Rockland, ME—The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) will present the exhibition S.B. Walker: Nor’east beginning May 29 and continuing through September 12, 2021. Included in the exhibition are more than fifty images from the photographer’s six-year journey documenting contemporary life in Maine.
Beginning in early 2014, S.B. (Sam) Walker traveled more than 100,000 miles throughout the state in an attempt to render a truly nuanced visual record of Maine. On the face of it, a project such as this appears to be a rational, census-like undertaking akin to the vast photographic surveys conducted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In reality, says Walker, “It was more a windy road, dictated by intuition, serendipity, and strange happenings. Over the course of the project, I’ve had the privilege to spend time with 10th generation Mainers, aging back-to-the-landers, young farmers, recent immigrants, artists, ex-convicts, entrepreneurs, drag queens, affluent summer folk, fishermen, crypto-currency traders, and so on. Despite the richness of these encounters, I am left with more questions than answers. To define a time and place is in some sense an impossible task, though, as an artist, trying to articulate what cannot be described is perhaps the best kind of sport.”
S.B. Walker (b. 1987) lives and works in Rockland and Portland, ME. His works have been exhibited internationally and are in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Peabody Essex Museum; Fitchburg Art Museum; Smith College Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brown University; The Thoreau Institute; and Paul Sack Photographic Trust. His projects have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, Photo District News, Lens Culture, Hyperallegic, and Aperture, among other publications. His first monograph, Walden, was published in 2017.
The exhibition is supported in part by a Bicentennial Project Grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as individual donors.
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Location: 21 Winter Street, Rockland, Maine. Hours: May 28 – September 12, 2021, Monday – Saturday, 10am to 5pm; Sunday, noon to 5pm. Closed Federal holidays. Admission: $8; seniors $6; children under 18 free, CMCA members free.
Below:
S.B. Walker, from the forthcoming exhibition Nor’East, to be shown summer 2021 at Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland.
