the Big Art class at Camden Hills Regional High School

Fri, 02/21/2025 - 3:07pm

Row 1: Levi Thomas, Luka Wienges, Eliot Condon, Isaac Dutile. Row 2: Jasper Hackett, Serenity Fairfield, Rosa Vinci, Rose Fishman. Row 3: Madison Surbey, Cassie Middleton, Levi Thomas, Cara Rothwell. Row 4: Jack Fifield, Maddie Bennett, Carolyn Brown, Mason Deane. Row 5: Abigail Strout, Carver Emory, Brian Leonard, Simon Bishop. (Photo courtesy Page Gallery)

CAMDEN — Each February, Page Gallery gives its walls over to the children of the community for its Youth Art Exhibition. This year's prompt is to create a piece of art depicting a neighbor.

On a frigid January morning, artist and gallery owner Colin Page visited the Big Art class at Camden Hills Regional High School to kickoff a collaborative mural project for the exhibition.

Prominently displayed and measuring more than 7.5 feet high and 6 feet wide, the mural is a featured work in the show. This year's selection is after Marguerite Zorach's Land and Development of New England (1935), a seminal painting in the Farnsworth Museum's collection. Born in 1887 in California, Zorach studied art in Paris. She participated in the Armory Show of 1913, and was the only woman exhibitor in the Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters in 1916.

"Using striking patterns and bold color, her paintings are responsive to the social issues of the day, and reflect her observations about the lives of women," said Page Gallery, in a news release.

A 2022 Women of Vision exhibit at the Farnsworth Museum described her Land and Development of New England painting as celebrating " . . . the resources of Maine, its families, forests, fertile fields and fishing, all abundantly rich with economic opportunity."

"The focus of the Big Art class is on collaborative work, large-scale imagery and installations, so the mural project was a perfect first assignment," said Carolyn Brown, Camden Hills Regional High School art teacher.

Each student was assigned a panel to replicate their part of the image in the medium of their choice, focusing on matching color and value. Over two weeks, the twenty young artists worked on their section of the painting, each beginning with a background of torn newspaper or book pages and then painting over the collage with varying levels of opacity. Like pieces of a puzzle, once complete, their individual efforts would be hung together to reveal the full painting.

The Youth Art Exhibition will be on display through February 28. Gallery visitors are invited to participate in activities stationed throughout the exhibition including, a community map, danish paper heart craft, and sketching activities.