Rockland, Maine, February 1, 2017 – The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) is excited to announce its 2017 spring exhibition schedule at its new location at 21 Winter Street, Rockland, Maine. CMCA’s striking new building, designed by internationally acclaimed architect Toshiko Mori, opened to the public on June 26, 2016.

The spring exhibitions at CMCA will showcase the work of artists Sam Cady, David Driskell, and Mark Wethli. A public reception celebrating the exhibitions will be held on Saturday, February 18, from 4 to 7pm.

The exhibition David Driskell | Renewal and Form presents the renowned artist’s most recent body of prints, including woodcuts, linocuts, serigraphs, and monoprints. David Driskell has been a summer resident of Falmouth, Maine since 1961. He was first introduced to the state while attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1953. When not in Maine, Driskell lives in Hyattsville, Maryland. The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, honors the legacy of David C. Driskell – Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Art, Artist, Art Historian, Collector, Curator, and Philanthropist – by preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture.

Boldly drawn, intensely colored, and richly patterned, Driskell’s imagery in his prints, as in his collage and mixed media works, derives from his childhood experiences in rural North Carolina, love for the Maine landscape, and appreciation for African art and textiles. David Driskell | Renewal and Form is on view through May 11, 2017, and is sponsored by Greenhut Galleries, Portland, Maine.

On view through May 14, 2017, is the exhibition Mark Wethli | Piper Cub. The exhibition features a life-size sculpture of the popular aircraft of the same name. Hand-made by the artist, Piper Cub is a tribute to Wethli’s father, who restored and flew the actual aircraft and helped build this sculptural version as well. Constructed of wood and aircraft parts, with Piper Cub, Wethli poses questions of the structure and nature of its existence. Is this an actual airplane, a copy, an artwork, or a combination of all three?

Mark Wethli is a painter and public artist who lives and works in Brunswick, Maine, where he is also the A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Art at Bowdoin College. Continually asking the question of how and why we make creative work, Wethli has explores many forms in his art, including painting, sculpture, and installation, and has embraced both abstraction and realism.

Also opening on February 18, 2017 is Sam Cady | Parts of the Whole. The exhibition is the first full-scale retrospective of the artist’s work, encompassing a broad selection of his emblematic shaped and rectangular paintings created over four decades, as well as a sampling of drawings, studies, and recent “fragments”–painted abstractions culled from the remainders of the shaped canvases. Ever tuned to seeing aesthetic possibility in the most mundane of objects, Cady turns these discards into explorations of pure color, form and edge, adding another “part” to the whole.

Living and working in Friendship, Maine, for many years, Sam Cady paints between the extremes of trompe l’oeil and abstraction. He is nationally known for his shaped paintings that closely follow the shape of actual objects. His relationship to coastal subjects and influence from pop, realism, and minimalism, allow him to create icons that show the viewer the world from an acute perspective. The exhibition is on view through May 21, 2017.

A fully illustrated catalog with a foreword by CMCA Director Suzette McAvoy and essay by David Raymond, Director, McCoy Gallery, Merrimack College, accompanies the exhibition. In addition, to mark the occasion of the exhibition, the artist has made a new, limited edition print, gull view, Sand and Little Sand, low tide, morning. The catalog and print are available for purchase exclusively through CMCA.

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CMCA’s new facility, located in the heart of downtown Rockland’s arts district, provides more than 5,500 square feet of exceptional exhibition space for the presentation of work by contemporary artists. The complex also includes a gift shop featuring the work of Maine artisans and designers, an ArtLab classroom, and a 2,200-square-foot public courtyard displaying a monumentally scaled sculpture, Digital Man, by Ogunquit-based artist Jonathan Borofsky.

CMCA is open Wednesday-Saturday from 10am-5pm, and Sunday from 1-5pm. Admission is $6; free to members. For more information please visit cmcanow.org. NOTE: CMCA galleries will be partially closed for installation between February 6 – 17, 2017.