Saturday, April 20th | 3-4pm | In-person at CMCA
Join us for an illuminating in-person discussion between Good Morning Midnight artists Sam Finkelstein and Duncan Hewitt, facilitated by curator Hilary Irons. The conversational format will offer artists the chance to ask one another questions, discuss their practices, and to speak to their work’s connection to image, memory, and material. Through an exploration of the narratives that drive the artists’ initial concepts, and a look at how these narratives attain distance as the materiality of process takes over, audience members will gain special insight into the thematic and formal processes of these two accomplished carvers. At the end of the talk, the audience will be invited to join the conversation for a Q & A session.
About the panelists:
Sam Finklestein
Sam Finkelstein (they/them) (b. 1992, New York) lives and works in Rockland, ME. Sam bought their first hammer and chisel on the way up to visit a friend in Thomaston five years ago and has been in Maine collaborating with rocks ever since. Sam’s practice considers regenerative models for community, the power of ceremony, and interdisciplinary methods of looking / seeing. Sam’s budding interest in performance and public art is motivating new explorations in sculpting sound and circus. Sam studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Summer 2022), and has exhibited work at Andrew Reed Gallery (Miami, FL), Duplex (New York, NY), Interloc (Thomaston, ME), and Personal Space (Vallejo, CA) amongst other galleries and institutions.
Duncan Hewitt
Duncan Hewitt was born in New York City in 1949 and grew up on Long Island. Having graduated from Colby College (BA) and the University of Pennsylvania (MFA), he worked at a Maine boatyard and foundry before becoming a Professor of Art, now Emeritus, at the University of Southern Maine. His work has been shown with prominent twenty and twenty first century artists. In 2016, the Portland Museum of Art presented Duncan Hewitt: Turning Strange, a selection of Hewitt’s work from the previous twenty years. In addition to a dozen solo shows (four at the ICON gallery) he has completed five public art projects.
About the curator:
Hilary Irons is a Maine-based painter and curator. She is gallery and exhibitions director at the University of New England and is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery. She received an MFA from the Yale School of Art in ’08 and a BFA from Parsons School of Design in ’02, and she has attended residencies at the Albers Foundation, Skowhegan, MacDowell, the American Academy in Rome, the Pace House, Hewnoaks, the Canterbury Shaker Village, and the Surf Point Foundation. She has written for The Chart, Art New England, Maine Magazine, and other publications.
Header image: Sam Finkelstein, Threes, 2023 foraged Adirondack granite, 7.25 x 6.25 x 8”