In August the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell presents Architect as Artist/Artist as Architect, an exhibition featuring the work of those who practice both disciplines. Jennifer Claster, Michele Gutlove, Ruthanne Harrison, Brian Kent, Solvejg Jorgensen Makaretz, Kevin Moquin, John Ossie, and Roger Richmond are architects, landscape architects, architectural designers, as well as painters, photographers, sculptors and mixed media artists. The public is invited to meet the artists at the show’s opening on Friday, August 6th, from 5-8 pm. This event is free and open to all; refreshments will be served. Architect as Artist/Artist as Architect is on exhibit at the Harlow Galley at 160 Water St. Hallowell from August 6-29, 2010. Call 207-622-3813 for more information, or visit us at www.harlowgallery.org.
Artists and architects are both concerned with looking, seeing, interpreting, intention, and using materiality to express and to make. There is a long tradition of people who created in both the fine arts and in the design arts, going back to the Renaissance, and more recently in the early twentieth century example of the Bauhaus, founded by architect Walter Gropius, a school which successfully sought to integrate art and design. The tradition continues today, and those participating in Architect as Artist/Artist as Architect illustrate how the two types of work often feed each other, sometimes diverge, but ultimately allow the full expression of an individual’s creativity to come forth.
Artist/architects are:
Jennifer Claster/Landscape Architect and Photography
Jennifer Claster is a landscape architect whose work primarily focuses on improving the public realm. She lives in downtown Portland, where she works for Wright-Pierce, an award-winning environmental engineering firm. She received a BA in Community, Regional, and Environmental Studies from Bard College and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This is her first gallery show.
Michele Gutlove/Architect and Glass Art
Michele Gutlove’s formal education and professional practice has been in architecture. As an architect she understands the creation of large spaces; on working as an artist she says, “I have a passion for the interaction of color and light. Now, as a glass artist, I celebrate how glass can sculpt light and how light can shape space. From the smallest bio-molecule to the largest ecosystem, nature’s staggering diversity has been a source of endless wonder. Translating these inspirations into fused glass has been an interpretative journey.”
Ruthanne Harrison/Architectural Designer and Painting
Ruthanne Harrison is a recent graduate of the University of Maine at Augusta, with a BA in architecture. She has also been a painter for many years, and has a BFA in visual arts. Recent solo exhibitions have been at the Maine Art Gallery in Wiscasset, and the Stadler Gallery in Kingfield. This year, Ruthanne was the winner of the Roger Richmond Founders Award for Thesis Design at UMA. Harrison has lived in the mid-coast Maine area for over twenty years, and prior to that she lived and worked in New York. This fall she will be pursuing her M.Arch degree at the University of Massachusetts. She is fascinated with the relationship between art and architecture, and is always interested to discover the fine artist side of architects and designers.
Brian Kent/Architect and Sculptor
Brian Kent lives in Litchfield and has offices in Gardiner. He holds a Bachelors degree in Architecture (B Arch cum laude) from Cape Town University in South Africa and a Masters in Architecture and Urban Design from Washington University in St. Louis. His professional consulting work focuses on downtown revitalization plans, site design, and master planning. He has created plans for downtown Waterville, Augusta, Gardiner, and Richmond. His work has received awards from national, regional, and Maine professional planning organizations.
Solvejg Jorgensen Makaretz/Architect and Textile Arts
Solvejg Jorgensen Makaretz grew up in Scandinavia where she studied Ethnology at Lunds University and Fine Arts at Konstskolan i Kristianstad (Sweden). She started her architectural training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (Denmark) and completed her M. Arch at University of Pennsylvania. Currently she is freelancing in Southern Maine.
Kevin Moquin/ Architect and Photography
Kevin Moquin was born in Ludlow Massachusetts and has found a home for life and work in Portland Maine. Kevin studied Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, receiving a BARCH in 1997. He gained professional license as an Architect in 2004 and became a LEED Accredited Professional in 2008. Kevin received an Honor Award from the Maine AIA Design Awards 2008 and received an Award for Excellence for his entry in the AIA Maine 2009 Ideas Competition. Kevin presented his thoughts on photography along with images of his work at the inaugural Pecha Kucha Night Portland in 2007. His work is present in personal collections throughout New England. This show at The Harlow Gallery is the initial presentation of Kevin’s photography in a gallery setting. Since 2002 Kevin’s darkroom studio has been located in The Artist Studio Building on Congress Street in Portland Maine.
John Ossie/Architect and Drawings
John Ossie was born in Fort Fairfield, Maine and he grew up in the potato fields of Northern Maine. He attended the Arizona State College of Architecture in Tempe, and practiced Architecture in Phoenix and in Denver. He returned to Maine in the mid 1980s and now owns a design and production company with my partner Steve Andrews in Portland. Ossie says, “I have worked for a number of fine firms as well as alone and built buildings from one end of the country to the other. Through it all I drew. Drawing is my foremost obsession. I cannot resist a blank surface. Paper, tablecloth, napkin or bare wall, they are all fair game for my left hand.”
Roger Richmond/ Architect and 3-D Photography
Roger Richmond was the national competition design winner of the Maine’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He has also won national design competitions in stained glass art and a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., proposed for Cambridge Square in Boston. He is a registered architect, and holds a Master of Arts in Architecture Degree from the University of Florida. Mr. Richmond is a professor of Architecture in the program he created at the University of Maine at Augusta. He was the first and only architect at the time commissioned by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in Houston, to design zero and “artificial” gravity living environments on space stations and planetary fly-by missions. His work and research for NASA in Hostile Environmental Design continued at the University of Pennsylvania while working toward a Ph.D. and studying conceptual architectural design theory in the World Masters Class of Louis I. Kahn. He was named The Student’s Choice Teacher of the Year in 2001. Professionally he is a design consultant and partner in SpaceTherapy™ a design/behavior based post-occupancy analysis firm. Mr. Richmond has been a 3-D photographer for over 25 years, and has given 100’s of 3-dimensional photographic presentations to public schools and other public and private organizations on art, architecture, and nature statewide, throughout New England, and internationally. Currently Mr. Richmond lives in South Freeport, Maine with his wife Beverly.
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