FRANKLIN STREET ART SPACE

FRANKLIN STREET ART SPACE
A contemporary art gallery focusing on emerging and established practicing artists whose work demonstrates a willingness to experiment with form, medium, materials, concept and subject matter.

FSAS is a joint effort by Russell Persson and Tammy Ackerman. The gallery opened in October 2007.

Visit our Flickr to see photos of openings and events. Open late for Biddeford's ArtWalk every last Thursday of each month.

RENT OUR GALLERY: looking for a beautiful venue at reasonable rates for your next class/workshop/luncheon/rehearsal dinner? Rent our gallery...contact us for more information.

June brings exciting things to FSAS...a guest co-curator Alex Rheult, an inaugural solo show by a hometown architect-turned-artist Chris Betjemann, and a guest artist from the north with an impressive bio, Joël Le Vasseur.

CHRISTOPHER BETJEMANN BIO
Christopher Betjemann III lives in Biddeford Maine and has had a career centered about architecture for the past 15 years. His formal education included a master’s degree in architecture and urban planning and a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. Betjemann has avidly been drawing, painting, and sculpting since childhood. This is his first solo show in which Betjemann illustrates the connection between the inhabitable environment of his built world through principles of fine art.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Within the realm of art and design, less is more. I attempt to invoke a minimalist clarity while trying to create a sense of place and spirit within a moment. In a complicated world that spins wildly around us, humankind has lost its connection with its humanistic side as well as with earth and nature. I am trying to remind us of the quiet, spiritual moment that exists when light travels through the moist air of a forest glade or the quietness of a gentle snowfall. My pieces use materials honestly and proudly based upon their individual talents and whenever possible, I use reclaimed materials.

Christopher Betjemann

JOËL LEVASSEUR BIO

Joël LeVasseur received his MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts, in Montpelier, Vermont in 2004. He is currently based in Mid-Coast Maine, Damariscotta, where he hosts biennial projects in his alternative gallery space, and teaches gelatin printmaking. His work has been shown at SOHO20 in Chelsea, Gallery 500X in Dallas, drawing room in Portland, and included in CMCA’s Biennial.

THE PRIMORDIAL CYCLE

All tribal legends tell of time when nothing was except the swell of seas. ~ And, then, a land was formed. A planted seed fulfilled the need for life. ~Trees grew high, surviving storms until an Adam’s axe decided it was time to die. ~ And from decay another seedling springs – and wakes a second day.”

– e.w.oestreich (May 2008 commentary on an art project being developed by Joël LeVasseur.)

Joel Le Vasseur

Many aspects of my work are about the desecration of landscape, continuum of man-made landscape, interrupted forests, abandoned or temporarily placed objects in landscape, encroachment, and more recently, technology in rural landscape—all reminders of loss of a natural environment. In contrast to my paintings depicting trajectories of scars across a tortured landscape, this series of gelatin monotypes, through subtle symbolism, focuses on the Primordial: Origins, Void, and Chaos, of what could be fragments of a “vanishing” earth. Through my ongoing investigation and art practice, my intent is to provoke, gently, how we quickly become accustomed to man-made landscape, no longer pristine – nor “wild”.

Gelatin Printmaking is a low-tech, non-toxic form of printmaking, without the use of a press, created by Fran Merritt, co-founder of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in Deer Isle, Maine.

OUR GUEST CO-CURATOR

Alex Rheault, our co-curator this month, lives in Portland Maine. She recently accepted the appointment of Chair of the Illustration Department at Maine College of Art, where she teaches drawing, history, and fashion illustration. Rheault initiated drawing room as a collaborative, movable project to build community through drawing and an extension of her multidisciplinary practice. Rheault shows with Filament Gallery in Portland and Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in New Hampshire. She examines and uses language, social architecture, proximity, and perception through drawing, printmaking, writing and installation.

drawing room¹s mission is served when I am able to work with others to overlap disciplines, participate in the generation of dialogue, offer new experiences of art, and challenge artworld systems and relational norms.

GALLERY SCHEDULE

DECEMBER : Biggest Little Art Show

MUSIC SCHEDULE

NOVEMBER 8: CANCELLED. David Wax Museum with South China 8:30pm.

REVIEWS

PORTLAND PHOENIX: "Mind architect : Sara Crall's expert hand is on show at Franklin Street Art Space" by Ian Paige, November 19, 2008

PORTLAND PHOENIX: "When ordinary is extraordinary : Gil Corral’s questions and answers in Biddeford" by Ian Paige, September 25, 2008

PORTLAND PHOENIX: "An Informal Formalism," a review of Jared Radding's show by Ian Paige of the Portland Phoenix, 02/20/08.

REVISED REGULAR HOURS:
SATURDAY NOON - 6P AND BY APPOINTMENT

FOR MORE INFO CALL 207 229 3560 OR EMAIL.
41 FRANKLIN STREET • BIDDEFORD ME 04005 • MAP