Author: jeffbadger

Friends of Aomori and the Lewis Gallery at Portland Public Library is pleased to present a retrospective exhibition of the prints in the MAPS (Maine-Aomori Printmaking Society) for a retrospective exhibition in September of 2021. The exhibition will feature 105 prints by artists from Maine and Aomori, Japan collected and exhibited throughout the state and prefecture during the MAPS project from 20015-2020.

A full-color catalog will accompany the exhibition. Receive a copy of the catalog as a gift with your tax-deductible donation to Friends of Aomori. Please see details below.

The catalog essay reads:

MAPS – Maine-Aomori Printmaking Society – is a project born out of tragedy. On a stormy night in October of 1889 the ship Cheseborough from Bath, Maine was caught in a fierce storm and ran aground off the coast of Shariki, Japan, now a part of Aomori Prefecture. The ship was destroyed, but some of the crew were rescued and cared for by Japanese villagers. The memory of this event launched a unique and long-standing relationship between Maine and Aomori that has lasted for more than 130 years. The relationship was formalized in 1989 in an official sister state agreement, and the people of Maine and Aomori have continued to developed and enrich their communities through the power of intercultural and personal connections.  

The artistic medium of printmaking has deep roots in both Maine and Aomori. MAPS was launched by Friends of Aomori – the all-volunteer nonprofit organization that supports the relationship in Maine – as a vehicle to connect printmaking artists from both countries through exhibitions, workshops, and delegation visits. For the first five years of the project the enthusiasm and dedication for MAPS led to a robust schedule of exhibitions in communities throughout Maine and Aomori, delegation visits by artists to both countries, and a second printmaking exchange program for K-6 students.

Now at the end of its fifth year, MAPS has grown into a multi-tiered project, presenting printmaking, American and Japanese culture, and the fascinating history of the Maine-Aomori relationship to our communities, connecting artists, patrons, and exhibition venues across the sea. “Six years have passed between us, and the solid course of the relationship continues to find rewarding steps forward,” writes Jiro Ono, President and Director of Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art, who manages the project in Japan, “who could have predicted the voluminous benefit at the beginning of the project?” 

At its core, MAPS is the dynamic collection of 105 prints included in this catalog, generously donated by participating artists. This collection serves as a snapshot of the state of contemporary printmaking in Maine and Aomori, and as a map for future cultural projects in our enduring relationship.  

Jeff Badger, President, Friends of Aomori
2021

MAPS is supported by the Consulate-General of Japan in Boston, the Rines Thompson Fund, the Expansion Arts Fund of Maine Community Foundation, and individual donors. MAPS is made possible by the contributions of the artists, exhibition venues and is organized and curated by Friends of Aomori, and Jiro Ono, President and Director of Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art.

The MAPS retrospective exhibition will be accompanied by a 76-page, full-color catalog featuring all of the prints in the MAPS collection. Get a copy of the catalog as a gift with your tax-deductible donation of $25 or more. Donate with Paypal or credit card by clicking below now. Include your address in the note for your complimentary copy.   

Common Street Arts in Waterville will host a collection of prints by artists from Maine and Aomori, Japan beginning May 18th through July 18th in an online Virtual MAPS Exhibit!  The traveling exhibition is part of MAPS (Maine-Aomori Printmaking Society), a cultural exchange program sharing art and artists between Maine and Aomori. The MAPS initiative is celebrating five years of collaborative exhibitions and artist exchanges. MAPS will be on view online through the Common Street Arts social media accounts from April 13 to July 6. For more information, please see their website.

View the exhibit here:

https://www.facebook.com/CommonStreetArts/

Friends of  Aomori proud to announce that this exhibitions is made possible by the generous support of the Rines-Thompson fund of the Maine Community Foundation.

Since 2015, Friends of Aomori and their partners in Japan, led by curators Jeff Badger and Jiro Ono, have coordinated the exchange of ten prints each year from artists in Maine and Aomori. The prints have been exhibited in Maine and Japan and the collection currently includes over a hundred works. The prints exchanged in 2019-2020 will be exhibited online through the Common Street Arts social media accounts from May 18th to July 18th. The same collection was shown at the Aomori Arts Pavilion in Japan during the Citizen Culture Days in October 2019, which was attended by an artist delegation from Maine that included five artists and curators included in the show. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with MAPS and look forward to showcasing this beautiful collection of prints. It’s a wonderful partnership and we are so pleased to be able to serve as a venue,” says Patricia King, Vice President of Waterville Creates.

The official relationship between Maine and Aomori has been in place for over 20 years, but the fascinating connection between the two states goes back to the wreck of a ship from Bath off the Japanese coast in 1889, resulting in a daring rescue of American sailors by Japanese villagers. In addition to MAPS, Friends of Aomori – the all-volunteer non profit that supports the partnership – also supports high-school exchange programs, educational workshops and events, and economic development opportunities.

“The MAPS print collection has grown into a beautiful representation of the diversity and
excellence in printmaking that can be found in both Maine and Aomori. Our goal is to exhibit this dynamic and growing collection all over the State of Maine. We are proud to partner with Common Street Arts to share this work with the people of Waterville and neighboring communities” says Badger.

The MAPS 2020 collection features work by: Lydia Badger, Stephen Burt, Susan Groce, David Harmon, Mary Hart, Emiko Kamada, Hitoshi Kikuchi, Osamu Kitamura, Michiko Kusakabe, Tadashi Saito, Hiroshi Takehana, Kiyohiro Toriyabe, Raegan Russell, Allison Derby Hildreth, Pilar Nadal, Noriyuki Ota, Lisa Pixley, Deloris A. White, David Wolfe, Tamiko Yamaya, and Tuya Yasuta.

MAPS is presented by Friends of Aomori and made possible by the generous support of the Rines-Thompson fund of the Maine Community Foundation and Ocean House Gallery and Frame.

Artist and Friends of Aomori President Jeff Badger has created a new print inspired by his recent visit to Aomori. The print – “Fujisaki Apples” – is for sale on his website and a portion of the proceeds from each sale will be donated to Friends of Aomori. Visit jeffbadger.com/shop for more information.

(Portland, ME) — In late October of 2019, a group of five Portland-area artists visited Maine’s sister state of Aomori, Japan while communities in both countries hosted exhibitions of woodblock prints by artists from each country. The traveling exhibition, called MAPS (Maine-Aomori Printmaking Society), is a cultural exchange program launched in 2015 that facilitates the exchange of art and artists between the states. MAPS is a program of Friends of Aomori, the all-volunteer non-profit that supports the relationship between Maine and Aomori.

The delegation was led by Jeff Badger, President of Friends of Aomori, and included artists Pilar Nadal, David Wolfe, Lydia Badger, and Lisa Pixley.

While in Japan, the group were guests of honor at the opening reception of the Aomori Citizen’s Cultural Exhibition where the MAPS prints were featured along with works by other Aomori artists. Over the following week, the group participated in a full schedule of civic and cultural activities, including visits to local studios, galleries, museums, and meetings with citizens and officials, including the Mayor of Fujisaki, a town near Aomori that hosted the prints in 2017.

“The warmth of the people that we met was really striking,” said Pilar Nadal. “They were very excited to meet with us, talk with us about our artistic practice, and find out why we are interested in Aomori. Even when translation was lost, it was clear that they were excited to know who we were, and for us to know them.”

The group was hosted by Jiro Ono, director of the Munakata Shiko Memorial Museum of Art, one of the sites visited by the visiting artists. The artist Shikō Munakata (b. 1903-1975) is strongly associated with the Aomori region, and the museum visit was a highlight for the group. “He was a modern artist in a traditional culture.” says David Wolfe, suggesting that in Munakata’s work you can see influences of Cubism and other European Modernist movements in his imagery, but that the artist never strayed too far from his traditional Japanese techniques.

Ideas of artistic lineage were a common theme in the artist’s explorations and conversations throughout the week. Lisa Pixley remembers that “my first exposure to Japanese woodblock printing was in the study of turn-the-century artists in Paris. Without really knowing it, I was studying artists who were studying Japanese artists, because the prints were flooding into Europe at the time.” Pixley notes how “important it is to foster tradition in art medium. In Western culture we put a lot of onus on the individual, but not necessarily the lineage that they came from — the history, the community…the need to foster knowledge of artistic lineage was a huge takeaway for me as an educator.”

In 2016, Jiro Ono led a similar delegation of Japanese printmakers to Maine. During that visit, Pilar Nadal remembers with a smile how the visiting artists asked her why she needed all of the “stuff” in her well-equipped Portland printshop, as the Japanese artists generally print their traditional black-and-white hanga prints with simple handtools, rather than large mechanical presses. “When we went to Japan, what we saw in the spaces wasn’t equipment, but rather artwork, tools, and the important relationship between student and teacher. But we put our equipment to good use,” she laughs.

The newest prints in the MAPS collection – now numbering 80 in total — are currently on display at the Blake Library at University of Maine at Fort Kent. In 2020, the next prints in the exchange will be displayed at Common Street Arts in Waterville, and a retrospective of all the prints in the MAPS collection is scheduled for display at the Lewis Gallery at the Portland Public Library in the fall of 2021.

“We share ten prints with each other every year, and the MAPS print collection has grown into a beautiful representation of the diversity and excellence in printmaking that can be found in both Maine and Aomori”, said Jeff Badger, who initiated and manages the exhibition series with his partner Jiro Ono in Japan. “Our goal is to exhibit the collection all over the State of Maine. We’ve shown it from York to Eastport to Fort Kent, and many places in between. We are always looking for more opportunities to share the work and get more people excited about the connection we have with Aomori.” Earlier this year, MAPS received support from the Maine Community Foundation for three exhibitions in Belfast, Brunswick, and Fort Kent.

While the MAPS project is a result of the sister state relationship, the exhibitions have had a parallel effect of educating audience members about the printmaking medium itself. “The Japanese know what printmaking is, and it is a strong part of their culture,” says David Wolfe, “but a lot of people in the US – even those interested in art and who collect art – don’t necessarily know what a print is.” Wolfe suggests that an exhibition with an additional element of a cultural exchange is a great way to draw a larger audience to learn about printmaking as an art medium.

All the members of the group noted the strong support of the arts in Aomori from both the government and citizens, with entire buildings dedicated to local art, but other cultural differences were more smaller and more humorous, including the many tiny cars in Japan, the incredible amount of vending machines and, for Lisa Pixley, how clean the streets were. “On more than one occasion I saw people picking up trash on the street or from the floor in a market. It’s a small thing, but a big difference in how our societies think of the individual’s place in the community.”

In 2018 the MAPS print exchange expanded to a K-12 student print exchange, with artiist and teacher Raegan Russell visiting Aomori and presenting an exhibition of children’s prints in the gallery at Berwick Academy. A second teacher delegate – Lynda McCann-Olson from Cumberland/North Yarmouth – will visit in November of 2019. This new facet of the exchange is sponsored by the Aomori Rotary Club, another group in Japan that has been generously supportive of the Maine-Aomori relationship. “Fostering the special relationship Maine has with Aomori takes commitment from many volunteers and generous contributions from donors in both countries,” said Lydia Badger. “All friendships need nurturing, and without the dedication of so many people, this trip, the art exchange, and the benefits they offer to the community would not be possible.”

For more information about MAPS and Friends of Aomori, visit maine-aomori.org.

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Join Friends of Aomori for a get-together at Oxbow Blending and Bottling in Portland on Tuesday, May 21st from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. We will celebrate Spring with raffles for local restaurant gift cards, a print sale, and delicious Oxbow beers. All proceeds go to fund our 2019 and 2020 programming, including the Maine-Aomori Printmaking Society exhibitions, student print exchange, high school exchange scholarships, and an upcoming artist delegation visit to Japan!

In 2018, three Maine communities will host a show of prints by artists from Maine and Aomori, Japan.  The traveling exhibition is part of MAPS (Maine-Aomori Printmaking Society), organized by Friends of Aomori as a cultural exchange program, sharing art and artists between the sister states of Maine and Aomori.  The prints will be exhibited in Green Lion Gallery in Bath, Arundel Farm Gallery in Arundel, and the University of Maine in Orono, while the same collection is exhibited at multiple locations in Aomori prefecture, from April to October.

This 2018 series of exhibitions builds on the successful series of exchanges and exhibitions held since 2015 in both countries, now numbering thirteen shows in varied locations throughout both states. Coinciding with the inaugural 2016 exhibition, Pickwick Independent Press — an independent print studio located above the galleries in the Space Studios in Portland — hosted Japanese printmakers for a week-long printmaking residency. The residencies were supported by a grant from the Consulate-General of Japan in Boston, and included time for the artists to work in the studio, visit local galleries and museums, and deliver a workshop at Maine College of Art.

MAPS is organized by Friends of Aomori, an all-volunteer non-profit that supports the Sister State relationship between Maine and Aomori, Japan. The relationship between Maine and Aomori has been in place for 20 years, but the fascinating connection between the two states goes back to a shipwreck in 1889 (read more here: https://maine-aomori.org/about/). In addition to MAPS, Friends of Aomori supports high-school exchange programs, educational events and programming about Japan, and economic development opportunities such as a delegation visit of Maine fisherman and aquaculture business leaders to Aomori in October 2016.

MAPS 2018 features prints by: Jeff Badger, Lyle Castonguay, Julie Crane, Rebecca Goodale, Don Gorvett, Adriane Herman, Charlie Hewitt, Isaac Jaegerman, Junji Kimura, Mitsuo Konno, Yoshiko Takebayashi, Tatsuo Maeda, Scott Minzy, Yoshiko Munakata, Akihiro Sakamaki, Hiroko Shibutani, Sadao Tanaka, Jaime Wing, and Seizo Yagihashi.

MAPS will be on view at Green Lion Gallery in Bath, Maine from April 20^th – May 19^th, with an opening reception on April 20^th; Arundel Farm Gallery from May 26^th to June 16^th with a reception on May 26^th; and at the University of Maine in Orono from Oct 5^th – Nov 16^th, with an opening reception on October 5^th.

Printmaking workshops and social events will coincide with the exhibitions, Please visit the websites and Facebook pages of the galleries and Friends of Aomori for details. MAPS is made possible with generous support from Ocean House Gallery and Frame.

Austin, Sacramento, Memphis St. Paul, Cambridge and now Portland.  On October 15th, Maine’s urban center becomes one of several American cities to host five Japanese delegates sent by the Japanese government to enhance mutual understanding between Japan and the U.S. as part of the WALK IN U.S., TALK ON JAPAN Program.

The delegates are headed by former Japanese Ambassador to the U.S., Ichiro Fujisaki.  Other delegates include Keizo Iijima, a retired CEO of the New York branch of Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank, and three young women:  Akiko Takahashi and Karuko Yuda, who work for Japanese companies, and Mai Iida, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, researching domestic migration. The delegates will each conduct a brief presentation on aspects of the Japanese economy, society, politics or culture from their unique perspectives.  The group will take questions and hold an open discussion at the end of the presentations. One topic of interest in many cities has been the status of women in Japan today.

The program is hosted by the Consulate General of Japan in Boston, the Friends of Aomori, and the University of Southern Maine and will be held on Thursday, October 15th from 2:45 to 4:15 in Luther Bonney Hall on the Portland Campus of the University of Southern Maine. The program is open to the public and is free. For more information contact Pat Parker at patriciaparker@mac.com.