Suzette McAvoy, executive director at the CMCA

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Suzette McAvoy is the executive director and chief curator at the center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland. Thanks for coming in today.

Suzette McAvoy:

You're welcome. I'm happy to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you've been doing this long enough that now the museum is not only in a completely different building, but in a completely different town.

Suzette McAvoy:

It is. Last June, June 26th of 2016, we opened in our new location in Rockland. And so we've been there a little over a year now. It's been an incredible year. It's gone in a blur. There's been so many good things happening. We've reached more than 40,000 people in our first year, which surpassed our projections of about 35,000. And that's about quadruple the number that we had in our former location in Rockport. So it's been a really a wonderful expansion of both our program and our audience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is it, do you think about the Mid coast area that is so supportive of artists?

Suzette McAvoy:

Well, a lot of artists tell me that Maine is where the work gets done, that they come to Maine to really spend time in the studio. There's this sense of you're away from the market, you're away from the kind of social demands of being in a more urban area. So there's not only the natural beauty of the place, you get that wonderful North Main light, which of course is attractive to many artists working in the studio. And a sort of side note is it's also one of the features of the new CMCA building in Rockland is that the architect Toshiko Mori took advantage of that of our north facing property to bring natural north light into the main gallery. So I think that the midcoast provides this sense of natural beauty, but also an environment that's really conducive. Doing work in the studio, which is of course where the art gets made.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And we also are appreciative of artists. So this is a place where people can come and be artists and they will know that other people will come and look at their work.

Suzette McAvoy:

Yeah, you know, it's long been an area where there's been a community of artists going back to, you know, the middle of the 19th century. Artists have been coming to the coast of Maine and Maine coast artists, which is how we began in 1952, really was an outgrowth of that. You know, the Farnsworth Museum was started in 1948 and Maine Coast Artists, as we were known then, started just four years later. Because so many artists were coming to the Mid coast to impart a reaction to, you know, getting out of the urban areas, getting out of New York City. So they ended up coming right after the war. This was pretty much. And so they would come to the Mid coast in a similar way that they might go to Provincetown in Massachusetts. But from there they just developed this network of artists who knew each other maybe in Boston or Philadelphia, New York. And then it became more of a year round. So there's always been this nice balance between the year round artists and the more seasonal residents. But really a great creative community that

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

we have define for me contemporary art.

Suzette McAvoy:

So I always tell people that at CMCA we are focused on the art of today, that contemporary art is really dealing with the current topics of today's culture. So it's really made by artists that are looking at the world around them and addressing that in with a contemporary spirit, with an idea of not looking backwards, but looking forward. We're a non collecting institution. We don't have a collection like a more traditional museum. And that's really because in 10 years, if we were collecting, it wouldn't be contemporary any longer, you know, so it's not just that it's about living artists because there's a lot of living artists, some of them that are not working in a contemporary way. They're working in a more traditional sort of, you know, really grounded in the 19th century traditions, or they're very nostalgic in their outlook. We're really interested in artists that are part of the larger cultural dialogue of today. Are they aware of the aesthetic concerns of the more contemporary voice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me about some of those artists.

Suzette McAvoy:

Well, right now, for instance, we're showing the work of the artist John Walker, who I think really fits that profile really well. He lives in Seal Point, Maine, which is down by South Bristol. And he's been really addressing the main landscape around his property in Seal point for almost 30 years now. But he's doing it in a really individual, unique way. So while the subject of the main landscape is completely traditional, I mean, there's been a long history of artists addressing the main landscape. John is doing it with a particularly unique voice. These are abstract when you first look at them, but I think a longer viewing would really start to reveal how he is responding to the visible world, the outside world, the way weather affects the light on the water. You know, for instance, there's a number of very large scale abstract paintings that are brilliant blue stripes with white patterning on them. And if you can put your imagination out there on Seal Point on a brilliant summer Maine day, when the light is reflecting off the surface of the water, it's creating that pattern in your mind's eye. And so he's somebody, I think, who is really taking that long tradition of Maine painting and pushing it into new areas, helping us to see the world and think about the world in new ways. And that's what I think of when I think of contemporary art. It's making me, as the viewer, think about the world outside in a way that I haven't thought of. It's helping me see another point of view, think about work in a different way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Many of the artists that you bring in have not only a main connection, but also are connected really around the world. And so this becomes an interesting. An interesting touch point, I think, for us, a reminder that, you know, we aren't just our own little state up here with our own little museums that we really. It's broader reaching than that.

Suzette McAvoy:

Yes. And that's a real goal of ours at cmca. And part of the move to the larger building and having a bigger footprint was to really communicate to the larger world that there is incredible things happening in the contemporary art field in Maine that can really hold its own on the global platform. And it's always been that way. If you go back to the earliest artists that were coming here, like Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, the Zorax Hartley, they were at the forefront of contemporary art in America when they were working. When Thomas Cole came to Mount Desert in 1848, he was cutting edge contemporary art at the moment I always remind people that all art was contemporary once, you know, so this is a legacy that was established in Maine and just continues until this day. And we've had this, you know, continuing wonderful balance between artists that are here year round being enriched by artists that are coming here from away and that there's this continual dialogue between it with places like Skowhegan, Mecca, you know, that are always feeding us new artists into the state and they typically fall in love with it, some of them come back and then they become year rounders and the whole scene just gets enriched from the bottom up.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You raise a good point because when I think of Winslow Homer, I don't think contemporary the same way that I would think of the Zorax being more contemporary. But you're right, at one point he was doing very interesting things with his painting that other people were not.

Suzette McAvoy:

Absolutely. In 1890, William Winslow Homer was cutting edge. The fact that he put the viewer right on the edge of the coast so that they, you know, he compressed the space, it's sort of a, you know, art speak. But it's, you know, if you imagine earlier landscape painters, you were back from the shore and you were an observer of this more tame landscape. So Scene Homer puts you right into the power and the, you know, the almost violence of the, you know, that was possible from the ocean that he was witnessing there on Prouts Neck. You know, he put, he really created a much more contemporary viewpoint than earlier landscape painters. And that's something that is with us until today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is that also potentially part of contemporary art is putting people sometimes in a place of discomfort?

Suzette McAvoy:

Yes, sometimes I think it's, you know, it's being aware of the realities of the world, not trying to cover up or create a sense of nostalgia. You know, we're not looking at the world with sentimentalized, it's looking at the world without blinders on. You know, sometimes it can be in a very imaginative way. For instance, next summer we're showing the work of Tom Burkhart and it's an installation piece that's called Studio Flood. And he's recreating an entire three dimensional full scale studio space out of cardboard. And it's completely upside down and it's about climate change and about how the world is becoming upside down and what would happen with a tsunami and the flood. And even though he created it before these recent storms, it certainly feels very timely and it brings to the fore some issues that are very much a part of today's topics.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So contemporary art also encompasses things like Sculpture and maybe fiber arts and things that are auditory. It's not just paintings on a wall.

Suzette McAvoy:

Absolutely. It's a range of mediums these days. Just over the weekend, I went up to South Penobscot, Maine, which is. There's an interesting art space called the Cannery that was showing seven sound art installations. So that's not something that you see too often or hear too often. In both of these cases, it was work that was combining both video and auditory sounds into the experience of the art piece. So that ranges from things like that to installations like I mentioned, to freestanding sculpture. When we opened the new cmca, we had a sculpture installation by the artist Jonathan Borowski that filled our entire main gallery with large scale sculptures that the viewer walked through. So it ranges from that to more traditional sized paintings. I tell people when CMCA started in 1952, nearly every painting fit on an easel and every sculpture on a pedestal. That's certainly not true today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's funny to think of something that is called the CMCA being founded in 1952. It's funny to think about as an institution, how you can stay true to your mission, which is to focus on contemporary things. But you're more than half a century old.

Suzette McAvoy:

Exactly. It is really hard to think of that. And it's incredible that changes that have happened in art over that time. But always staying true to our mission of showing what we have felt is really the quality work. I mean, excellence has always been the standard showing work that the curators of CMCA over the years have felt was important to be introduced to the public audience. And that included people like Louise Nevelson, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Jamie Wyeth. You know, so many artists, people now like John Bisbee and Dozier Bell, and they all had early shows at CMCA back in the day. So I'm really proud of that long history that we've had of introducing artists to the public, you know, early on in their career, or showcasing artists that are older artists that haven't gotten the kind of exposure that their work really deserves. So it's, it's. There's never been a time where I felt like there been a limitation by just being focused on artists connected to Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's also funny to think about the fact that at one point Louise Nevelson and Jamie Wyeth, those were the contemporary again. It's like the Winslow Homer idea that now we think about them as fairly classic. Exactly. But you're right, they needed earlier exposure to get to the place where they could become classic.

Suzette McAvoy:

Exactly. We had a show with Robert Indiana in 1964 of his love sculpture and his love work. That's the year that was introduced to New York. I mean, you know, so it was pretty incredible what's been happening here in the coast of Maine and, you know, maybe hasn't been really celebrated or made as much of as the real impact on the story of American art. And that's really one of the things that we aim to do at the new CMCA is to make sure that that story, the importance of that story, the importance of Maine's role in the ongoing story of American art is told to a larger audience and maybe gets more the kind of attention that it really deserves.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things that I've enjoyed is the studio visits that you do. And I think that you post stuff on Instagram. So I will sometimes be like, oh, there's Suzette. She's over at this artist studio. And she's over at this artist studio. And it kind of just brings it full circle for me, this idea that this is a living person that is working on their art in their own space. And there's something that's very alive about that.

Suzette McAvoy:

Exactly. I think it's quite honestly the best part of my job. It's the thing I enjoy doing the most, is doing studio visits. And I only wish I had more time to do them. Maine's a big state and it's hard to get around geographically. I try, if I have a meeting in some place, I try to make sure that I schedule a studio visit at the tail end of that day or before my meeting to take advantage of being there or to being away out of the office. I do try to get around as much as I can. There's really no substitute for seeing the real thing. To be able to talk one on one with an artist in their working space and see what their concerns are, what their ideas are, their working method, you know, all of that. And so lately I've been really trying to post those visits and oftentimes people ask me, does that. Does that mean they're going to have a show at cmca? And I said, not necessarily. I mean, it's just really that I'm trying to get out there and connect with the artist and take the pulse of what's going on around the state as much as I can and share that with the online audience if I have the advantage of being there. And I always ask the artist if it's okay if I photograph their work. Because some people are, you know, a little touchy about showing work in process, but if they give me the permission, then I feel like I just really want to share that in any way that I can with the online audience. I'm a big believer in social media. I know that some people really don't like it as well, or they say it's not for me, but it's a way for me to feel connected with artists across not only the state, but across the nation that are working and see work that I wouldn't maybe otherwise see. So it's just a tool for me, I think, a communication tool.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I actually think it's hugely important, especially when it comes to art. My daughter, my older daughter, she loves art, has always loved art, actually worked in the Portland Art Gallery over the summer. And she loves following the art feeds. She loves following, she loves seeing what's going on, seeing the artists, seeing the pieces. And it can be anything from what's going on at the Louvre to what's going on at the cmca. I think this is a way to get people interested.

Suzette McAvoy:

It really is. I think it has great potential as really an educational tool. I certainly benefit from it. I mean, I follow a number of online art journals and a number of artists Instagram feeds. And whenever I give a talk to artists about getting their work seen or professional practices, I always say, you know, get on Instagram especially because that's really visually focused and it's, you know, it's an easy way, it's free. It's a way to get your work out in front of an audience and you just never know who's going to see it and what it might lead to. So, yeah, I'm a fan. Good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We're on the same page on that one. Anybody who criticizes, at least you and I, we know what we're talking about, so that's good. Tell me about this award that has recently been announced through the cmca.

Suzette McAvoy:

Yes. Well, just yesterday we're really pleased to announce a partnership with the Ellis Beauregard Foundation. That's a new foundation based in Rockland, Maine. It's the legacy of two artists, John Ellis and his wife, Joan Beauregard. And the director is now Donna McNeil. And we're really pleased to be partnering with them. The Ellis Beauregard foundation itself is going to be giving out a $25,000 award annually to a main artist working in any medium. And part of the award is a solo show at cmca. So that's our contribution to the award is the exhibition so that the public, the Larger public can see the work of the artist that is getting the award. So we're really pleased about this. And it's a significant amount of money. That was one of the things that I think the Ellis Beauregard foundation was particularly thought was particularly important was to give a significant monetary award to really be able to make a difference in an artist's life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that's important. I mean, this is something that a lot of artists that I've spoken to for quite some time, they will need to do other things in order to support their art and support that creative side. So to be able to have the space provided by money to, I don't know, turn on your lights, I guess and pay your mortgage, I mean, that's pretty important.

Suzette McAvoy:

Well, you know, it's enough money that I think somebody, if they are able to, they could take a break from work, from an outside job, they could rent a studio space, they could buy materials. It really, you know, it's enough that I think that it can really make a significant difference in an artist's career. And coupled with the exhibition at cmca so that it also brings that work to the larger public. I think together it's really going to be a positive contribution to the whole field here in Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The thing that I find fascinating about Rockland is that it's absolutely still a working waterfront. The ferry goes out to Vinyl Haven, where Robert Indiana's studio and home is, goes out to North Haven. You know, there's a big, I think it's a concrete factory or something. There's some big factory that's over there. So there's this gritty industrial feel to it. And yet it's been called the new Art center of Maine.

Suzette McAvoy:

It's rapidly becoming that. I think, you know, our, our building is just a block away from the Farnsworth Art Museum. It's around the corner from the Strand Theater. So we intentionally bought that location when it became available to create that, you know, to be the third leg of the proverbial three legged stool to really create a center in the of Rockland's Main street and Arts district. There are now something like 24 commercial art galleries scattered around Rockland. So with the CMCA and the Farnsworth, the Strand Theater, these commercial galleries, the Ellis Beauregard foundation, now it's becoming this really active art center. We're very close to the working waterfront, you know, and the building was really designed to be both an aesthetic bridge, an architectural bridge between the historic Main street and the working waterfront Design. New England called us as timeless and as frugal as the Maine lobster boat. So we love that description because we really are. So, you know, it's sort of an industrial style building with metal cladding on it. And you know, it's not, it's not fancy. It was done with a really minuscule budget. But just working with a great architect, Toshiko Mori, to make every nickel count.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Every time I talk to artist Eric Hopkins, he reminds me that his original studio was actually somewhere in that footprint of where your building is now. So it's got this interesting kind of decades long heritage of already being a place where art was, I guess, focused upon.

Suzette McAvoy:

Well, yes, our art lab education classroom. Our art lab classroom is exactly where Eric's studio was. So I feel like there's really great energy in that space left over from Eric because certainly he's a wonderful artist and friend of CMCA's and we have him to thank for actually bringing that property to our attention. And he's also a very good friend of our architect, Toshiko Mori. Her husband, Jamie Carpenter and Eric went to the Rhode Island School of Design together. So the reason that Toshiko and Jamie are in Maine is because of Eric. So there's a wonderful network there. It's that, you know, that Maine thing where there's never six degrees of separation in Maine, it's never more than two, I think. So there's a great network and spirit of community that sort of surrounds the whole cmca.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I also like the fact that the Camden International Film Festival has showings scattered not only in Camden Rockport, but also in Rockland. So you're bringing in yet another type of art and more exposure for the people at CMCA through people coming to town for that?

Suzette McAvoy:

Yes, a lot of people come into town for sifting for the Camden Film Festival and the last couple of years they've had this incredible virtual reality showcase called Storyforms that has been installed in a building directly across the street from us at cmca. So there's been this wonderful exchange of visitors to the storyforms to see the virtual reality pieces that are on view and then coming over to to cmca. And for the last couple of years we've tried to have something that was really participatory or engaging the public in our courtyard during the SIF weekend. And this year we had the sculptor Jeff Smith and his piece called it's the Smallest House in the World picking up on the tiny house movement. It's a bright grass green sculpture that is also a functional tiny house not meant for the long haul, but really great as a kind of talking point and, you know, topic of conversation, something to get people thinking about. It's absolutely adorable small house on wheels and it had a documentary film about the tiny house playing inside the tiny house during sif. So we, you know, we try to have something that sort of fits or would be appealing to the SIF audience during that weekend and hope to do more because there's so much crossover right now with film and documentary and what it, you know, storytelling. There's, you know, artists that are visual artists that are working in that medium. So there's a lot that, that I think we can partner with in the future as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, now I'm excited to go back up and visit. I've already been in the cmca, but it continues to change, so I'll have to make a trip back up to Rockland. I've been Speaking with Suzette McAvoy, who is the executive director and chief curator at the center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland. Thank you so much for coming down and for sharing this continuing story with us.

Suzette McAvoy:

Well, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.