Fast Forward to July 🕺💿 🎬
You're invited to our upcoming Art Party Benefit – get your tickets today!
You’re invited to our Art Party Benefit on July 20th in Belfast, Maine!
Join us for an unforgettable summer dance party and video show! This event is a special fundraiser for Lights Out, showcasing the best of local food, specialty cocktails, dance music, and Maine video artists. Your attendance will support our ongoing efforts to connect and enrich the Maine arts community. This event has limited entry – so get your tickets fast!
GENERAL ADMISSION | This ticket includes standard entry for one guest, 2x drinks, food and fun! 21+ only. ID’s will be checked at the door.
MEMBER DISCOUNT | Get $25 OFF your ticket with a Lights Out Membership!
HOST COMMITTEE | Become a host! Please show your support for Lights Out or pay it forward for another guest (Includes one general admission ticket).
EVENT SPONSOR | Contribute $500+ to the event and show your support for Lights Out (Includes 2 general admission tickets).
Robert Barnes has been called the “most famous unknown painter in America.”
Robert Barnes’s (b. 1934) paintings and drawings have been included in gallery and museum exhibitions across the country with fair regularity for the last 40 years, and attracted the admiration of generations of artists and connoisseurs. Unfortunately, his work has remained relatively unknown in the popular art world. This may be because or in spite of Barnes’s command of a rich mixture of literary and psychological references and his unique style that walks the line between figurative and abstract, narrative and surreal.
Barnes was born in Washington. D.C. but moved to Winnetka, Illinois as a child. From 1952 to 1956 he attended both the School of the Art Institute and the University of Chicago, and would receive BFAs from both schools. During this time, he was a part of an exceptionally fertile community of students that included Claes Oldenburg, Jack Beal, Irving Petlin, Leon Golub, Ellen Lanyon, Robert Indiana, and H.C. Westermann.
In 1957 Barnes left Chicago to attend Columbia University in New York. While there he became active both in the world of Dada surrealist art and in the James Joyce Society at Gotham Bookmark – the beginning of two interests that would become major sources of inspiration for the rest of Barnes’s career. In 1958 the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired one of Barnes’s large early paintings, entitled “Judith and Holofernes.”
In 1961 Barnes was awarded both the William and Norma Copley Foundation Prize for Painting and a Fulbright Grant to study English portraiture, and so left to study at the Slade School of Art in London, where he would stay until 1963. Again, Barnes found himself in the company of an extraordinary community of artists, including Francis Bacon. Through Bacon’s involvement with the London Theatre, Barnes developed an interest in the theatrical arts, which would also pervade his paintings for decades to come.
In 1963 Barnes returned to America as a visiting artist at the Kansas Art Institute, Kansas City, where he would stay for a year before moving to Bloomington, Indiana to teach at Indiana University. While living in Indiana, Barnes continued to exhibit with Alan Frumkin at his galleries in Chicago and New York, and in 1967 his work was shown at the Gallerie du Dragon, Paris. During a two-year sabbatical that began in 1972, Barnes traveled to Umbria, Italy and has continued to visit Italy often ever since.
In 1985 a retrospective of the previous three decades of Barnes’s artwork traveled around the country, with stops at the Herron Gallery of Art in Indianapolis; the Madison Art Center, in Madison, Wisconsin; and the Hyde Park Art Center and the Renaissance Society in Chicago.
Barnes retired from teaching at Indiana University in 1999 after 35 years there.
- Artist bio via Corbett vs. Dempsey
Can Norway’s New Lights Out Gallery Power an Artistic Surge?
– Downeast article by Sara Anne Donnelly and photos by Cait Bourgault
“With donations and sweat equity from more than 300 volunteers, the Lights Out team has replaced the factory’s foundation, shored up its listing walls, hauled its contents (broken furniture, rusty kitchenware, and other odds and ends) to the scrapyard, installed new drywall and windows, built stairs, and painted the exterior doors what Sipe calls a ‘we will not abandon you’ glowing shade of yellow. Still, most of the complex remains unfinished and unheated. With a capital campaign set to launch later this year and continued support from volunteers, the founders say they hope to have the place fully operational by the end of 2027.”
Upcoming exhibit at Wolf & Harp – “Down the Rabbit Hole”
Lights Out presents “Down the Rabbit Hole” at the Wolf & Harp in Norway Maine, opening online at the end of June 2024 and in person on September 14, 2024. This show, comprising 68 pieces by 46 artists chosen from our recent open call, will be an installation of flat work and sculpture at the Wolf & Harp, the high-end wedding venue in the heart of Norway. Boasting a historic mansion that sleeps 10, an arched ceremony space, a carriage house reception area, and a speakeasy, all available for catered weddings and fancy dinners, Wolf & Harp has invited Lights Out to curate the entire venue with gallery and museum-quality artworks which will also be available for purchase upon inquiry. These pieces will be available for viewing online, at the venue by guests, and by the public at select times throughout the remainder of the year, at events to be determined. We hope to create a mutually beneficial relationship with ongoing curated shows for the benefit of Wolf & Harp, for the artists involved and to further the goal of Lights Out to enhance the experience of artists and art lovers in Maine and beyond.
Make a donation or become a member!
Become a member by signing up for monthly donations or make a one-time donation. If you would like to donate for a specific project within the building, contact us for our sponsorship levels.