ROCKLAND—Those who like their art to be a little edgier than sailboats and lighthouses found the Steel House South's first art show, “the Crooked and The Wide,” to be right up their alley. Nathan Davis, Steel House's co-founder organized a show of local artists and designers, which promised "explicit drawings, vulgar political cartoons, algorthmically-processed pornography and an army of robots.

Not exactly a venue for the pearl-clutchers, but this art, design and technology collective did not disappoint.

Davis's contribution was algorthmically-processed pornography. On a computer screen, the outlines of an explicit image were just beginning to manifest before what looked like a giant Etch A Sketch altered the image.

"It started off as kind of a joke," he said. "I'm a computer programmer and in the past, I've done algorithmically processed photos of typical Maine scenes like lighthouses and beaches where the program overwrote the image and altered it. I thought, wouldn't it be funny if the source material was unfit for showing to the public? So, I created a program that randomly downloads explicit pictures and alters them. The results were actually pretty remarkable in that they transformed material that otherwise didn't have much artistic merit into something that really merited careful contemplation."

Jared Paradee, an artist who has contributed his ideas to Hot Pink Flannel theme parties, as well as the Mini Maker Faire in Camden, had two exhibits at the show. Anyone who remembers him as "The Robot Overlord" in a giant robot costume from the 2014 and 2015 Maker Faires, would be pleased to see the original costume hanging, surrounded by a miniature Robot Army he'd created out of paper and cardboard.

"It started as my own project and then I had the opportunity to share it with others at the Faire," he said. "I also did a internship at ArtVan, a mobile arts therapy organization in Bath, which gives kids access to arts. the Robot Overlord costume debuted at a fashion show fund raiser with recycled materials and I just happened to have the perfect costume to work with."

Paradee's other collection of found objects, oddities, retro cereal boxes and vintage pulp magazines featured a mounted puzzle of Mr. T as the centerpiece.

"I got this puzzle at a thrift shop and some pieces were missing, but oddly, a third eye puzzle piece was in the box, so now Mr. T has a third eye on his forehead,” he said. “People really responded to this piece."

To the right was a collection of paintings of Jesus Christ, positioned so that all of the Jesus figures were looking at one another.

"I have always enjoyed accumulating kitschy religious paintings, they just kind of made this fortuitous conversion," he said.

Becca Shaw Glaser enjoyed the opportunity to push the notion of what constitutes art with her exhibition. Among her paintings of women and gender-nonconforming forms, she had an interactive piece where people could pull envelopes stamped with a wood carved printing of a vulva off the window and look inside.

Each envelope offered a random collection of messages inside.

Pulling one of the window, the one I opened said “”Who does your art serve?”

This happened to be the perfect question for the artist herself.

“When I first learned of the call out for a transgressive art show, I was excited because I have not felt that my art would find a home here in Midcoast Maine,” she said. “My experience is that most art is geared toward the rich tourist with all of these class politics involved. I was thinking about the $300,000 paintings being sold in Rockland and how inaccessible that is for most of us in this time of extreme income inequality. I’m really interested in having the art scene in Rockland continue to connect with locals by becoming more friendly and open to the public, including students and low-income people by making classes and entrance fees sliding-scale or free, and other creative ways."

Kitty Winslow wasn’t sure if she was channeling the novel 1984 when she made her two mixed media pieces, but she might as well have. Both feature some kind of survellience camera “box” affixed to a jarring grid of lines with the organic element of a tree branch attached. “Over the fall and winter when there was just so much in the news about surveillance, is when I started to make a trilogy of these,” she said. “One of them is called ‘I’ll be watching you.’ They’re purely from my subconscious.”

The exhibition came down the weekend of June 10, but Steel House South promises more alternative and outsider art shows in the future. For more information about the artists visit: http://www.rocklandsteelhouse.com/

All photos by Kay Stephens

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com