When walking into an art exhibit, one observes a carefully curated presentation.
Pieces are arranged deliberately, sometimes moved multiple times to achieve the most cohesive organization. Lighting has been adjusted and then readjusted. And artists like Paul Myoda have spent days installing sculptures only to test them, and test them once more to make sure they function precisely to offer audiences a flawless display.
But the public doesn’t always see what goes on behind the scenes.
On Oct. 2, the University of Maine Museum of Art will open its fall exhibitions: “Celebrating Photography in Maine: Selections from the Bruce Brown Collection”; “Natural History: Traer Scott”; a rotation from the permanent collection; and an exhibition featuring sculptures by Paul Myoda.
In the days leading up to the opening, the museum was closed to the public while the exhibits were installed. During that time, Myoda was hard at work installing his interactive light sculptures.
On a recent afternoon, a table outside UMMA’s Zillman Gallery was filled with hand tools and Myoda wore a baseball cap and a look of determination as he carefully put together his pieces for audiences to view.
“Usually in the case of installation artists or people using new media, the artist has to be here to do it … Paul is creating a whole experience for people as they enter,” director and curator George Kinghorn said.
Myoda, a Japanese-American artist based in Providence, Rhode Island, creates sculptures investigating the transformative qualities of light.
“They’re all based on historical nimbuses, or halos, in different history paintings — typically religious paintings, but you see them in all different types of religion,” Myoda said of this exhibition.
He creates his sculptures by using computer-based technologies, like 3D printers, as well as hand tools.
“For many years I’ve been working with light as a material for sculpture. People often think of it as immaterial, but it is actually material that you can sculpt and shape and form,” Myoda said.
There’s beauty in the science of his work, which is made obvious once the lights of the gallery are turned down and his sculptures light up to cast forms on the surrounding walls — intricate designs made perfect through painstakingly crafted materials and a deliberate and systematic approach to art.
Myoda’s sculptures are both aesthetically pleasing and thought-provoking pieces, but more importantly, they’re interactive.
“As you approach, the light changes — it gets brighter and it moves … I hope [audiences will] pay attention to how they’re affecting the responses of the sculpture,” Myoda said.
In addition to Myoda’s works, the museum will feature pieces by Traer Scott, a photographer dedicated to single-exposure digital images. The photos catch people’s reflections in the glass walls of natural history museum exhibits, and although the photographer does not use double exposure or Photoshop, the images present in an otherworldly fashion.
The new exhibitions open on Oct. 2. The museum is open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is free.
