The days are finally getting brighter and SPACE is thrilled to welcome the new year. Kick off your 2024 arts experiences by calling 207-828-5607 to hear a beautiful poem read by the author. We have rebooted the SPACE Poetry Hotline with “Ode to Friendship” by Ohio-based Palestinian American poet Noor Hindi and will next feature Arizona State University’s Dr. Sa Whitley. SPACE’s rebooted Poetry Hotline will be bringing words of justice and peace in 2024 for the trying times we find ourselves in. We have plenty of new poems, programs, artists, and initiatives on the horizon and will announce this year’s Kindling Fund recipients in the coming week. Stay tuned for this news, and join us February 11th for the Kindling Fund grantee celebration!
SPACE is honored to start off the new year with two additions to our organization’s board of directors: veteran advertising leader and Garrand Moehlenkamp’s Chief Creative Officer, Ken Matsubara, and Bates College’s newest curator and established advocate for artists, Samantha Sigmon. Their exciting work and proven leadership will enhance the board’s capacity for stewardship and contribute to a vibrant future for SPACE’s mission and work.
The addition of these two innovative and experienced creative thinkers to our nonprofit’s board will bring fresh perspectives and savvy skill sets that will invigorate SPACE’s approach to problem-solving and strategic plan implementation. Each begins a three-year term starting with SPACE’s first board meeting of 2024. In other governance news, outgoing board president and L.L.Bean VP of Creative, Emily Drain Bruce, joins the SPACE Advisory Board after a board tenure leading the organization through our unprecedented pandemic closure and the many operational changes in its wake.
SPACE cares equally about the artistic projects we produce as the ethics and standards of how we do the work itself. We are excited to keep finding values-aligned leaders that will further add to this legacy while creating an inclusive, experimental, and dynamic platform for arts, artists, and ideas in downtown Portland. In a world beleaguered with many challenges, our organization believes that accessible arts experiences and the voices of artists are a beacon in the dark to rediscover joy, connect with others, and ask hard questions.
Read more about our new board additions below.
Ken Matsubara is the Chief Creative Officer and a partner at Garrand Moehlenkamp, a full-service branding agency in Portland, Maine. At GM, Ken helps brands find their North Star and guides the agency’s creative vision and output. He has spent a majority of his 27 years in the business craving the brands he has been helping to grow. From the all mighty Big Mac, to the oddly delicious Stuffed Crust Pizza, to getting the right power tool for the right job, he helps find creative ways to connect people with the brands they love. An art director by trade, he has a deep appreciation for design, photography and the visual arts and tries to find ways to seamlessly weave those into his day-to-day work. Ken previously worked for a decade at the Via Agency as a creative lead.
Through curatorial projects, arts writing, and community engagement, K. Samantha Sigmon (she/her) works with intersecting aspects of contemporary art and theory, cultural and folk histories, and equity and grassroots activism within the built environment. She is currently the Assistant Curator at Bates College Museum of Art and lives in Portland, ME. Samantha has a Master’s in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, a Master’s in Museum Studies from Syracuse University, and a Bachelor’s in Anthropology and English from the University of Arkansas. Previously, in her hometown of Northwest Arkansas, she was invested in community arts, running a do-it-yourself space and organizing local arts exhibitions as a freelance curator while specializing in contemporary art and architecture as Interpretation Manager at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Recent projects include writing about entangled corporate arts funding in Northwest Arkansas alongside the work of grassroots spaces and creatives for Burnaway and Ozark Home, Beyond the Frame, a curatorial endeavor that spanned work from a history museum to a contemporary gallery in Springdale, Arkansas.