Event to raise funds for Cultural Center in Downtown Presque Isle

Officials with the Wintergreen Arts Center and the University of Maine at Presque Isle are collaborating to host their first ever 10×10 Art Auction, which will help them to establish a Cultural Center in the downtown area. The auction will be held Friday, May 4, from 6-9 p.m. at the Wintergreen Arts Center during the May 2012 First Friday Art Walk.

As part of the 10×10 event, organizers are providing participating artists with blank 10-inch by 10-inch canvases to fill in any way they choose – “Any media goes.” Artists have between now and the end of April to complete their works, which will be put on display in the Barresi Financial Gallery at WGAC starting May 4. A silent auction and reception will be held that evening from 6-9 p.m. Each canvas will hold a reserve bid of $50. Bidding will end promptly at 8:30 p.m. and winning bids will be announced at 8:45 p.m.

Co-organizers Wendy Gilman-Zubrick, WGAC Executive Director, and Heather Sincavage, UMPI Assistant Professor of Fine Art, said they are excited to see the work artists produce based on these simple parameters.

“We are tickled by the quality of artists we have on board for this event – both local artists and artists from Southern Maine, New England and across the United States,” Gilman-Zubrick said. “The sheer enthusiasm with which the artists are approaching our cause – and their canvases – is incredibly energizing!”

Organizers also are excited about how funds raised during this event will allow WGAC to expand on its successful programming, and support Wintergreen and UMPI’s efforts to make 149 State Street a Cultural Center with established museum-quality, downtown gallery space on the floor above WGAC.

Funds raised from the auction will help Wintergreen to sustain the momentum that has been built through programs such as “Saturday Open Studio,” “Toddle-In Time,” and “Girls’ Night Out!,” and will allow for other family programming and visual arts initiatives, as well as programs in the performing arts, to be explored and expanded upon.

“The funding is especially needed to help sustain our afterschool art enrichment programming as our Department of Education Arts and Parks grant comes to an end in November,” Gilman-Zubrick said. “Wintergreen programming is on an upward arc and the funds we raise as part of this auction are going to help us to continue moving in that direction.”

For UMPI, the auction event and the larger project it will support are the beginnings of an exciting new venture that officials believe will benefit students, the arts community, the downtown area, and the community at large.

“We’re very excited about having gallery space like this set up in a building that is so closely associated with art and its connections to community,” Sincavage said. “Not only will this be an opportunity to feature more of our regional talent in a centralized location but also we are excited to have a facility that will offer national and international exhibitions to our local community.”

While the second floor gallery will include room for climate controlled storage of the University Collections, the goal is to have a more expansive gallery space that will allow for larger art work to be displayed and larger group exhibitions to be held, and will serve as a real-world learning space for students. The downtown gallery will allow students to gain experience in the professional practices they’ll experience within the art field.

There’s a lot of work and fundraising to do before the Downtown Cultural Center becomes a reality, but officials are confident that with exciting events like the 10×10 Art Auction and with community support like they have seen in the past, it will happen soon enough.

“This collaborative effort capitalizes on the momentum created by our respective organizations and is enhanced by our joint vision,” Sincavage said. “Not only does it allow for unique engagement for our students, but it also creates vibrancy in the downtown that makes Presque Isle a better place to live and a desired place to visit.”

For more information about the 10×10 Art Auction, contact Gilman-Zubrick at wzubrick@hotmail.com or 762-3576, or contact Sincavage at heather.sincavage@umpi.edu or 768-9442.

A University of Maine at Presque Isle English Professor has had his debut novel published and the University will celebrate with a reading and book signing event with the author on Monday, April 9 at 7 p.m. in the Campus Center. The public is invited to attend this special event, which will include a reception featuring light refreshments, and wine available through a cash bar.

Richard Lee Zuras, UMPI Professor of English and Creative Writing, explores Zain’s final year of childhood, his father’s dismissal from the CIA, and his family’s near disintegration in this coming-of-age work The Bastard Year, published by the independent press, Brandylane Publishers.

“When Zain’s father is fired from the CIA in March of 1980, it creates a tremor that threatens to upend the family’s precarious balance,” the back cover reads. “Zain’s awakening to a world riddled with cracks and his adolescent attempts to mend them are the stuff from which young men, and great stories, are made.”

Zuras was able to bring verisimilitude to his novel due to his upbringing – he was born and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where his father worked as a CIA analyst. Zuras already has received praise from his peers for the novel.

According to James Robison, author of The Illustrator, “In this spare and unsparing novel, Richard Lee Zuras breaks down the critical Iran Hostage days of 1980, the gas shortage year, the year the country pivoted from Carter’s idealism to Reagan’s patriotic pragmatism. This narrator is gallant in his restraint, jarred by the violence—both psychic and physical—of the private lives of adults, but he tells all without protest or deflecting guile, without delusions, without the gnawing irony that chews away at so many lesser works of and about those times. This novel of commencement and initiation is set at a determining intersection of histories, East and West, a moment in the life of this country mirrored in the fate of the narrator. A profoundly affecting work.”

And Cathie Pelletier, the author of Running the Bulls had this to say of the novel: “The most riveting characters in literary fiction are those young protagonists who must survive not just impending maturity (which often comes too soon) but the complicated world of dysfunctional adults who make the laws and set the rules. Zain, in The Bastard Year, is one such character. His coming of age story is told by the author with so quiet a reserve that it echoes loudly in your memory long after you’ve read.”

Zuras earned his MFA as the McNeese Fellow at McNeese State University under the auspices of Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler. He also did graduate work at the University of Colorado, George Mason University, and the University of North Dakota, where he worked under James Robison. At UMPI, Zuras serves as the advisor to the Film Studies program and he has written box-office reviews for the online site www.fusedwire.com.

Zuras has been published in more than 20 journals, including Passages North, South Dakota Review, Story Quarterly, and The Laurel Review. He has also garnered several prizes, including the Yemassee Fiction Award and the Bernard O’Keefe Fiction Scholarship at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and was named a Wesleyan Writers’ Conference Scholar.

All are encouraged to attend this special evening with Richard Lee Zuras. The April 9 event will include a reading and Q&A by the author, followed by a book signing. There will also be a reception featuring light refreshments, and wine available through a cash bar. Copies of the book will be on display and for sale.

The Bastard Year is currently available for sale online at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com, and at the UMPI Bookstore for $10 per copy. For more information about this event or the novel, please contact the University’s Community and Media Relations Office at 768-9452 or sara.martin@umpi.edu.