LC Bates Museum Art Exhibition: Marks and Tracks

Please join us for the virtual opening of the L.C. Bates summer 2021 exhibition: Marks and Tracks. The event will take place on Saturday, May 8, 2021 from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EST. We are pleased that artists Alen Bray, Jeff Epstein, Natasha Mayers and Karen Adrienne will speak about their work as part of the virtual opening.

Click to join: https://colby.zoom.us/j/96161754503?pwd=–sanitized–&fbclid=IwAR18B13Qaz97tUaHzd87nogHdSVHWM2M2lSwrNbZ3M3iWP8Lr7Oor1kPVHI#successZoom Meeting ID: 961 6175 4503; Passcode: 067018

To see the virtual exhibit go to: https://web.colby.edu/lcbates/home-summer-exhibition-2021/

Millions of years ago, the glacier left marks on the stone ledge. Trees’ core bear reminders of their growth over the years. As they move through the landscape, animals and humans (their feet or their vehicles) leave tracks on the snow and on the mud, traces of their movement. Habitations and objects display marks that are witnesses of their use and history. Our bodies too are marked by life, with scars and wrinkles, or with the voluntary mark of a tattoo. Records of an activity and perhaps more fundamentally of existence, tracks and marks are at the core of art-making, as artists too leave marks with their brushes and chisels.

Marks and Tracks will showcase the work of 25 contemporary artists from Maine or with close ties to Maine that explore, in a variety of mediums, the myriad marks and tracks that appear in the natural world around us, as well as those that emerge as records of human activity and, perhaps more fundamentally, existence.

Jeff Epstein captures the layered tracks humans leave on the landscape. Roads cut through nature and tires leave burnouts on the blacktop, thus recording human movement. Abstract works by Elizabeth Awalt demonstrate how mark-making is at the core of art-making. Meanwhile, Natasha Mayers explores how our bodies are marked by life, not only with wrinkles and scars, but through the voluntary mark of a tattoo. John Meader’s photographs explore the clues that bear witness to human interactions with the environment, while Sharon Yates’s paintings consider the marks that naturally appear on animals and those they leave behind as they move through their environment.

As a non-traditional, encyclopedic museum with a focus on the natural world, the L.C. Bates is the perfect setting to explore the intimate relationship between humans and the environment, as embodied by marks and tracks.

Marks and Tracks is the result of a collaborative effort between the L.C. Bates Museum staff and two Colby College students, Whitney White and Carissa Yang, under the supervision of Professor Véronique Plesch.

For more information, call 207-238-4250 or email [email protected].