The Outbreak Project exhibition at the Charles Danforth Gallery, the fine arts component of the wider collaborative Outbreak Project and Plunkett Poetry Festival, explores this year’s academic theme “Outbreak” through the visual arts.
The exhibition, selected by a jury of art leaders drawn from community arts organizations and the University of Maine System, draws from works submitted through an open submission process for the show.
The exhibition will circulate, conceptually and physically, around an installation and performance work by Maine artist and UMA lecturer Patricia Brace. Brace’s work, “Stage” will be a constructed plywood cubic space installed within the recessed center of the Danforth Gallery. With audiovisual equipment installed above, performance artists will choreograph and perform live-streamed dance-based works that respond to the restraint and connection of the physical form of “Stage” and, metaphorically, our moment of outbreak. Artists Patricia Brace, Liz Rhaney, Heather Lyon and Riley Watts will perform during a live-streamed performance April 9. Brace will perform again in the structure on April 30 during the Plunkett Poetry Festival, after which she and all the performers will participate in a live question and answer session via Zoom.
Brace’s project will be realized through the support of numerous groups, including UMA’s Women Invigorating the Curriculum and Cultivating Diversity (WICCD) Committee, the Plunkett Poetry Festival, the Danforth Gallery, the UMA College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office, and through a grant from MECA.
The Outbreak Project in the Charles Danforth Gallery will open April 6 and close April 30 after the events of the Plunkett Poetry Festival.