Help us celebrate the little things in life.

Mayo Street Arts is pleased to present Miniatures-- a group show featuring small-scale work of local artists:

Amanda Petrozzini
Amanda Saker
The Art Department (Abbott P., Tyler W., Mike L., Brenda S., & Destiny L.)
Bevin Holmberg
Bess Welden
Bridget McAlanon
Caroline James
Jesse Wendleken
Jill Dalton
Jill Osgood
Justin Fell
Kellie Ryan
Kris Lape
Kyle T. Randall
Louise Packness
Mike Libby
Robin Carlson
Savanna Sullivan

Join us for the opening reception on Friday, March 3 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM at Mayo Street Arts. 

Magnifying glasses will be available for the perusal of tiny art objects. There will be popcorn and libations.

The exhibition will be on view until Friday, April 28. Gallery hours are on Fridays & Sundays from 12-4, excluding Sunday, March 5; Friday, March 17; Sunday, April 2; Sunday, April 9; & Sunday, April 23. 

Pictured: detail from Half Full's "sweater, plant, orange juice, beer," 8" x 8 1/2, gouache and colored pencil on discarded book cover, 2023, $400.00

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Amanda Petrozzini is an arts administrator and collage maker living in Portland, Maine. She is the co-director and member of the Double House Arts Collective - a studio arts program for artists with and without disabilities to build community and work toward arts access and inclusion. Amanda has worked at the intersection of arts and creative wellness for several years and is committed to empowering artists and using art as a tool for healing and resilience. Amanda discovered collage in 2020 as a way to help transform emotions and stay grounded. Collage became a joyful daily practice that she continues today and shares with others. She loves the accessible and collaborative nature of collage. She also views recycling objects as an important goal of making art in a world that discards so much. Searching for or unexpectedly coming across materials has added an extra layer of challenge and fun to her process. A receipt, envelope, old ticket stub, and pages from vintage books all become materials for her collages. It’s a new way of looking at things that encourages her to be resourceful and mindful. @owlcatcollage

Amanda Saker's appreciation of the human figure is found flowing throughout the entirety of her work. While much of her current work is based in painting, Amanda’s background is in 2D character animation. Feeling the movement, where the weight falls, and the overarching gesture of the subject is at the root of her work. She enjoys the fluidity of figurative work and works to capture the light and shadow by carving into each piece, rather than just adding. As a former veterinary professional, she has an overarching interest in anatomy/ecology and brings this knowledge into her work. Amanda is an artist living in Portland. She received her BFA in Game Art & Animation from MECA in 2020. When not creating, Amanda can be found tide-pooling and marveling at the Maine coastal ecosystem accompanied by her dog, Rye Bread. @amandasakerart

Abbott Philson (The Art Department) is an outsider artist who lives and works in Maine. He particularly enjoys printmaking, as well as drawing and painting. He is best known for his "Screen Printed Cowboy." @theartdepartment_maine

Bevin Holmberg is an artist living and working in Falmouth, Maine. She obtained a B.F.A. in Studio Art from James Madison University, with a concentration in photography, focusing specifically on alternative processes. She also holds a Master of Education in Art from the University of Minnesota and has studied at Säterglänten Institute for Slöjd (traditional handicrafts) in Insjön and Stockholm, Sweden. While in Minnesota, she lived and participated in the Tilsner Artist Cooperative in St. Paul, worked as a sign painter, and taught drawing lessons to elementary-age students. "In my art practice, I am illustrating aspects of life that one might find interesting. I see personality in nature, and I am especially interested in pattern. For me, art does not need to be complicated if it brings someone joy." @mermaidmeadow

Bess Welden is primarily a theater-maker - playwright, performer, educator, director, and producer - but recently she has been creating visual art as part of Death Wings Project, a web of visual and performing arts offerings that promote open dialogue about death, loss, and grief. Death Wings are an invented end-of-life ritual through which she collects paper, fabric, and fibers and assemble them into a set of wings in order to memorialize a person who has died/is dying or to honor a difficult life transition (e.g. my break-up with Diet Culture and healing from eating disorders) or to mourn and amplify a big public issue or challenge (e.g. the losses of the COVID-19 pandemic). She began her wing-making process by creating a human-sized set for my father which became an essential part of her grieving process leading up to an immediately after his death. Now she makes sets of mini-wings and teaches others how to make them as a way to creatively and compassionately explore the many layers of loss and grief. 

Brenda Smith (The Art Department) is a Portland-based artist who has been creating art through local studios in the Portland area for the past 10 years. Brenda’s work focuses primarily on animal portraits, nature scenes, and New England landscapes. Brenda enjoys using watercolor and acrylic paint to portray vibrant features of local New England scenery and wildlife. Brenda's work was displayed at Bombdiggity, Northgate Plaza Starbucks, and several additional local galleries and shops in the Portland area. Brenda currently works out of the Art Department, located on Congress Street in Portland, where you can find additional works of hers on display and available for sale. @theartdepartment_maine

Bret Woodard is "Funny first, sad second." He is an artist & freelance photographer based out of Portland, ME, who graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design in 2010 with degrees in Photography & Sculpture. He has been rejected from many prestigious galleries, museums, and film festivals and happily marches on. @brettyw

Bridget McAlanon is an introvert who lives on the edge of the woods and coax images out of the dreamworld... @Bridget3001 @inventingtrees

Caroline James is an artist currently living in Portland, Maine whose drawings, paintings, and felted objects explore the intersections of spiritual, emotional, and geological landscapes. Common motifs include houses, ghosts, flowers, creatures, and little guys. @mudmist

Destiny L. (The Art Department) is a Portland-based printmaker and artist who has been actively making art in the area for the last 10 years. Destiny’s work focuses primarily on animal portraits and nature scenes. Destiny enjoys using ink-based printmaking, acrylic paint, and colored pencils to create her character drawings and prints. Destiny draws inspiration from Pokemon-style character drawings and uses cartoon-style drawings to portray her original characters. Destiny has a passion for Pokemon, going for walks, and creating artwork! Destiny currently works out of the Art Department, located on Congress Street in Portland, where you can find additional works of hers on display and available for sale. @theartdepartment_maine

Half Full's work is about the absurdity, honesty, and courage of the everyday. As a public school art teacher, he constantly deals with the juxtaposition of inspiring students' uniqueness and creativity in a sometimes homogenizing, bureaucratic, and sterile environment. He hopes to bring out the humanity of people, while also poking fun at the standardization and conformity our culture encourages. @half.full_

Jesse Wendelken completed his BFA in cinema, photography and visual arts at Ithaca College's Park School of Communications in 2021. Based in New York City and Portland, Maine, he has a liberal arts background in both filmmaking and art history producing a unique style that infuses intricate lighting and digital tableau techniques with psychology and traditional art aesthetics. His creative photography combines these elements in surreal, theatrical scenes with recurring themes of obsession, melancholy, and disquietness. A longtime interest in multiple self-portraiture was celebrated by a first prize win by the National Society for Photographic Education’s Self-Portraiture competition. Jesse also earned a spot on Stillwater’s Portfolio Review in 2019. @jessewendelken

Jill Dalton is a mixed-media sculptor and jewelry maker living in Portland, ME. She earned her BFA in Sculpture from the Maine College of Art. Her work has been exhibited at the DUMBO Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH, the Fuller Museum in Brockton, MA, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, ME. She has shown her work locally at Filament Gallery, June Fitzpatrick Gallery, and Whitney Artworks. 

Jill Osgood is a painter, illustrator, book artist, and educator who lives on Portland’s beautiful West End. Growing up in the woods of New Hampshire helped to foster a sense of wonderment and respect for the natural world that has guided her perspective as a person and defined her work as an artist. She is also a Maine Master Naturalist and continues to share her knowledge of both art and Maine’s rich natural ecology through teaching and workshops on nature journaling and book arts with both children and adults. @JillOsgoodArt

When Kellie Ryan is not being an artist, which is ostensibly most of the time, she is helping people navigate their sexuality as a somatic-focused sex educator and bodyworker. These photos are from a past life in many ways when she was a photographer with a macro lens camera that used something called film. 

Kris Lape is an artist of many things. She lives on Munjoy Hill where she paints, makes jewelry, and creates fabric items. She loves color and design and is especially appreciative of handmade work. Kris Lape Designs has been in business for 30 years. A Maine, homegrown collection of unique craftwork. @krislapedesigns

Kyle T. Randall started his career as a professional artist in 1987, the same year that he was born. In 2008, he took his first drawing class and discovered that art skills can be improved with practice. Since then, he has spent countless hours drawing and practicing printmaking. In 2018, he made my first painting and fell in love with the medium. Today, he makes watercolor illustrations of the world around him as well as the imagined. @ktrmakesart

Louise Packness has been making collages for years, taking images from art books and magazines and "accessorizing" and transforming them in the process. 

Mike L. (The Art Department) has been an artist at The Art Department for four years. He likes working with colored pencil and acrylic paint to create landscapes. When Mike was creating his miniatures he played around with size by creating a vast forest and a giant truck on teeny canvases. @theartdepartment_maine

Mike Libby graduated from RISD with a degree in Sculpture in 1999, and has attended the Vermont Studio Center, been an artist-in-residence at the University of Maine at Orono, exhibited through the CMCA in Maine, Peabody Essex Museum, Rutgers University, Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Shows, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston. He has shown locally in Maine, regionally, nationally and internationally, at Robot Kingdom in Japan and galleries in the UK, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Sweden, and Australia. He's worked with Neiman Marcus, Hasbro, Anthropologie, and Edmund Scientific, has made work for book covers for Tachyon Publications, Hachette Publishing, and Chronicle Books, and for 10 years has created awards for the Science Fiction Writers of America in addition to being in private and public collections and fulfilling unique commissions. He works from his studio and live in Southern Maine where he also teaches at nearby colleges. @bymikelibby

Robin Carlson (SnailQueen14) is a Portland-based miniature artist specializing in polymer clay sculptures. Carlson describes ‘play’ as being one of the primary motivators in her artistic process. “My world, the things I am passionate about and what matters to me at the end of the day, is a place where ‘play’ is taken seriously and everything is a puzzle. Problem-solving becomes silly and fun.” The results are indeed silly and fun— snail shells made of sushi, ice cream sundaes, or gruesomely dislodged eyeballs. They harken back to gift shop miniatures, to emojis, and in some instances to comics and gross-out toys of the 80s and 90s. Carlson says that she’s been making toys since she was around 6-7 years old, and has always enjoyed collecting things. Over time she has grown to enjoy creating her own toy collections, and exploring variations on a theme. By working from a constant starting point— in this case the snail— she enjoys exploring the infinite possibilities for play. @snailqueen14

Savanna Sullivan is a painter from NH and has been living in Portland ME since 2020. She graduated with a BFA from MECA+D in 2016. Previously engaged with portraiture and figurative work, Savanna has been exploring color and abstraction in recent years. She has continually return to miniatures in her work. Obsessed with the idea of a hero’s journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell, and the small and large journeys we experience throughout our life, she attempts to visualize openings and endings of journeys - the physical or psychological thresholds we must pass to grow and share with others. Portals, doors, and windows as well as water and holes are symbols of voids into the unknown and the curious surrender of moving forward.

Tyler W. (The Art Department) has been making art at The Art Department for 5 years. He loves creating colorful art like the Tiny Gold Star with Rainbow Stripes on view at this exhibit. He is currently working on a series of books about his original character Emily. @theartdepartment_maine