” Fundraising
Brochure featuring as article about the pole project, Dec. 1996
Martin, Lucy, “Video Immortalizes Whitefield’s Painted Poles,”
Lincoln County News, Dec. 17, 1998
Muir, Bryce, “Community Art,” UMVA Journal, Dec. 1994-Jan. 1995
Rayfield, Susan, “Pole Painter’s Work Brightens Whole Town,”
Portland Press Herald, Jan. 17, 1997, p. 1B (color)
Weekly Reader, “History on a Stick,” edition 4 vol. 78 issue 3
Sept. 20, 1996 (color feature)
WCSH TV News, Feb. 20, 1997, feature with Bill Green
“Tall Tales,” 22 minute video made by Cyclops Productions
Vanessa Barth and Doreen Convoy, with a grant from the
Maine Humanities Council about the painted poles:
1998 includes interviews with Lucy Lippard and Alan Taylor,
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
Quotes from Lucy Lippard:
“Natasha Mayers is the best public artist in Maine!”
“Natasha Mayers is the most committed activist artist in Maine.”
Collections:
Corporate:
Payne Webber Co.
Sonesta Hotel
Woolworth’s
McDonald’s in Freeport
Sun Savings Bank
Maine Wood Products, Inc
Wiscasset Family Medicine
Augusta Family Dental Associates
American Express, Joel Davis Associates
Institutional:
Portland Museum of Art
University of Maine at Presque Isle
United States Department of State Art Bank
Selected Individuals:
Bruce Brown, Lucy Lippard,
David Hitchcock, Donna Gold,
Rob Elowitch, Edgar Allen Beem,
David Hitchcock, Phil Isaacson,
June LaCombe, Marcia Stuart,
Nancy Davidson, John Holverson,
Katherine Bradford, Dr. Sandy and Mary Allen,
Alison Hildreth, Leonard and Barbara Keilson,
Alice Spencer, Dr. Gary Astrachan
Per Cent For Art Commissions:
Peru Elementary School, Peru, Maine, MSAD 21 (2008)
Solon Elementary School
Miller School in Waldoboro
