Lord brings ‘heartland’ to drawings in exhibit
PRESQUE ISLE—The University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Reed Art Gallery is featuring Headway/Heartland by Emilee Lord through Friday, Dec. 16, 2016.
The exhibit features 25 graphite, charcoal and ink drawings and several small sculptures by Lord centered around the idea of homeland.
Lord grew up in Northern Aroostook County and has carried with her its stillness and its wild vastness – windswept fields of snow, evergreen forests, winding country roads and big skies – and has incorporated this into her show.
She said Headway/Heartland attempts to capture the essence of what it is to be a girl from the north country, what it is to have left it behind, and how she might compress these experiences into maps of her headway and her heartland.
“There are patterns in our field of vision, both internal and external, that allow us to reason about and begin to mark or trace our lands and our paths,” Lord said. “Drawing, as with cartography, attempts to translate this immensity of information into marks and gestures; lines, topographies, and travel plans. This series addresses homeland, mapping, patterns, memory and absence to talk about identity, belonging, and the traceable human gesture of marks we leave in our wake.”
Lord earned her bachelor’s degree in dance and sculpture from Bennington College in Vermont in 2004 and her master of fine arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has had exhibitions at a wide range of galleries and arts centers across the country and as far away as Iceland. She has been awarded residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Vermont Studio Center, and in Sheridan, Wyoming and Reykjavik, Iceland.
“Unpacking this body of work was a treat,” Reed Gallery Director Hyrum Benson said. “As I unwrapped each piece, I was enamored by her line quality, her unified theme and the subtleness that she employs in her drawings. We are lucky to be able to feature Emilee Lord’s work.”
All are invited to view the show. The Reed Art Gallery is located in the Center for Innovative Learning (the library). The gallery is open Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m-10 p.m., Friday, 7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., and Sunday, 5-10 p.m.
For more information, contact Benson at hyrum.benson@maine.edu.
