Public Art

	An Overall View Of The Leaf Piece Installed At The Harlow Site. Photo By Jeff Kellar.

Art and Nature: A Natural Collaboration

The Department of Conservation Builds an Art Collection

In the busy offices of Maine’s Department of Conservation in Augusta, computers hum, fax machines pump out documents and phones ring. It is not unlike many other Augusta offices. The work, however, is unique. The department oversees some of Maine’s most precious and unspoiled regions of the state. Both staff and visitors now have a permanent reminder of just what it is they are protecting, thanks to a Percent for Art project in the building’s new location.

The project began back in 2004, when Katy Kline, director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Sharon Corwin, Lunder curator at Colby College Museum of Art, Cordelia Pittman, architect for Winton Scott Architects; Joe Ostwald from the Bureau of General Services, Patrick McGowan and Karen Tilberg, commissioner and deputy commissioner for the Department of Conservation, formed a committee to select art for the restored and updated Harlow Building. It is an imposing 19th-Century former institute for the mentally ill which now houses the new offices of the Department of Conservation in Augusta.

	A Close-Up Of The Pin Cherry Leaves Used In The Artwork. Photo By Jeff Kellar.

An open call to artists asked that the art speak to the work of the agency, the oversight of thousands of acres in 16 counties throughout the state.

After reviewing over 40 submissions, the committee selected the work of artist team Jeff Kellar and Judy LaBrasca and the photographs of Scott Peterman. Both projects would have a full year to research and visit the territory the department oversees in each of Maine’s four seasons.

Kellar and LaBrasca set out to digitally photograph leaf specimens from each region that the department oversees, framing them in a kind of specimen case and labeling them much like a botanical field study book. The images are of such crystalline quality that they appear almost three-dimensional. The overall case size is 100" x 52" x 13/4", an effective greeting in the building’s foyer that helps define the work going on inside. Kellar and LaBrasca also created brass geological markers that are installed throughout the building, with the names of sites protected by the department. An arrow indicates the direction to the site and the distance in miles.

	Katahdin Lake, By Scott Peterman.

For their project, Jeff Kellar and Judy LaBrasca say they wanted to emphasize the connection between the work going on in Augusta and at all the sites around the state.

“We chose 16 bronze survey markers to symbolize the role of stewardship of specific places, rather than using symbols in a generic way. For the same reason, the photographs of leaves in the lobby artwork are not idealized botanical illustrations, but portraits of individual leaves, each collected on a particular day at a particular site and corresponding to those named on the markers,” says LaBrasca.

Scott Peterman’s photography project would become an enormously successful collaboration between the department and the artist. Peterman and Commissioner Patrick McGowan decided the commissioner would personally take Peterman to the remote and pristine sites selected by the department for their beauty and significance to its mission. It began an odyssey. McGowan, a pilot, amateur photographer and one of the original supporters of Maine’s Percent for Art Act, would fly Peterman into the wilderness.

Depending on the trip, McGowan would either drop Peterman off and pick him up later, stay with him for a few hours or the two would camp together for the night. The resulting photographs, taken in each season of the year, are a tribute to the magnificent natural beauty of Maine, portrayed through the lens of one of Maine’s most original photographic eyes, guided and nurtured by an engaged and generous commissioner.

	An Exterior View Of The Courtyard Plaza With Bronze Marker Set Into The Granite Paver. Photo By Jeff Kellar.

“This project was a true pleasure to work on,” says Scott Peterman. “Having grown up in Maine and having photographed here extensively for almost ten years, I have a strong connection to the Maine landscape. The weather here and the changing seasons are unparalleled anywhere in the world. I was completely inspired by this project because I was able to see and photograph locations I might otherwise have overlooked. I think Katahdin Lake is one of the most subtly beautiful locations I have ever been to, and the opportunity to be a part of the Department of Conservation’s interest in this site is a real honor.”

“I co–sponsored the Percent for Art program in the early 1980s as a new legislator,” says Patrick McGowan, commissioner of the Department of Conservation. “Twenty-eight years later every community and public building in our state has been touched by talented Maine artists. The program works. It is government at its best and the people that run the program and the artists that use it are indeed Maine’s finest.”

The committee members who selected the artists say they are pleased with the final results of their work.

“Both Jeff and Judy’s work and Scott’s photographs give a sense of the influence of the Department of Conservation in the State of Maine,” says Joe Ostwald of the Bureau of General Services. “While you’re among the good people in the office building, your thoughts can travel to these distant locations that the artists have captured in their work. I’m encouraged to make plans to get out there and see more of Maine.”

“The Harlow Building Percent for Art project was deeply personal to the Department of Conservation, reflecting its work, values and mission,” says Elaine Clark, director of the Bureau of General Services. “The bronze markers, leaves and Peterman photographs, all stunning in their own right, also demonstrate devoted stewardship of precious natural resources throughout the State of Maine.”

	Bigelow. By Scott Peterman.

Committee member Katy Kline, the director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, says the challenge of the project was to try and show Maine’s environment in a fresh and unpredictable way. “Scott Peterman’s bold photographs of remote, virtually inaccessible locations, and Judy LaBrasca and Jeff Kellar’s encased leaf specimen photos and sly geological site markers imply a voyage over time of discovery and wonder that will engage both first time and regular visitors,” she says.

The affinities between the mission of the Department of Conservation and the art that was selected for their new building is just the kind of confluence that one hopes for in public art projects,” says Sharon Corwin, Lunder curator, Colby College Museum of Art. “Both Scott Peterman’s photographs of natural landscapes in Maine and Jeff Kellar and Judy LaBrasca’s photographs of leaf specimens and site markers throughout the building offer visitors to the Harlow building another lens through which to think about and appreciate the natural resources of Maine.”

The Harlow Building at the Department of Conservation is located at East Side Campus, 18 Elkins Lane, Augusta. The artwork can be viewed anytime during normal business hours.

	A Close-Up Of A Bronze Marker, Photo By Jeff Kellar.