70s Catalogue

mode. Instead of pure resins poured into
molds these were painted on, colored
resins over glass cloth in multiple stages
on top of plaster and clay shapes. Like
the paintings and prints he did in this
period, these were tondos, circular threedimensional
works in saturated colors.
The pieces in this exhibition, influenced
by the early protractor paintings of Frank
Stella and also the crisp circular motifs
of Robert Indiana, evince a concern for
pattern, surface, and precision—cool,
abstract, and objective.
Berger serves as a bridge to the painters
to be considered in this exhibition as
the distinction between painting and
sculpture was being blurred in the 70’s.
There were many stylistic possibilities
Melanie Zebit in her studio in Eastport, 1974.
Photograph by Hugh French/The Quoddy Tides.
in painting one could take as a starting point. Jane Erlich was doing her own versions of
geometric abstractions using quirky optically colored bands sporting, in this example, chain
saw like teeth on a canvas tilted radically off square. Both the striping and the shaping of
paintings were consistent warp threads running through this period in the work of influential
artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella.
Bill Barrell, who was the first of the ‘70s artists to arrive in the Eastport area, painted in a
very personal, painterly style using compositional elements from Matisse and figuration from
Picasso in a decidedly funky, expressionistic, and anti-academic manner.
Lee Suta, who trained as a scenic artist for opera, stage and film, though a realistic painter,
has produced a body of work that surpasses the utilitarian in his surreal, highly imaginative
art. Suta is an accomplished draftsman and we have in this exhibition the illustrations he did
for books produced in conjunction with the Wabanaki Bilingual Education Program as well
as an oil painting depicting the Maine Coast. He captures the lyrical harmony of sea, fields,
silence, and the scents of the earth.
Another signature image of Eastport, the working water front, is depicted by Judy Colemann
in a style somewhere between Van Gogh
and Marsden Hartley, an earlier visitor to
the Maine coast. Like Hartley, she also
did loose but incisive portraits of many
of the cast of characters in the area.
Her work prefigures some of the neoexpresionistic
art of the ‘80s.
There was, in fact, a very strong
predilection towards landscape imagery
among many of these painters, not
surprising in a liminal environment
dominated by Passamaquoddy Bay’s
insistent horizon line. This was a time
Brendt Berger and Sarah Berger in Eastport, c.1975.
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