BANGOR, Maine — If you happen to be walking in downtown Bangor late this week and early next, and you smell pancakes cooking on a griddle, you’re probably just imagining things.
But it won’t be from lack of trying on the part of Allison Melton, one of 10 University of Maine graduate students who is taking part in the first Freese Pop, a set of art installation pieces that will be set up in the former Freese’s Department Store building.
The students, who are part of UMaine’s new Intermedia MFA program, will have an opening show from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 12. Freese Pop will be closed Saturday but will be open 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday and 3 to 6 p.m. next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
The installations explore themes relating to the building, its history and the artists’ relationship to the community. Melton’s installation, “Waiting for Paul,” will feature a pile of pancakes that could reach 15 feet in height. By that point the pancakes won’t be edible — Melton has spent all week making pancakes and even recruited a few friends to help her out — but they are a key element to the installation.
The Paul of Melton’s project is lumberjack Paul Bunyan, whom, legend has it, was born in Bangor. Melton herself stars in the installation as Flapjack, a woman waiting for Paul to visit her. To pass the time, Flapjack makes pancakes … and more pancakes … and well, you have to see it for yourself.
“Lumberjacking is a big part of Bangor history,” said Melton, a native of Pottstown, Pa., who earned an undergraduate degree from UMaine in 2006 and also works as a lumberjill for the Great Maine Lumberjack Show in Trenton. “In terms of relating to the area of the Freese’s building, [the building] was a living legend in its heyday. It’s taking this whole thing, tying it together with Paul Bunyan.”
Other students are using graffiti, old clothes, wheat grass, a large, white cube in which people can walk, and even interactive digital technologies to show the historic connections between the Freese’s building and the community.
Freese Pop originated in a class on installations which is being taught by visiting professor Vanessa Vobis. One of the assignments was to make an installation off-campus, and Vobis said the students wanted to use a building with historic connections to a downtown, such as Freese’s.
“They’re learning to work in site-specific locations,” Vobis said. “The students are forced to work with the architecture and the history of the building, and negotiate the work in relationship to that. It’s a key factor of this show.”
Melton said the students are very conscious of the building’s history.
“We’re all kind of going into it with this image of what [the building] used to be, in our minds,” she said. “Right now it’s not bright and cheery, and everything’s neutral, and I think we’re all playing off the aspect. It’s not super bright and cheery. It’ll be interesting to see how things will come together.”
Freese Pop starts on the third floor of the Freese’s building. For more, visit http://freesepop.wordpress.com/
990-8287