FARMINGTON, ME (January 19, 2022)—The UMF Emery Community Arts Center is launching its spring semester lineup with “American Conversations: Short Films and Artifacts,” a perceptive new media exhibit by Dawn Nye, UMF associate professor of Art – New Media.
Dawn Nye, UMF associate professor of Art – New Media
The exhibit runs from Jan. 27 – March 9. 2022. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, Jan 27, from 5-7 p.m. An artist talk is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 2, at 11:45 a.m.
The exhibit and related events are free and open to the public. Masks are required at all indoor events, at all times, by all attendees on UMF’s campus. All visitors to Emery Community Arts Center will be required to register with name and contact information upon entry. This information will only be used if the university needs to conduct contact tracing in the event of a confirmed exposure to the coronavirus. Updates to COVID-19 protocols for all University of Maine System campuses can be found at https://www.maine.edu/together/community-guidance/everyone/.
American Conversations marks the start of a new body of work by Nye pertaining to the conversations and stories we tell ourselves and others every day. Through looking at formative moments in her subjects’ lives, she asks the questions: at what point do our disparate stories meet? And when does the personal become universal?
“The Bombing of Munich,” 2021, Digital Video, Animation and Sound
Combining interviews, animation and print media, her work aims to transcend traditional documentary and reveal these intimate stories in a way that honors our collective experience.
Nye has worked as a graphic designer and has also maintained a studio art practice for the last 20 years. She has exhibited and screened her work in the United States as well as in Europe. She is most interested with telling stories of conflicting human desires, best intentions, beauty and futility. She uses humor, pathos and the history of image to connect to ideas that cannot be accurately described with words. She is influenced by graphic design, film, animation, music, literature and the history of art–but also by the people she meets, the neighborhoods she has lived in and the headlines she reads.
She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in New Media and Design. Since then, her work has been screened and shown nationally and internationally in film festivals and art galleries, most notably at The Art Kitchen in Milan, The Torpedo Gallery and the CICA Museum in South Korea.
More on the UMF Emery Community Arts Center
The Emery Community Arts Center is an innovative, experimental venue for the arts in Western Maine. It features an exciting 2,500-square-foot, 109-seat multipurpose performance space with dynamic vertical foldaway doors that open onto an outdoor performance area and a 1,600-square-foot Flex-Space gallery for traditional exhibits, new media and performance art. A dramatic interior corridor offers additional exhibition space and connects the center with the UMF Alumni Theater. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Saturday: 12 – 6 p.m. (Closed Sundays and holidays)
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EDITOR’S NOTE:
Image: https://www.umf.maine.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/2022/01/RP212-028A.jpg
Photo Caption: Dawn Nye, UMF associate professor of Art – New Media
Photo Credit: Submitted Image
Image: https://www.umf.maine.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1/2022/01/RP212-028B.jpg
Photo Caption: “The Bombing of Munich,” 2021, Digital Video, Animation and Sound
The Bombing of Munich is a short animated excerpt of a 2019 interview with Josepha Worden, an 83 year old German immigrant to the United States. During World War II, she was a child, living in Munich when it was bombed by the allies.
Music by Crowander “The Walk”
Photo Credit: Submitted Image
April Mulherin
UMF Associate Director for Media Relations
office: 207-778-7081
cell: 207-491-0064
april.mulherin@maine.edu