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July 1, 2011

New views of Earth in Skowhegan

By Doug Harlow dharlow@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

SKOWHEGAN -- The Earth is flat.

click image to enlarge

WORLD VIEW: Artist Wally Warren of Wellington hangs globes on Thursday that are part of the “Worlds, Seen & Foreseen” exhibit in downtown Skowhegan. Nearly two dozen artists are expected to display their globes in shop windows though Aug. 6.

Photo by Jeff Pouland

click image to enlarge

A HORNET'S NEST: A globe from a hornet's nest by artist Abby Shahn hangs in a display window at the Blueberry Cupboard in Skowhegan recently.

Photo by Jeff Pouland

It is a ball of barbed wire, scrap metal, papier-maché and fire.

The Earth is beautiful.

All of those images and ideas are part of an art installation called "Worlds, Seen & Foreseen" in storefront windows all over downtown Skowhegan this month.

Globes and Earth replicas began appearing suspended in windows Friday as "visions of the world," a show by more than 20 artists from all over Maine, said Solon artist Abby Shahn.

"Our shared planet is fragile," Shahn said. "The Gulf oil spill, the Fukushima meltdowns, the frightening effects of global warming -- melting ice caps in the Arctic, floods in Pakistan, droughts in Russia -- affect us all. Increasingly we realize our fates are tied to the fate of this planet. The troubling question arises, are we good tenants?"

The Globe Project will be on display day and night through Aug. 6 in the windows of several downtown buildings.

The show comes with support from The Kennebec Valley Tourism Council, Somerset Economic Development Corp., Main Street Skowhegan and the Wesserunsett Arts Council.

"Artists are picturing their images of the world, creating worlds, feeling that connection to the globe and to all that's going on," artist Robin Brooks of Topsham said as the show was being installed. "It's a sense of connectedness with the rest of the world."

Shahn said one of her globes is made, in part, from an actual hornets' nest.

"When I was starting, I was thinking, 'Oh, the world, the hornets' nest'; but when I started taking them apart, they were so beautiful," she said. "And in the end, I just kept thinking, I guess I find it beautiful."

Globes hover inside the large windows in a building in the 160 block of Water Street being renovated by Steve and Lyn Govoni. They are big globes and little globes, metal ones, boxed ones and flat ones. There are painted globes by artist Wally Warren of Wellington made from TV satellite dishes that are suspended in the windows of the former Skowhegan District Court, above Variety Drug, on Water Street.

In part of his globe project, Solon artist James Fangbone, has a large, flat satellite dish suspended from the ceiling, as if the world has already collapsed upon itself in a pre-apocalyptic vision.

"This is our world and everything's been sucked out of the center -- every gas and oil and water, everything's been pumped out," Fangbone said. "Just the two skins of the Earth will flatten out ... similar to a satellite dish."

Doug Harlow -- 474-9534

dharlow@centralmaine.com

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