The Pencil of Nature

Photography bends, blurs, and beams in our summer group exhibition, The Pencil of Nature. Featuring five Maine artists, the show explores photography’s abstract edge: where light becomes line, optics become physical, and images are drawn more by the sun than by hand. The title nods to Henry Fox Talbot’s groundbreaking 1844 publication, the first commercially published photo book ever made, where he called the medium “photogenic drawing.”

Come raise a glass at the artist reception and help us toast 23 years of SPACE Gallery on Friday, August 1st, from 5–8pm.

Maya Tihtiyas Attean (b. 1994) is a Wabanaki artist living in Portland, Maine or Machigonne, raised on the Penobscot Reservation. Her work reflects her ancestry, resilience, and connection to the natural world. Through exploring the duality she embodies within the colonized world she exists within, she marries mediums and techniques of multiple cultures to create new realities and possibilities within her work. Maya earned her BFA within Photography from Maine College of Art & Design in 2023. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art and the Abbe Museum.

Elizabeth Atterbury (b. 1982) is a sculptor based in Portland, Maine. Recent solo and group exhibitions include The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2023); The New England Triennial at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2021); Mrs. Gallery, Maspeth, NY (2021); Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL (2021); Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY (2018); The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME (2018); Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL (2017); The Luminary, St Louis, MO (2017); The Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (2015); Et al. She received her BA from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, and her MFA from MassArt, Boston, MA. Atterbury’s work is in the collections of the Portland Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the collections of Celine, Northwestern Mutual, The New York Presbyterian Hospital, and the Cleveland Clinic. Her work has been featured in W Magazine, Art in America, and Wallpaper. Works in the show are courtesy of the artist and Document (Chicago/Lisbon).

Tad Beck (b. 1968) received a B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1991, and an M.F.A. in Fine Art from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 2003. He lives and works in Vinalhaven, Maine. Beck’s solo exhibitions include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Fisher Center at Bard College, Samuel Freeman Gallery, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and Grant Wahlquist Gallery among others. Group exhibitions include: the Wadsworth Antheneum, Fotofest International, Spritmuseum in Stockholm, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Portland Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, the Ogunquit Museum of Art, Apex Art, and others. His work is in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Portland Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Princeton University Art Museum.

Neville Caulfield (b.1998) was “aged and cured” on the Maine / New Hampshire coastline, and his work circles masculinity, queer phenomenology, the home, and the church. Caulfiled is a graduate of the University of Vermont, and has been making large format photographs since 2021. He has shown work with Lights Out Gallery, the Colburn Gallery at UVM, the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, and the University of Iowa among others. He has recently been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, on Monhegan Island, and was a 2023 VSC / NEA Creative Inclusion Fellow.

Shaina Gates (b. 1983) is an artist working in experimental and alternative photography. Using a variety of photographic surfaces, she combines geometric folding algorithms with the alchemical nature of photosensitive materials to produce 3-dimensional photograms and 2-dimensional prints on film and paper. Her work has been exhibited throughout New England, as well as in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. A selection of her experimental film pieces were included in the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s 2023 Biennial. Her film sculptures and large cyanotypes were also included in the New England Triennial in 2022, presented by the deCordova Museum and Fruitlands Museum. A solo exhibition of her work was also exhibited at 3SArtspace in Portsmouth NH in fall 2023 after being awarded the the Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant for 2023. She earned an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, an MAT in Art Education in 2008, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. She currently lives and works in Kittery, Maine, and teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

Image: Tad Beck, Alison Hildreth, 2020, Archival pigment print, 42.5 x 32 inches