Alumni news

Hewnoaks alumni are out in the world doing amazing things! We’ll keep a running list here. To see alumni news from 2022 click here, or from 2021 and before, click here.

(If you are a past participant in our program, please drop us a line so we can celebrate what you’ve been doing.)

2024

February

Ashley Page‘s installations form the core of, Kindred Futures: Through Our Eyes, a group show at Waterfall Arts in Rockland, ME. On view from Jan. 26 – March 1, with an artists talkback at 4 pm on Feb. 10. 

Three of Nathaniel Meyer‘s paintings appears in Spring/Break Art Show in Los Angeles. On view from Feb. 27 to March 3. 

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney’s busy few months continue with We Are What We You Eat at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, focused on food preparation and sharing as an empowering practice of re-appropriation and agency. Opening Friday, Feb. 2, from 7PM – 11PM. They also have work in ApexArt’s group show, Death Rights, at Communion in San Antonio, TX, which runs from Feb. 24 to March 23. 

Erin Dorney has a new book object out, featuring a found poem made from the book Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews. The Usual Arteries from Illuminated Press (Ithaca, NY), is available for order now!

January

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney‘s work appears in Perennial Hug, an exhibition envisioned as “a group hug, gathering together a cross section of generous makers and thinkers in order to highlight the ways in which visual forms of expression reach out to the viewer embodying the act of communal meaning making.”  Opening Reception: Thursday, Jan. 25th, 2024, 5:00-8:00 pm. On view until March 29 at Circle Contemporary North Shore in Glenview, Il.

Nicole Duennebier‘s debut solo exhibition in LA is set for next week at Nicodim Gallery LA, running from January 13 to Feb. 17. “Faint of Heart” revolves around themes of nature and ornamentation, exploring the underbelly of dread that clings to our innate desire to arrange and display it.

2023

October

Shaina Gates‘s show, TESTSET, is on view at 3S Artspace, in Portsmouth, NH, until November 12. The show features her disctinctive “lumen-printed” artifacts, produced when light shines through origami-folded photographic sheet film, themselves artifacts. The show includes work Shaina made while in residence at Hewnoaks this summer.

Explore the children’s book artistry of Coretta Scott King and Caldecott Honor winner, Daniel Minter in an exhibition entitled A Blue: Daniel Minter and the Layered Narrative of Illustration at L/A Arts in Lewiston, ME. The exhibition is on view through November 10, 2023.

Julie Poitras Santos co-curated Liveable Worlds, her valedictory exhibition asdirector of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design. The exhibition focuses on how artists, designers and community members have long seen environmental disruption as a moment to reimagine and rebuild. Featured artists include Hewnoaks residency manager and alumna, Pamela Moulton. Opening Reception October 6, 5-8pm. More information about the exhibition, events, and a symposium, November 3-4, at the ICA website. On view: October 6 – December 15, 2023.

In further Julie Poitras Santos news, her project SOIL CULTURE was also awarded a Collective Futures Fund New Works Grant. SOIL CULTURE is a collaborative project centering on a public walk and a map of scientific and creative research that facilitates participant discovery of the hidden narratives of soil. The goal of the project is to address the growing problem of waste and pollution on and within urban soils. 

An exhibit Kat Zagaria Buckley curated, Embodying Softness/Excavating Delight, featuring artists Jackie Milad and Libby Paloma, opens at the University of Southern Maine Art Gallery on October 12 at 6 pm. A performance and artist lecture will begin at 6:30. The show runs through December 9th. 

Paintings by Will Hutnick, including one he created while at Hewnoaks this summer (pictured above), appear in a group show, Black and White, at Bernay Fine Art (Great Barrington, MA). The show is up until October 22.

August & September

John Gardiner, Gina Siepel and Lin Lisberger have work in This Is Out of Hand, which explores the history of carving as an artform and is open till Sept. 16, at the Institue of Contemporary Arts at MECA&D in Portland, ME. Each will be making appearances, either as performers or panelists, in the associated Carving Symposium that runs from Sept. 11-13th.

Congratulations to Pamela Moulton, Asha Tamirisa, Olivia Spring and Brian J. Evans for winning $10,000 Project Grants from the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation!  Grants will support bold, compelling, risk taking work in and outside of the standard exhibition venues.

Rebecca Turkewitz‘s debut story collection, Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023) received a starred Publishers Weekly Review and was recently reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. Read excerpts from the collection in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and Debutiful.

Brian Smith‘s solo show, That Queer Fish, is on view at the Parsonage Gallery until Sept. 18 in Searsport, ME. Brian’s show imagines a not-so-distant future in which land creatures undergo transformative adaptations in order to thrive underwater. Check out this insightful review in Boston Art Journal.

We Are The Warriors, produced and directed by David Camlin and Megan Grumbling, debuted at the 26th annual Maine International Film Festival – and left with highest honors, winning Tourmaline Prize for best feature made in Maine!

June & July

Nancy Andrew‘s first solo exhibition in her home state, Homebodies, brings together diverse threads of her artistic practice, including drawing, collage, video, and sculpture. On view at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, ME until September 10.

Caitlin Shetterly‘s debut novel, Pete and Alice in Maine, received a rave in the New York Times. Listen to Cailtin’s interview with NPR’s Scott Simons here. Check here for upcoming readings and author events. 

Dead Gowns have announced their list of summer tour dates.

Roberley Bell‘s solo exhibition Where Things Set at the Brattleboro Museum of Art in Battleboro, MA is on display till Oct. 6.

Meghan Gilliss‘s short-story, Intelligent Creatures, appears in Guernica this week. Meghan’s debut novel, Lungfish, is also the selected novel for Read ME 2023 (July 12!) and Maine’s adult selection for the 2023 National Book Festival.

Anne Buckwalter has work in the group show, Levity, at Alexander Berggruen in New York City (July 13 – Aug. 29). Opening reception from 5-7pm on July 13.

Tessa Green O’Brien‘s paintings are showcased in two simultaneous solo shows, I’m Back At My Cliff, Still Throwing Things Off at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, ME (July 7th – 29th) and Gentling, at Sibyl Gallery, New Orleans, LA (July 7 – September 9).

May

13FOREST Gallery in Arlington, MA hosts Tender Burden, Nicole Duennebier’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, from May 20 – July 14. Join Nicole for an artist talk on Saturday, June 24, 4-6pm.

Nancy Andrew‘s first solo exhibition in her home state, Homebodies, brings together diverse threads of her artistic practice, including drawing, collage, video, and sculpture. The show is on view at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, ME from May 27 – September 10.

Veronica Perez‘s hair-based interdisciplinary sculptural work, which might just as easily be characterized as “fiber art, community art, or even, at times, horror art” will be on display in shadow / echo / memory, a solo exhibition of Veronica’s work at University of Southern Maine from May 11 – July 29.

The book launch for Jennifer Lunden‘s, American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life, takes place Monday, May 8 from 7:00-8:30 PM at Portland, ME’s Mechanics’ Hall. Jennifer worked on the book, a blend of theory and essay that probes the nation’s maladies through the lens of Jennifer’s lifelong struggle with chronic fatigue disorder, during her residency at Hewnoaks. She will appear in converation with another Hewnoaks alumna, Chelsea Conaboy.

April

Leah Sobsey will be giving a talk in San Diego, CA as part of @mediumsandiego at San Diego City College at 4pm. The subject: her work and exhibition In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers, which was on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History earlier in late 2022.   

Anne Buckwalter has work on display at Expo Chicago, in Chicago, IL, from Apirl 13-16. 

WriteME, an epistolary poetry project, kicks off in April with a series of FREE workshops taught by some of Maine’s most beloved poets, including Maya Williams and meg willing, in Eastport, Farmington, Portland, Maine and online on April 22 and 29. 

March

Eli Nixon has a bevy of shows, performances, and happenings, some co-presented with Greta Bank clustered around the end of the month and beginning of the next:

• • • FRIDAY (3/31) 4:30-6pm at SPACE Gallery in Portland, ME: NATUREDRAG WORKSHOP on expanding drag and embarrassment as key to transformation.

    • SATURDAY (4/1)  2-4pm at Speedwell Projects in Portland, ME PRIMORDIAL/ FUTURISM conversation with Greta Bank & Eli inside a volcano!

    • SUNDAY (4/2) at 7pm, doors at 6:30 at SPACE Gallery in Portland, ME: HORSESHOE CRAB HOLIDAY Local band, Jesus Cactus opens (and maybe closes) this evening of Eli’s suitcase theater proposal for a new/old holiday.

Hannah Waielewski and Kristen Stake (as Imaginary Island) will be performing the dance piece, You Are Going to Be Healed, at SPACE gallery in Portland, ME on Thursday, March 30 and Friday, March 31 at 7pm. Their last public performance of this work was at Hewnoaks’ mid-summer bash, Wild Light. 

Catch Jung Hae Chae at the Association of Writing Professionals annual conference in Seattle on March 11!

 Join Maine Writers and Publisher’s Alliance for an evening of literary socializing, readings, and AWP conference counterprogramming, Alternative Writers’ Party, at 7pm on March 8 at Portland’s SPACE Gallery. Readers will include Hewnoaks alumni Jennifer Lunden, Maya Williams, and Rebecca Turkewitz.  

Ashley Page‘s installations appear in a joint exhibition Earthly Bound at Fountain Street Gallery in Boston. On view until April 2. 

Curated by Ryan Adams and Rachel Adams, the group show Euphoria at Alice Gauvin Gallery in Portland, exhibits work by Bee Daniel, Karen Gelardi, Spenser Macleod, Hector Magaña, Chel and Will Sears. March 3 – April 2. 

Riley Watts (performing with Little House Dance), Devon Kelley-Yurden and Coco McCracken will all appear in Cabinet of Wonders, Portland’s Mechanics’ Hall’s annual benefit, on March 2. 

February

Samuel James started a Substack and in addition to his amazing writing, research, and truth telling, subscribers get a 15-minute micro-concert at 8:45am on the first Friday of every month.

Dead Gowns has released their show schedule for the next few months: THURS – 2/23 – Underground Lounge (Belfast, ME); SAT – 2/25 – Oxbow (Portland, ME); 3/15-3/19 – SXSW (Austin, TX).

Selections from Michelle Hauser‘s photographic project, Meeting Hall Maine, are currently on view through April 30th at Maine’s State House in Augusta.

January

Hewnoaks alumni Brian Smith, Evelyn Wong, Pamela Moulton and Nate Luce are all featured in the Center For Maine Contemporary Art’s Biennial in Rockland, ME. The exhibition, featuring dozens of Maine’s leading artists, is up from January 28-May 7. 

Greta Bank‘s solo show Scorched Earth, a retrospective of 17-years of work exploring the seductive glamor of consumer culture in a toxic global capitalist ecology, is on view at University of Maine Farmington’s art gallery from January 26 – March 10. 

Antonio Rocha performed A Slave Ship Named Malaga at this year’s FUNDA Fest. 

Jimmy Viera‘s Geocache installation adorns Portland, ME’s SPACE Gallery window gallery from January 6 – Febuary 24. 

Check out Gabriel Chalfin-Piney’s article, QTVC Live! and the Roots of Hustle Culture, in Sixty Inches from Center.

To see 2022 alumni news, click here.

To see alumni news from 2021 and before, click here.