Rockport artist shows work at Union of Maine Visual Artists show

Rockport artist Ann Tracy will show a special piece of art at the Union of Maine Visual Artists show at their gallery space, located within the Portland Media Center at 516 Congress St., Portland, from June 3 to 29.

A reception will be held on June 3, and Tracy will be there from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

This group show of member artists will run the gauntlet from digital and photographic works to sculpture and painting.

Tracy’s piece is a hybrid work, photographic encaustic. It occurred when Tracy was scrapping the wax from a failed encaustic painting and she became enamored of the old chunks of wax that fell off. She ran to get her camera in the studio and “Remains of the Day” was born. To better highlight the materiality, Tracy has printed the photo on Japanese mulberry paper and waxed it onto a wood cradle frame, so glass or plexiglass is not needed, as the wax protects the image.

Although Tracy has only lived in the Midcoast region since June 2021, she has lived in the Portland area since 2011, when she, her husband, dog and cats moved back to the East Coast after over 20 years in Northern California. Tracy grew up in Fryeburg and Cape Neddick before her family moved south to Massachusetts and then west to Colorado, where she met her husband.

She is a retired journalist who blogs at https://anntracy.blogspot.com.

Tracy’s fine art has been exhibited from Japan to Maui to New York City to Spain and Budapest, Hungary. She was a 2014, 2015 and 2016 finalist in the Julia Margaret Cameron competition and was invited to exhibit at the third Photographic Biennale in Malaga, Spain 2014, as well as the Berlin Foto Biennial 2016. In 2003, her work “Stop” was included in the catalog of the “Violence Against Women” exhibition, Group 78 Amnesty International, Tokyo, Japan. Her digital paintings “The Power of Romania Lies in its Artists” and “Message 3” were juried into the 2010 and 2008 editions of “American Art Collector.”

The Union of Maine Visual Artists is an artist-run, nonprofit organization, dedicated to upholding the dignity of artists and creating positive social change through the arts. The UMVA represents visual artists statewide in all fields of endeavor and welcomes those who support contemporary artists in Maine. For more information, visit http://www.theumva.org.