Art at Bartlett presents . . .
ART TALK by Midcoast Painter Sam Cady on
Midcoast Painter Cicely Aikman
(Rockland, ME) – Bartlett Woods Retirement Community welcomes renowned Maine painter Sam Cady to speak about legendary Maine painter Cicely Aikman on Monday, July 13th, from 10-11am. The free ART TALK coincides with the current exhibition “CHICKADEES, ALLIGATORS AND STONEHENGE,” featuring the work of Cicely Aikman, along with Janice Kasper and Dirk McDonnell. Located at 20 Bartlett Drive (just off Talbot Avenue between Broadway and Old County Road), the non-profit retirement community continues its commitment to its Art at Bartlett Program through hosting this public program.
Both Cady and Aikman are represented by Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, ME. The exhibition is on loan from the Gallery through August 28th; public hours are Sunday through Friday, 9-4pm. Parking along the Bartlett driveway is suggested.
About the Artists:
Sam Cady (American b. 1943). Born in Boothbay Harbor, Maine and raised in a leafy suburb of Boston, Sam Cady is a self-described New Englander. After receiving a BA at the University of New Hampshire (1965) and a MFA at Indiana University (1967), Cady taught art for 2 years in New Hampshire before moving to New York City in 1969. He lived and worked on the lower east side of Manhattan and in Hoboken, NJ for most of the next 30 years exhibiting his work and teaching in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. With exposure to all the “isms” of recent American art he found his way with realism, pop, and minimalist influences from Hopper, Oldenburg and Kelly often with shaped or cutout oil on canvas images of bits and pieces of the everyday world. His first major exposure was in the 1975 Whitney Museum Biennial and continued along with regular gallery exhibitions in NY, Boston and Rockland, Maine with other museum and gallery shows around the country and in Japan. After being in the city for 30 years he moved to Friendship, Maine (where he had summered as a child) in 2000, built a studio and continued to work, exhibit, and teach. He is in many private, corporate, and museum collections around the country and was the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant and an American Academy of Arts and Letters purchase prize. His aim throughout has been to explore and celebrate both the constructed and natural worlds that we are all surrounded by (courtesy Anderson Yezerski Gallery).
Cicely Aikman (American 1923-2013). Born in Texas, where she lived until the age of six, Aikman spent her childhood in Los Angeles – a child of the west – before going to high school in Washington D.C. She studied at the Corcoran School of Fine Arts (1938-40), the University of Chicago (1940-42), and the Art Student League with mentor Morris Cantor (1942-1946). Aikman reflected “This was a serious art education – our only regret was that due to World War ll, we could not go to Europe, in particular to Paris to see, first-hand, the works of Picasso and Matisse.”
After the war, Aikman traveled to Italy by boat with her young son, Paul, and lived in bohemian circles with others, drawn like Aikman, to the cultural life in Rome, Paris and elsewhere. Back in New York, Aikman began showing her work along with her downtown peers, among them Lois Dodd, Rudy Burkhardt and Gretna Campbell at the Pyramid Gallery. In the forties and fifties, Aikman painted winters in the city and summers in Provincetown, MA. She exhibited in New York with Green Mountain Gallery, the Blue Mountain Gallery, the Artists’ Gallery, the Westbeth Gallery, and with the Provincetown Art Association, while raising her son and holding down a series of jobs. She moved to Maine in 1973 with her second husband, Fred Scherer, whom she had met through her work at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Aikman began to show at Caldbeck Gallery in 1990. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including the Farnsworth Art Museum, The Portland Museum of Art, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and Roundtop Center for the Arts. Her work “January”, was included in WINTER IN MAINE by Carl Little, published by Down East Books. Aikman maintained a vigorous studio practice, splitting her time between Friendship, Maine and the Indian River in Florida. In 2005, Aikman and Scherer moved to Brattleboro, Vermont where they continued to live and work until 2013 (courtesy Caldbeck Gallery). https://www.cicelyaikman.com/
For further information at the artists, contact: Caldbeck Gallery, 12 Elm Street, Rockland, Maine 04841. Call 207.594.5935 or email info@caldbeck.com.
