Friday
Oct082010

October 10, 2010

2011 Maine Arts Fellow Deborah Wing-Sproul:
From Maine to MoMA and Back Again

Creative Portland Blog


It has been quite a year for Portland area multidisciplinary artist Deborah Wing-Sproul, the winner of the 2011 Maine Arts Commission Fellowship in Media and Performing Arts. Last Spring, she commuted to New York for three months as one of 39 artists selected by Marina Abramović to re-perform five of her performance pieces for the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Marina Abramović:  The Artist is Present. Abramovic's durational works demand exquisite stillness—long periods of time with no outward physical movement but with an active presence. Quiet stillness is not new to Wing-Sproul. Her long-term project, Tidal Culture, involves durational "performances" in remote North Atlantic locations (see a still from the Greenland chapter above), as well as objects made out of seaweed. Deborah is an Assistant professor at the Maine College of Art; a founding member of pfvac (Portland Film and Video Collective); and has shown her work in Portland at the ICA, SPACE Gallery, Whitney Art Works and Zero Station. She had a one person exhibition, water, algae, ice: works from Tidal Culture I, II, III, IV, Maine, Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland, last year at the Housatonic Museum of Art, awarded to her by Bill Arning (Director, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston). Wing-Sproul's work will also be in the 2011 Biennial at the Portland Museum of Art. In response to the Maine Arts Commission Fellowship, Wing-Sproul says, "I work on a long time frame, and every step can prove challenging. When one's work is slow and quiet, as mine often is, it is easy to feel invisible. I am extremely grateful for this honor and support." The other 2011 Fellows are Ethan Hayes-Chute of Freeport and Berlin, Germany, for Visual Arts; Poet Elizabeth Kirschner of Kittery Point for Literary Arts; and basketmaker Theresa Secord of Penobscot, for Traditional Arts. Congratulations to all the Fellows and many thanks to the Maine Arts Commission for their support not only of arts institutions but also of individual artists.

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