News and Notes

The board and staff of TEMPOart are horrified by the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey and Breonna Taylor and so many other victims of racist violence in the United States. 

We support the Black Lives Matter movement, along with the protesters in Portland and across the country, in demanding an end to systemic racism and police brutality. 

For the past year, we have worked to clarify and define TEMPOart’s mission, vision and values. Part of that mission is to champion and support public art that is a catalyst for social, racial, environmental, and economic justice. 

In pursuit of this vision, we commit to the active pursuit of diversity in our work and to holding ourselves accountable for commissioning, presenting, and amplifying the work of artists who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color.  

-The board and staff of TEMPOart

This past summer TEMPOart commissioned four monumental sculptures by Daniel Minter called Mother’s Garden. These sculptures, which are located near Kennedy Park in East Bayside, evoke the food and spirituality of the African Diaspora. In conjunction with this project, and in partnership with World To Table, TEMPOart sponsored four dinners for recently arrived immigrants and longtime Mainers. Our goal for the year, to help bring Portland’s diverse communities more closely together through art and food, was a great success.

In addition to the dinners, we sponsored four youth art and writing programs, including those offered by the Telling Room and Mayo Street Arts. We also hosted summer interns from the Portland Museum of Art.

Each year new TEMPOart projects enliven Portland’s public spaces. They serve as catalysts for addressing important issues and ideas that can help make our city a richer and more interconnected community.

For the coming year our theme is Resilience in Place, a concept that will enable us to explore and respond to challenges posed by imminent changes in our natural and social environments. From a field of 14 artists we are pleased to announce that Jesse Salisbury has been invited to create an installation for TEMPOart 2020. The sculpture will be located at Fish Point along the Eastern Trail, an easy walk from both Fort Allen Park and Commercial Street.

We have another exciting announcement. After 6 years of reliance on an all-volunteer board, TEMPOart has hired its first full time executive director. We are happy to welcome Tony Adams who will start work in December. Tony brings many years of experience in non-profit arts management as well as a deep commitment to multiculturalism. We hope you will have a chance to meet him in the near future.

TEMPOart continues to grow and to provide unique ways to encourage community connectionsand conversations. Our challenge in the coming year is to support both our ambitious 2020 project and our new professional staff.

We have had so much fun welcoming local youth educational programs to engage with our Welcome Feast project this summer. First, we hosted a community painting party to collaborate with Daniel Minter as he wrapped up production of the sculptures before installation day. Kids got a chance to learn about printmaking and see how an artist prepares for a big public project! Students from various youth art and writing camps have engaged with the project by responding to the sculptures with writing and art making. Students from the Telling Room, Oak Street Studios, Mayo Street Arts, Love Lab Studio and the Portland Museum of Art have all spent time contemplating concepts of community, what it means to be welcoming and how food and art can bring people together.

Here is a poem written by Elizabeth Thomas, one of the Portland Museum of Art 2019 Homer Fellows:

Mother’s Garden: Daniel Minter

By Elizabeth Thomas

2019 Homer High School Fellow at the Portland Museum of Art / rising senior at Portland High School

Powerful winds dance among our silent bodies

Painted wood creates our faces

And our structure which stands

Now old in the sun

Has grown fond of her light

We turn our faces left

Perhaps searching

Perhaps our gaze is cast on something fixed 

Something which brings strength 

Matching the burnt umber wood which crouches under our painted tones of fire, yellow, and blue of the sky

We taste of fire and ash

Yet here we stand

Unburnt

For over a year now, we have been working with the artist Matthew Mazzotta on his Shifting Tides project. While Matthew’s concepts are beautiful and fit our mission, the Board of Directors has recently voted to cancel the project. Even with generous and enthusiastic in-kind support from so many involved in our waterfront and building communities, the project’s costs have more than quadrupled. We cannot move forward and remain good stewards of your support.
With that decision behind us, we are already working toward a new project for the summer of 2019 that will support our mission and make the city proud. We will start engaging with artists in Maine and elsewhere for their ideas. We see an exciting path forward and can’t wait to show you what’s next.