Wednesday, March 24, 2010

MMW Offers Scholarships

Check out this article from the Bangor Daily News... If you know any Maine high school students pass it on!

Media Workshops sets $10,000 scholarships


By BDN Staff
BDN Staff

ROCKPORT, Maine — Maine Media Workshops has launched a new scholarship fund for Maine high school students attending MMW’s Young Artists Program. Partnering with Camden National Bank, MMW has committed $10,000 for Maine Youth Scholarships in 2010.

The Young Artists Program, which takes place in June, July and August, provides opportunities for students ages 14-17 to study photography, filmmaking, multimedia and acting. More than 30 one- and two-week classes include introductory and advanced course work as well as specialized workshops in editing, screenwriting, animation and special effects.

Teens from across the country travel to Maine every summer to study with world-class faculty members and work with peers from a wide range of backgrounds.

Over the past three years, while 150-200 students have participated in the program, only 10 each year have been Maine residents. Community outreach has been a primary goal of the school since it transitioned to a nonprofit organization in 2007. The new scholarship fund will make it possible for more Maine teens to participate in the Young Artists Program.

“Camden National Bank’s commitment to opportunities for youth and cultural enrichment for the community make them an ideal partner for this program,” said MMW President Charles Altschul. “We’re grateful to [the bank] for providing critical support for the scholarship fund in its inaugural year.”

The experience of a workshop opens up for young people not only the chance to expand their knowledge of a favorite hobby, but also the opportunity to discover possible careers in creative industries. Many MMW high school alumni present examples of the work they produce in Rockport as part of their college applications or for employment.

“Sometimes all a student needs is an opportunity, a chance to express themselves and to be immersed in a creative environment,” said Greg Dufour, president and chief executive officer of Camden National Bank. “We’re pleased to partner with MMW to help Maine youth realize their dreams, which will help fuel the creative economy of Maine.”

Application is by letter of interest, evidence of financial need as demonstrated on the application form, accompanied by legal guardian’s most recent tax return, and three letters of recommendation. The deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. April 23. Awards will be announced the week of May 16.

Visit www.mainemedia.edu for complete course descriptions and details on registration and scholarships. Contact MMW directly by e-mail info@theworkshops.com or phone 236-8581.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Pecha Kucha Rockland - March 26th

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pecha Kucha Night Travels to Lincoln Street Center for Arts and Edcuation

Midcoast Magnet and the Lincoln Street Center for Arts and Education (LSC) have teamed up to host the first 2010 Pecha Kucha Night in Midcoast Maine on Friday, March 26 at 7:15pm at Lincoln Street Center, located at 22 Lincoln Street in Rockland. Nine individuals have been chosen to show 20 images for 20 seconds each, a fast-paced and engaging program to be followed by discussion and socializing. Pecha Kucha Night is open to the public and doors open at 6:30pm. There is a $5.00 admission fee and light refreshments will be served. Seating is limited to 280 seats on a first-come, first-served basis.

The following nine individuals have been chosen to present at the March 26 event:

Jim Macdonald (marquetry/inlay artist and furniture maker); Kevin Johnson (photo archivist at the Penobscot Marine Museum); Cythia Motain McGuirl (printmaker and painter); Jesse Watson (permaculture designer); Mark Kelly (mixed media artist); Jim and Amy Grant (Good
Karma Farm and Spinning Co.); Brian Willson (font designer); Ben Potter (mixed media artist).

The MC for the March Pecha Kucha will be Joshua Woodman. Josh is a native to Rockland and a self-taught artist with a passion for creating.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for chit chat) was conceived in Japan in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network and show their work in public. It has grown to include more than 180 cities worldwide, thus answering a global demand for a forum where creative work can be easily and informally shown. The unique format of 20 images discussed in 20 seconds each keeps presentations concise, the interest level up and gives more people the chance to show.

Founded in 2004, Midcoast Magnet (www.midcoastmagnet.com) brings people together to develop innovative projects that support creativity, livability and economic sustainability in Midcoast Maine. As a non-profit organization dedicated to vibrant culture, entrepreneurship, and making connections socially and professionally, Midcoast Magnet is a proud partner in Pecha Kucha Night.

"All of us who are part of the Lincoln Street Center community are pleased to welcome Pecha Kucha and the talented individuals who help to make the Mid-Coast community such a special place to live. There is a vibrant creative energy here at the center, one that begins with our
own studio artists and to that we're excited to be adding the truly unique creative energy that Pecha Kucha night provides,” says Dale Schierholt, President, Board of Trustees, Lincoln Street Center for Arts and Education. The Lincoln Street Center provides the arts for everyone, offering affordable classes, wide-ranging exhibitions, studio space to working artists and special art-related events and performances. Lincoln Street is a supportive environment where people
of all ages, backgrounds and abilities can study, create, and present all forms of art. Through educational programs, opportunity outreach and exhibitions, Lincoln Street Center brings people together and enhances community life.

For questions about the upcoming Pecha Kucha event, please send an email to rockland@pechakuchamaine.org or call Midcoast Magnet board member Mary Bumiller at 207-949-9155.

Midcoast Magnet... Who, What, Why, How

Midcoast Magnet develops leaders in support of innovative projects that foster creativity, livability and economic vitality.

We're a non-profit organization of people dedicated to vibrant culture, entrepreneurship, and socially and professional networking.


Juice Conference: The Juice Conference is bi-yearly conference held in Camden. Juice is a forum for the exchange of ideas, the sharing of success stories, and the development of strategies for Maine’s future. Juice connects leaders of the creative economy to foster growth and prosperity. By weaving together the arts, technology, and entrepreneurship, Juice inspires innovation by bringing talented people together from widely different backgrounds to build on Maine’s traditions. Juice 3.0 November 11-12, 2011 www.juiceconference.org

Pecha Kucha: Pecha Kucha Night is an internationally recognized event based on a unique presentation style in which artists, designers and other creative individuals share twenty images, or each image. Pecha Kucha Night Rockland spans the midcoast, from Thomaston to Belfast, and strengthens community by bringing people of all ages together to consider ideas and images presented by various creatives in our area.

Build Green Maine: Build Green Maine was originated by Midcoast Magnet with the intention of connecting practitioners in the various areas of green building and renewable energy with each other and with homeowners and other stakeholders in Maine’s. BGM is currently going through a transformation. To learn more about it contact George Callas.

Juice Boxes: We want to keep the conversation moving in the creative economy and between Juice conferences. In support of this effort we will be producing quarterly events, called “Juice Boxes”. Each Juice Box will be crafted with specific sectors of the creative economy in mind, at least two sectors, bringing them together, having speakers, panelists, a dialogue or theme to be continued from Juice, the ability to walk away with a new or improved skill, and ample time to network. The sectors focused on, but not limited to, are: the arts, entrepreneurship, investment, fundraising, networking, technology, and innovation.

Wanna Social Network… In Real Life?: We held some focus groups last year and it became apparent to us that the 20/30 demographic in Midcoast Maine wants to be more involved. We have designed some events to bring them together to socialize, network and tell them more about the events we have coming up. We had the kick off event in March at Billy’s Tavern and it was a great success! We will be having more. These events are not meant to exclude, but actually the opposite – they’re meant to include! Learn more on our website or facebook.

Monthly Networking Events: Midcoast Magnet will broadcast events happening within the community and invite interested parties to go to the event together. At least one of our board members will be there to welcome and network with you. The outings range from art walk nights, plays, techy gatherings, and more. Let us know if you have an event you would like to promote and we will add it to our calendar and put it in our newsletter.
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Many Ways To Get Involved...

• Start coming to events! Email info@midcoastmagnet.com to get on the list. You will receive updates on upcoming MM events, as well as other happenings in the Midcoast and beyond.

• Stay tuned for the new www.midcoastmagnet.com - we will be announcing it soon.

• Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/midcoastmagnet

• Join our board: The Midcoast Magnet board is always expanding and always looking for people that want to contribute. We would love to meet with anyone interested! Email Amber Heffner and come to our next board meeting.

• Join a committee: We welcome volunteers for all of our programs! You don’t have to be a board member to join a committee. Contact the Committee Chair for more information.

Pecha Kucha: mary.bumiller@bangor.com
Build Green Maine: georgemcallas@msn.com
Juice Boxes: kimberlycallas@mac.com
Monthly Networking: jasiecostigan@yahoo.com
Juice 3.0: aheffner@littleharbortech.com
Fundraising: skip.bates@bangor.com
Social Networking: jasiecostigan@yahoo.com

Monday, March 8, 2010

What Is Beauty?

Donna McNeil, Director of the Maine Arts Commission graced us with her poise and perspective at the Built Energy Forum last January (2009) at the Augusta Civic Center. There she gave an address that is absolutely worth publishing again!

Written and Presented By Donna McNeil

Look around, everything outside the natural world is man made and all of it designed. We are at a global tipping point where the future has the possibility of being radically different from the past, a moment where design is activism. On the eve of the historic election of Barak Obama we were asked to help him remake the nation “block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand. Infrastructure is suddenly a buzzword, so alluring it could be the name of new cologne. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration so titillating it could be the latest gizmo from Steve jobs. Truth is, designers have been on the track of globally responsible design for at least a hundred years. Now is the moment…..
In the next few minutes I will re-present ideas gleaned from folks much brighter than I, reassembled and juxtaposed with the hope of providing stimulus for todays topic.

My presentation revolves around three axioms:
truth is beauty, form follows function and necessity if the mother of invention.

In 1919, Walter Gropius, a German architect, founded the Bauhaus school in Dessau. The aim of the Bauhaus was a "unity of art and technology" – beauty and truth if you will -- to give artistic direction to industry. The design philosophy behind Gropius’ architecture was to retain the importance of function and still remain aesthetically pleasing, form follows function. A respect for materials and a regard for being severely economic are ideas which set the standard for modern architecture.

Responding to events in Germany in the 1930’s including the repression of the work at the Bauhaus, Gropius moved to the United States and became Chair of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. In 1945 he founded The Architects' Collaborative, one of the most well-known and respected architectural firms in the world. Walter Gropius was a great theorist who brought art and engineering together exemplified by his functional and simple architectural style, His theories are still practiced and evidence themselves as particularly relevant and timely today.

Form follows function:

Buckminster Fuller, one of our world’s first futurists and global thinkers was born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts. By 1927, Buckminster Fuller pledged to work always and only for all humanity. This personal pledge led him to address the largest global problems of poverty, disease and homelessness. He realized early on that by examining global problems in the context of the whole system—the whole planet—he would have the best chance of identifying large-scale trends that would allow him to anticipate the critical needs of humanity. This “big-picture” approach evolved into a comprehensive assessment of humanity’s global situation—where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going.

Fuller called his approach to global problem-solving “Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science.” The central principle of this approach is “doing more with less,” that is, securing the maximum life-sustaining performance achievable per each pound of material. Simply put, by using the resources on Earth most effectively, we will have enough for everyone to enjoy a high standard of living. This is the principle Fuller dubbed “dymaxion.”

Fuller’s comprehensive research into our global situation led him to pronounce the Malthusian world-view of human overpopulation, resource depletion, and eventual self-destruction to be absolutely in error. Due to advances in technology that Malthus had no way of foreseeing, humanity, he believed, has developed the capability to provide adequate food, shelter, and energy for every man, woman, and child on Earth.

Great scientists and great artists are not only subjective and pure but also objective and responsible inventors. To Fuller’s mind some of the great artists of our time are Henry Ford and Albert Einstein. Because of a comprehensive outlook, their art reflects many disciplines, especially science. Fuller often stressed the importance of blurring the artist's and scientist's roles and envisioned that these two opposite sides of the cultural pendulum's swing would eventually come together. He was perfectly aware that this was not an entirely new thought, as he himself quoted Leonardo da Vinci, who he called a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, inventor of the wheelbarrow and other useful instruments from the speaking tube to the mechanically gyp-proof whore-house, and who wrote: "the further art advances the closer it approaches science, the further science advances the closer it approaches art."

Beauty is truth

The problem of how one may navigate contradiction and complexity is central for those working in art and technology. Fuller provides a model that points to integrity as being key in the work one builds. Although he professed a lack of interest in how his projects looked, he believed that a project at completion was beautiful if it possessed integrity, which to him was the key to aesthetics. Again, form follows function, truth is beauty.

"The great aesthetic which will inaugurate the twenty-first century will be the utterly invisible quality of intellectual integrity; the integrity of the individual dealing with his scientific discoveries; the integrity of the individual in dealing with conceptual realization of the comprehensive interrelatedness of all events.

If everything that can be seen or imagined can be known and made, then everything one makes is worth contemplating. We live in an artificial environment we have collectively created and must collectively use. The appearance of the world as one has made it should be a source of spiritual and intellectual pride.
Look at our built environment with attention and clarity and a sense of its place in the economy of the whole. Gone are the days when craftspeople worked a lifetime on a project to be completed 400 years hence, completely satisfied that they were making an honorable contribution to their society and contentedly delivering to the future without hubris.

Necessity is the mother of invention

During the years of the Great Depression in America, modernist designers developed products and lifestyle concepts intended for middle-class—not elite—consumers. Modernism combined International Style, functional efficiency and sophistication with a respect for consumers’ desires for physical and psychological comfort -- ideas paralleling Gropius’s and Fuller’s architectural design concepts. New Englanders seem to be especially reluctant to embrace modernist design. Living with an abundant historic building inventory, when the opportunity presents itself to build new, they often opt for imitating the past. There exists a deep insecurity around major investment in untested design and enormous security in time honored methods. The predisposition to comfortably appropriating the past does not offer our communities the chance to define this century, this amazing moment. How does rooting ourselves steadfastly in the design concepts of our forefathers identify this age or move us forward with authentic response to the particulars of our age?

In flush economic times, consumers don’t covet the concerts you hear or the books you read, they covet your possessions and then they go and buy cooler versions. In the recent giddily hyper financed years, Michael Cannell writes in a January article in the New York Times, signature architects and designers came to be known by their first names –Rem, Phillipe, Zaha – and they were photographed as prolifically as Bono in new design hotbeds like Miami and Dubai. Brooklyn designers became the apotheosis of indie cool. Now, with those slick Miami condos sitting empty, designers are rethinking their priorities just as American designers took the depression as a call to arms. It was and is a chance to make good on the Modernist promise to make affordable intelligent design for a broad audience. In the scarcity of the 1940’s, Charles and Ray Eames, for example, produced furniture and other products of enduring appeal from cheap materials like plastic, resin and plywood and Italian design flowered in the aftermath of WWII. As with every facet of life, there will be less design, but better design. Design will be vetted for efficiency and usefulness. The economic condition will be the curator. Designers will shift their attention from consumer products to the more pressing needs of infrastructure, housing, city planning, transit and energy. Artists are coming up with new ways of looking at and solving complex problems and if the new administration delivers anything like a works progress administration (WPA) we “could be standing on the brink of the most productive periods of design ever. “

Modernism’s great ambition was to democratize design. Ikea and Target have shown that the battle for good cheap design can be won. The emphasis will shift to greater quality at affordable prices. Expect to hear a lot more about open source design and cradle to cradle, a concept developed by William McDonough and Michael Brangart that calls for cars, packaging and other everyday objects to be designed specifically for recycling so that their parts and materials are used and reused without waste.

So. YOU, voters, consumers, taxpayers, citizens, make your choice


I Died for Beauty Emily Dickenson

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.


Now is the time to resurrect our responsibility to truth and beauty, to integrity and global sustainability.. Fear is neither reason nor philosophy. Avarice a destructive motivator.

We cannot not change the world


Michael Cannell writes in a January article in the New York Times,
Reed Kroloff, director the Cranbrook Academy of Art.