Visiting Artist Series: Marissa Glover
As the final artist in the Visiting Artist Series at the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, Marissa Glover will facilitate a collaborative art project. During Marissa’s “pop-up studios”, visitors will work together to create an interactive textile installation celebrating the natural world. The recycled, thrifted, and salvaged materials will be used to form flowers, plants and trees that celebrate the diversity of ecosystems from the mountains to the sea. As we repurpose items through creating beautiful art, we become part of a greater conversation about our role in nature and how we can help maintain its beauty and health.
The Visiting Artist Series in the Lunder Arts and Culture Gallery is designed to enrich the Museum & Theatre’s arts education programming for children and their families with a focus on using art as a lens to explore sustainability and our changing planet. From February 19, 2022 to May 28, 2022, the Visiting Artist Series will host three artists who call Maine home. The Artists will work with Museum & Theatre visitors to create communal works of art.
Textile materials for Marissa Glover’s communal art project
Artist Statement:
Maine is home to some of the nation’s most interesting plant life and vegetation. Fiber and Flora educates children on the beauty of our native plant life through an interactive installation created out of recycled, thrifted, and salvaged material. Some of these materials come from generous donations from small local businesses who manufacture, produce and sell their clothing right here in Maine. This creates a collaborative work that not only actively reduces the waste of this industry, but also teaches children just how beautiful and creative sustainability can be.
Artist Bio:
Marissa Glover is a textile artist from Saco, ME who utilizes found, donated, and salvaged textiles to make work that creates a message about sustainability. After working as a designer for a local business and traveling to Thailand to oversee clothing production, Marissa became interested in deadstock fabrics and discarded textiles. Driven by a passion for ethical production and consumption, she now uses primarily recycled and salvaged materials.
Schedule
More About the Visiting Artist Series
From February through May, visitors will have the opportunity to meet and create alongside our three Visiting Artists who were chosen through a rigorous application and selection process: Pamela Moulton, Roberta March and Marissa Glover. Over the course of several dates, each Visiting Artist works in the Makerspace for special “pop-up studios” during specific play sessions over four weeks.
Each artist works in a different medium and supplies base materials and leads special art-making techniques that visitors will use to contribute to the communal work of art. Over the course of the spring, visitors will help create sustainability-themed artwork.
The Museum & Theatre’s mission promotes engagement with the transformative power of the arts and provides essential opportunities for children to explore identity, foster creativity, and develop critical life skills essential for healthy development. As children engage in artmaking, they also are given the opportunity to explore new and complex ideas and express their understanding of the world around them. In addition to generous funding of the Lunder Arts & Culture Gallery by The Lunder Foundation, the Visiting Artist Series is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.