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[Cliff Kucine](http://www.cliffkucinephoto.com ) is a Portland-based photographer who tackles every creative endeavor with energy and passion. Some of his clients include: All You Mag., Auto Europe, Communicators, Pulp + Wire, Ethos marketing, Godesignlabs, Discovery Channel, Entrepreneur Mag, FHM magazine, Futures Magazine, GO-Fish, Kemp-Goldberg, MMC, NL partners, Cary Medical, Getty Images, Parade, Parents, PC World, Simmons & Company, THD, Thermo, Time Publications, USPS, and The Wall Street Journal.

“We are born thru an embryo into this world, where do we go next, what’s our future? Where will we be!! Immersion!!”


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Cliff Kucine, "underwater Embryo" - archival photo image, 33" x 40" - $1950

CeCe Camacho was born in Sacramento and lives and works in Brunswick. She has lived in Yemen and Gabon and has worked in Nigeria, Cameroon and Rwanda. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master in Education from Harvard University, and has completed 63 credits towards a BFA in painting at Maine College of Art. For the past thirteen years since leaving MECA, her work has addressed issues of identity and her Mexican heritage. This work, influenced by engagement in war, specifically the Iraq War, investigates the psychic archiving of our emotions of pain and grief and memories of loved ones via time and space. She is investigating how mark making onto a canvas can house time as well as our physical selves. She is also fascinated with how the act of silence can convey both a gesture of respect and/or protest and how accessing states of solitude can guide us to a state of transcendence.

“I am interested in how the act of immersing oneself in a state of quiet contemplation—the remembering—can collectively access and archive our emotions ‘to preserve the memory, to preserve time.’”


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CeCe Camacho, "Remembering. (Let’s Take a Moment of Silence). 2,853 souls." - graphite & charcoal powders on cotton rag paper, 69" x 55" - $3000

[Amy Hagberg](http://amyjhagberg.com ) began her career at Kaji Aso Studio in Boston, a cooperative art studio space, working primarily in watercolor and pastels. After canoeing down the Mississippi River in the summer of 1983 with a group of fellow artists, Amy felt the need to return to the water. For the next two decades, she worked in the marine industry, graduating from the Landing School in Arundel Maine in both Boatbuilding and Yacht Design, and earning her 100-ton USCG Captain’s License. In 2002, she fell in love with the magic of the darkroom and went back to school at the University of Southern Maine, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in photography and currently works as the Administrative Specialist for the Art Department. She received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University’s College of Art and Design in 2014. Amy’s current work utilizes handmade pinhole cameras that use photographic paper for the negatives. This process mirrors the life experience: sometimes a horrible failure occurs, and sometimes a surprise gift is bestowed. The sculptures she photographs are totem interpretations of the duality of perception. 

“Water is the giver life and sustainer existence. Swamp House emerges from the water sheltering a tree that would otherwise grow on the shore. Swamp House is an island, an outside-in reflection of the world that it has sprouted from, completely immersed in, yet harboring, its environs. Immersion is the state of being deeply engaged to the point of being one.”



Amy Hagberg, "Swamp House" - pinhole camera image from 8” x 10” paper negative, archival pigment print, image of multimedia sculpture, 39" x 41" - $500

[Anita Clearfield](www.anitaclearfield.com ) is a painter and video installation artist. She is a founder of LumenARRT!, a project that creates large-scale video projections for progressive causes and is featured in the 2019 CMCA Biennial Exhibition. Her awards and grants include a Silver Hugo, Chicago International Film Festival; First Place, San Antonio Cinefestival; Juried Selection, Festival of New Latin Cinema, Havana, Cuba; and an American Film Institute (AFI) Independent Filmmakers Grant. She holds an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown. 

“Disgracer 3 (After Goltzius) Tantalus is based on one of ‘The Four Disgracers,’ prints by Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617). Like his rendering of Tantalus’ eternal punishment (food and water recede as he reaches for them), my modern disgracers are women immersed in a world where their goals remain just beyond their grasp – under the ‘glass ceiling.’”



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Anita Clearfield, "Disgracer 3 (After Goltzius) Tantalus: We Sacrifice our Children and Still the Glass Ceiling" - oil & ink on canvas, 34" x 60" - $2000

[Carter Shappy](https://www.studioshappy.com/) is a printmaker, multimedia artist, and Vermont native currently living and working in Portland. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art and is the print shop manager at Running with Scissors Artist Studios. Recent projects include a collaborative art and science residency at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, which concluded with the installation of a two-story installation titled Colorcosm, on view at the laboratory headquarters in E. Boothbay since July 2016. Shappy's work is inspired by his interests in natural phenomena, perception, and psychedelia. By embellishing and transforming mundane elements of our lives, he encourages a reevaluation of peripheral or commonplace things and experiences. Working in a variety of mediums, he is frequently drawn to intersections in printmaking, painting and installation.

“The Elder is an intricate web of self-similar, branching figurations. These seemingly repetitious yet random patterns parallel fractal-like geometries found throughout the natural world. We are saliently and tangibly immersed in the visual language of The Elder.”

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Carter Shappy, "The Elder" - cut out archival inkjet print, 48" x 33" - $3000

[Olga Merrill](https://olgamerrill.com) is a Russian abstract photographer based in Maine. Photography was a hobby for her father, and she remembers the smell of chemicals from being with him in the darkroom. In 2015 she got a photo camera and her view of the world became different through lenses. She creates painterly, mysterious, intriguing artworks that bring imagination. Her dreams and her feelings are in her works. Abstract photography, with endless creativity and experiences using different techniques and tools, became a passion for her, and she is happy that she found the way to express herself through this style. 

“The artwork ‘Phantom’ symbolizes a multilateral idea of ‘Immersion’: the tall sailboat represents the idea of ‘back to the era’ or vision of a century ago; the cruise represents immersion in the mystery and adventure of the journey; and the way I photographed and created this artwork makes it look like the sailboat is literally immersed in the sea, a misty atmosphere symbolizing immersion in nature of this world.”




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Olga Merrill, "Phantom" - archival pigment print on fine art paper, 28" x 38" -  $1000 framed, $650 unframed

[Sarah McCullough and Lydia Brown](https://www.instagram.com/sarahandlydiadraw/) began working together in 2012 during an experimental drawing course at the University of Southern Maine. After given the semester prompt that students were to create three works of entirely their choosing Sarah and Lydia found themselves perplexed unsure of what to do next. Following weeks of subsequent procrastination they decided to team up. Using leftover Sharpies and one very large sheet of paper, they decided to “just see what happened.” The end result was more than one collaborative piece but a continuing partnership that embraces a spontaneous, “stream of conscious” mode of creating. Their work aims to set a raw but conversational visual tone, blurring their individual styles and narratives. 

“Mermaid plays with our powerful human impulse to detect narrative patterns, immersing the viewer with intimate details, sheer visual mass, and the overall cyclical composition of the piece.”




Sarah McCullough & Lydia Jane Brown, "Mermaid" - sharpie on paper, 85" x 88" - $3000

[Robert E. Hammond](https://www.instagram.com/artby_rob/) was born and raised in Portland before moving to California as a young man to explore his interests as a self-taught student of the arts. Rob has always been deeply interested in the effects of color, light, texture, and illusion. Many of his paintings include the use of sand, glitter, various metallic paints, pumice, polymer gels, paste, and caulking set onto a framed board, constructed primarily with salvaged lumber. After many years working primarily with acrylics and experimenting with the use of various mediums, he was able to create an exciting new dimension and unbridled personal expression into his work by adding fluorescent and phosphorescent paints, resulting in a magical explosion of expression when illuminated under a blacklight. A lifelong interest in photography led him to begin photographing his works under fluorescent blacklight. This has recently opened an entirely new and exhilarating medium of design and composition he had not yet explored. Patterns of raw organic images jump off the screen with vibrant color and endless possibilities. With an inexhaustible desire and passion to create and explore multiple forms of art, Rob continues to produce exciting and fresh new images, injecting a living and breathing emotion into all of his
work.

"A single sphere immersed in the fluid of life. Comes static."


Rob Hammond, "Static. A single sphere." - fluorescent, phosphorescent, acrylic paint on canvas, 36" x 36" - $1850

[Peg Becksvoort](https://www.viewbug.com/member/PegBecks) has been interested in photography since childhood. She started out using her mother's old Kodak Hawkeye camera and bought her first camera with Top Value stamps. Progressing through a variety of cameras, she tried any and all that came her way. She taught photography at Montgomery College as an adjunct instructor the year before she moved to Maine. Her photos have appeared in a wide variety of publications including: Down East Magazine, multiple school yearbooks, and most recently in the book Shaker Inspiration by Christian Becksvoort. She has exhibited at The Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine; the Village Store in New Gloucester, Maine; Edna & Lucy’s in Pownal, Maine; and the Maine Photography Show. A National Board Certified Teacher Librarian, she was the 2015 Maine School Librarian of the Year. Peg retired from teaching in 2017. Photography forces Peg to look and to remember that it's all about light and seeing.

“What is there, is not there, falling in and out of sight, obscured by moisture, immersed in evaporation.”


Peg Becksvoort, "Drift Away" - photograph, 28" x 40" - $600

[Jack Montgomery](http://www.jackmontgomeryphotography.com) is a photographer living on the coast of Freeport. His interests in photography are boundless but have focused on portraiture and landscape. While he has explored many genres between those bookends, he is in large part a 19th century romantic trapped in the wrong era; he would have been happy to have born long ago with enough skill to be a proficient painter. In particular, but not exclusively, he is very drawn to the painters of the Pre-Raphaelite and the Hudson River schools of painting, and has equal admiration for many of the great photographers of the 20th century including Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and, Sally Mann. Beauty, mystery, ambiguity, texture, half written stories... these are the grist for his imagination and what he hopes to convey in his photographs. Jack’s photographs are in permanent collections of several museums in the US and abroad, but his greatest pleasure is in seeing them used for book covers, beginning with To Kill a Mockingbird several years ago.

“Immersion... That state from which we exist from conception to birth and thus one that is often associated with new life (baptism, blessings with Holy Water). And also, in many instances, it is the means of death.  My photograph Ophelia is a clear homage to the Millais painting of the same name. But I hope it may stand on its own as a metaphor for ..... Well, my intent is of far less importance that whatever meaning the viewer may attach to it. I mean to invite others to create the story behind it from their own imagination.”

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Jack Montgomery, "Ophelia" - inkjet print, 37" x 48" - $1200

[Reggie Burrows Hodges](https://www.instagram.com/reggiehodges/ ) is a South Portland-based artist, bass player, tennis specialist, and chegan living in Maine. He majored in film at the University of Kansas and then moved to New York to become an actor and to pursue his passion for music. Currently an adjunct professor in digital media at MECA, he is exploring his multi-media passions.

“As one thing comes to the surface something else is left behind. Time moves forward with resilience and backward conscious of hope and promise. ‘Citation’ explores through visual metaphor cultural references a motto of activism, identity, and legacy.”


Reggie Burrows Hodges, "Citation" - acrylic & pastel on canvas, 60" x 60" - $2300

[Anna Dibble’s](http://annadibble.com) paintings have been featured in solo, group, and invitational exhibitions in museums, cultural centers, and galleries for over forty years. Dibble was a freelance writer, music composer, and co-concept designer for multiple animated shorts on Children’s Television Workshop’s Sesame Street and Electric Company. She has designed and created sets for opera and theater and taught workshops in both visual art and writing. In the 1980s and 90s, she worked in art departments of commercial and independent animation studios in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan. In 2018, she designed and launched a three year collaborative public art/science initiative, The Gulf of Maine ECOARTS project, which focuses on the changes in biodiversity in the Gulf due to climate change and other human impact. The initiative’s first venue will be Bigelow Science Laboratory in Boothbay, Maine in the summer of 2021.

“This painting reflects human immersion in the natural world. The ice cores tell us we started altering the earth’s atmosphere around the time of the industrial revolution. At the same time our species became more urbanized and as technology evolved, we began losing our crucial connection to the land, water, weather, and the other animals. The confluence of these two inceptions is the source of our current ecological crisis. In reality, we are still very much immersed in nature. We’ve just sped up too fast to pay attention, to notice. My paintings attempt to address both the disconnection and connection with the planet - a personal mythology that’s based on my love of the natural world and deep concern for its future.”




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Anna Dibble, "Between Blue & Cloud" -acrylic & flashe on canvas, 24" x 30" - $3000

[Andy Curran](https://www.instagram.com/andydogstar/) is a graduate of the University of Southern Maine and has focused his creative and entrepreneurial efforts locally, using regional subject matter in his paintings and keeping a strong connection to his ancestral home of Westbrook. As a painter, he is inspired by the coast of Maine, particularly Casco Bay, and the inland forests and waterways of Northern New England. An avid sailor, he spends much of his time on the bay anchoring amongst the Calendar Islands, sketching and photographing images that he then develops into full scale paintings. He is the owner and sole proprietor of Dog Star Creations, a successful and long-standing business that produces fine note cards, distributed throughout Northern New England, featuring his paintings and poetry. He was the founder and Director of the Saccarappa Art Collective, a fine art gallery, and other ventures have included the Edmonds Curran Gallery, Aterra Fine Crafts, and Paper Moon Stationery and Fine Art. He is currently President of Westbrook Arts and Culture and a strong voice for the arts in Westbrook and beyond.

“Calendar island
immersed by relentless tides;
stalwart to the sea” 

Andy Curran, "Rising Tide" - acrylic on canvas, 24" x 36" - $2400

[Rebecca Cote](https://rebeccacotestudio.com/home.html) creates art that reflects her long and intimate observations of the natural world through living and working in wilderness areas for over 20 years. She communicates nature’s power, grace, and relationships with dynamic gestures and subtleties of line and color, enticing the viewer to recognize and feel nature’s energetic moments. Driven by a passion to connect people with their creative potential, she has broadened her work to include community art projects that generate the capacity for agency. She has a BA from Humboldt State University and MEd in Community Art Education from Lesley University.

“When captured in the vortex of intense focus, all else falls away until you are released from that one consistent moment - the impetus for expansion.”

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Rebecca Cote, "A Consistent Moment" - mixed media, 32" x 44" - $1400

[Jenny Scheu](http://www.jennyscheu.com) is a multimedia artist with the roots of her art practice in design, color work, drawing, and printmaking. She established her architecture office in 1987, specializing in small projects of all kinds, and has participated in collaborative design and construction projects in both Maine and New Hampshire. She has taught design in Maine schools, and continues drawing, painting, and printmaking, studying at MECA and community workshops. Jenny is always observing the natural world and built environment and collecting images, colors, and patterns for her studio work. Her watercolor paintings are built slowly on fine rag papers, containing layers of transparent watercolor pigments, translucent gouaches, and opaque color-pencil and ink marks. She maintains a workspace at Bakery Studios in Portland. 

“Immersion is an excellent word for an active and focused art practice. Each of my watercolor paintings has layer upon layer of color and line. ‘Maelstrom’ is an apt example of these measured and meticulous layers juxtaposed with very spontaneous marks. As a painter, I am immersed in the daily search for inspiration, the painting process, and in the complex, joyful, and unexpected colors on the paper.” 



Jenny Scheu, "MAELSTROM" - watercolor, gouache and pencil on Arches, 29" x 37" - $1600

[Maryjane Johnston](https://mjjphotography.weebly.com) is a photographer who is best known for creating photographs of the female form. She presents the female form as simplified, the ambiguous shapes sometimes revealing, mystifying, and personal. The women are strong, confident and comfortable in their bodies. The intimate nature of the subject immerses us in a universe of sensations, sometimes blurring the line between illusion and reality. Maryjane was born in Hamilton, Bermuda and moved many times (13 times in one year), as a child. She grew up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine and graduated with a BFA in Photography from the Maine College of Art and obtained a Masters in Creative Education from Lesley University. She is currently an art educator in Cape Elizabeth.

“Once fully immersed in the cool white of winter, Natalie brings forth spring.”


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Maryjane Johnston, "Natalie" - archival inkjet print, 32" x 24" - $800

[TJ Whitmore](https://www.tjwhitmore.com) is a travel and real estate photographer from Portland. Capturing special moments in time and documenting them has always been important to him, as if composing an anthology of his mind’s eye. His inspiration draws from multiple sources, but the main source would be sharing what he finds beautiful in life. Whether it be architecture, street photography, or landscapes, capturing and sharing the perfect moment is his goal. 

“The unique perspective of Time & Temp draws the viewer in with an ordinary scene framed in an interesting way, giving the feeling of almost falling and being immersed into this upside down world.”



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TJ Whitmore, "Time & Temp" - photograph, 24" x 24" - $300

### Back to [Creative Portland Art Gallery](/art-gallery)

IMMERSION - Spring 2019

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