PRESS RELEASE

Zillman Art Museum - University of Maine
January 22, 2025

Contact:  Kathryn Jovanelli
               207.581.3370
               kathrynj@maine.edu
               www.zam.umaine.edu
               High resolution digital images available upon request


Zillman Art Museum (ZAM) announces New Exhibition

BANGOR – The Zillman Art Museum - University of Maine, located at 40 Harlow Street in Bangor, ME, opens a new exhibition that runs January 17 - May 3, 2025. ZAM is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am - 5 pm and brings modern and contemporary art to the region, presenting approximately 21 original exhibitions each year. Admission to the Zillman Art Museum is free in 2025 thanks to the generosity of Birchbrook.

CLAUDIA OLDS GOLDIE: FLY AWAY HOME
JANUARY 17 - MAY 3, 2025

The Zillman Art Museum is delighted to present Fly Away Home, a fantastical menagerie of Claudia Olds Goldie’s sculpted figures. The sculptures are constructed from slabs of white stoneware that are formed into hollow cylinders, shaped from the inside and out, then finely modeled to create their figurative details. The artist then covers the surfaces with intricate graphite pencil drawings or layers of graphite powder to produce a rich, silvery finish. Olds Goldie’s figures capture strength in stillness and a powerful sense of determination. Considerable emotion is portrayed on the faces of the characters and conveys a push and pull between reality and dreaminess.  

Olds Goldie’s series of heads represents an intersection between realism, fantasy, and irony. The faces portray individuals with aspirations and anxieties and offer a stylistic nod to the history and culture of portrait sculpture. Since the artist does not work from live models, she is free to employ an intuitive and inventive process that allows the personality of each head and figure to reveal itself as she manipulates the clay.  

Olds Goldie explores pattern and tone with her installation piece In Concert. By layering graphite designs she creates dimension through divergent motifs. The arrangement of the orbs is unified by shape and form and their abundance creates a dynamic display. These non-figurative pieces reveal the patterns of rhythmic movement through an innovative use of design.

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