This month's artist feature + upcoming events 🔗
“But [painting and sculpture] didn’t come naturally to me. Which I think is better because it really pushes you. So often you saw people that were called “talented” that just let it go and didn’t push. And when you don’t have that, what I would call natural talent, you have goals. You really do push yourself. You become very committed to it.“
Harriett Matthews received her formal training at the University of Georgia, where she received her BFA and MFA degrees. She studied with the sculptor Leonard deLonga and art history with the Byzantinist, Ljubica Popovich. Matthews’ first teaching position, after completing the MFA, was at the University of Oklahoma, where she was a sabbatical replacement in sculpture. At the end of the year she moved to Amherst, Massachusetts where she worked in the University’s music library. The following year she began her teaching career at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she started and developed the sculpture program. Matthews began traveling to Europe for the first time with a small travel grant from Colby. Travel to photograph specific sites or to draw from landscape has become the visual source for Matthews’s work in sculpture. The idea, whether taken from a monastery, an archaeological site, or a landscape, affords the format for formal exploration. This has become a never-ending source for exploring scale relationships between parts, the special interaction of the parts in space, and the implied weight in relation to the balance between the sections in the pieces. Working pieces to be cast in bronze provided a contrast to the process of welding and also set some fresh directions for the steel pieces. Although the two processes are antithetical to each other, each now influences the other formally.
Last Call for Pirate Radio Zine Entries!
As part of the Pirate Radio dance party on the 27th of June at the Wook Nook in Norway (you’ll be there, right?), there will be zines for sale where all proceeds will to go towards direct aid fundraisers, and everyone is welcome to contribute!
Centered on the idea of the text above, queer and underground culture, DJ Angel Investor is looking for photography, collage, drawing, painting, poetry, essay, or whatever ways you know how to create!
Send your work to zoeypatarroyo@gmail.com before June 20th so they can be printed before the event.
Upcoming Programming:
Community Art Night
Sundays, 2pm-5pm in the Community Room at Lights Out!
Why make arts and crafts at home alone when you can do it with others! Bring your materials or some of ours to spend some time being creative! Recent projects have included, painting miniatures, mixing DJ sets, darning and sewing, watercolor journaling, beading, painting and drawing, clay sculpting, and more!
Community Lunch + Volunteering
Wednesdays, 10am-2pm in the Community Room at Lights Out!
We are in the midst of our spring cleaning! Join us for some weeding, organizing, and cleaning of our building. Georgia makes yummy lunch for anyone who volunteered, or, wants to stop by! This week she made a fresh salad with pickled veggies, options for meat, and delish yellow dragon fruit cut as celebration. If you are interested in volunteering or stopping by for lunch
Pirate Radio
June 27th, 8pm-12am at Wook Nook, 459 Main St, Norway, ME
Many peoples and tongues, forbidden, ridiculed, forgotten. Pressed tightly and violently to the edges by the warped gravity of empire and hegemony.
But even when the field is paved over, the weeds will find the fissures. A tear in the veil begets light and rain, and when the mirror is shattered, we see that no face is sovereign in the shards. Myriad smiles beam back at us. When there's rot in the walls, our bodies forced to fit the holes, and our hands rusted to fists, was this house ever meant to hold us? But at the edges, we build. Our hearts budding from the bones of the earth, kisses burnt into the skin of the air, threading upwards through the lattice. In communion, ownership unravels. Truth and love seep in like dusk in the window, unclaimed. All things are free to those who know how to give.
Atlantic Morning
First Fridays 5pm- 8pm and First Saturdays 12pm-4pm, in Woodhull at the Safford House, Portland, ME
Dark the Night and Bright the Stars Opening Reception
July 9th, 5pm-7pm at Waterville Creates, Ticonic Gallery, 93 Main Street, Waterville
Dark the Night and Bright the Stars showcases visual art, textiles, sculpture, and traditional crafts to focus on themes of ancestry, with each artist conveying ancestral messages. Featured artists include Gabriel Frey, Raphael Gribetz, Sarah Haskell, Daniel Minter, David Lonebear Sanipass, Avis Turner, and Maria Wolff, each bringing unique perspectives influenced by Passamaquoddy, Mi’kmaq, Jewish, Afro-Atlantic, Scandinavian, and Celtic ancestral roots. The exhibition will run through October 13, 2025 at Ticonic Gallery, with special events including storytelling, a community art project, and artist talks to deepen audience engagement with the artists’ stories and heritage.
Did you get to the end of this email and think, Wow, Lights Out sure has a lot of events and partnerships going on! Us too, don’t worry. We are passionate to be working to bring together the community and artists across the state. The scope and the time we put into these events would not be possible without you. Sharing our posts on social media, volunteering with us, inviting friends to our events, and submitting work to zines are valuable and important actions to support the work we do. Right now, we need your help financially to keep this vision alive and thriving. $5, $20, $50, or $100 ensures that we can keep supporting artists, local businesses, non-profits that we work alongside, and people who are working for us. Please consider donating today and supporting our life that we are building.