Join Dr. Amy Rahn, Peter Precourt, and Luc Demers for a gallery talk, a conversation on collaborative creative practice, and the shared experience of observing the 2024 solar eclipse.
Friday, March 13, 2026 @ 5:00PM
Happy Birthday to the very best one! ❤️🎂❤️ Love you so much @prahn ! Every year with you is a gift and an adventure. 💛 Fair winds and following seas for your year 43! ⛵️⛵️⛵️
Hi Joan! 👋🏻
I loved seeing this amazing show of Joan Mitchell works from the very era my dissertation addressed! It felt like a reunion. There were paintings I love seeing every time and ones I’d never seen before (especially the gorgeous watercolors! Wow!). The loans are great. What a gift! See it if you can. Thank you @srehmroberts and @davidzwirner and @joanmitchellfdn for this gorgeous show. ✨
Loved seeing Grace Hartigan “The Gift of Attention” at the @portlandmuseum ! The loans are incredible: “Persian Jacket” from MoMA, “Grand Street Brides” from the Whitney, and then so many surprises. I loved this painting “Masquerade” from 1954 (images 1-2) which includes archival images of Hartigan and all her friends posing for a photograph she worked from! Her figurative work in the show is so strong, and feels sure, confident, smart and joyful.
I’d never seen her collage work (images 3-4) and loved seeing her writing and cutting and sense of color and form meld with fashion and costume directly.
What a gem of a show!
I was so honored to speak at the @ogunquitmuseum last night. It was a gorgeous night in an incredible museum and the audience brought such kindness and curiosity to our conversation. Thank you for having me! ✨
“I support Lights Out as a monthly supporter and Board member because I love their can-do spirit, their passion for Maine art and artists, and their positive vision of art as a catalyst for positive change in our communities. As soon as I learned what Lights Out was about, I wanted to be involved; the more I see the impact of their work, the more I want to help them grow.” - Amy Rahn
We need your support to keep making an impact around Maine - donate to our Kickstarter today - link in the bio
Please join me September 9 at the @ogunquitmuseum for my talk: Over and Under the Surface: Painting in Community. I’d love to see you there! Registration link in my bio ✨
I realized that, like a fool (!) I’ve been putting my art adventures in my stories and not the grid! Here’s some of the latest. It’s been an incredible summer of art so far!
1. @ian_trask in @lightsoutgallery and @woodhullmaine ’s amazing show in their matchless Portland building.
2. The astonishingly skilled and talented @stu_xyz . He gave me the best tour! Seeing his woodwork in the Woodhull building, and his vision and care in helping realize this show with @lightsoutgallery and his immense kindness as part of our community was such a gift.
3. My fave Morris David Dorenfeld @morrisdorenfeld weaving in the Woodhull show. These pieces are all mind-blowing.
4. @kevin.xiques incredibly moving painting! A great example of a small work with internal scale
5. @ian_trask at @sidlehousemaine !! I was not prepared - what a tour de force!! You have to go see this show.
6. @kategerwig ‘s flock of doves made out of plastic waste at @sidlehousemaine
7. @justinelasdinartist at @sidlehousemaine
8. The fabulous @artsinmaine visionaries @d.moriarty and @amybwh looking at Samantha Rand’s exuberant and moving installation at @sidlehousemaine
9. My favorite in an incredible group of works by @ashleypage.studio at @sidlehousemaine
10. @d1minter works at @wtvlcreates curated by the unbeatable @lightsoutgallery team! This exhibition “Dark the Night & Bright the Stars” absolutely knocked me out. The three works by Minter connect ideas of ancestors so poetically
11. Installation view of “Dark the Night & Bright the Stars” showing works by @sdhaskell and @smithingmaria
12. Sailing with Cheese!!! He sails now!!!
13. With my beloved @suzyyspence standing where she grew up in Maine. I have been working on an essay about our generative friendship that I can’t wait to share with you. 💛
I am so grateful to live in this beautiful place full of brilliant and kind people.
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I just heard that I got tenure!!!!! I love my work at UMA and am so grateful to work with amazing students, colleagues, and staff. Hooray!!! Hooray!! Hooraaaaaay!!!
Here is my impromptu celebratory photo shoot with Cheese. I had hoped for one decent photo and instead got a very Cheese set of winners.
Thank you to all the incredible people who support and love me, (most of all @prahn !!), who wrote letters of support, and who steadied me in the process. I am so grateful to continue my work at UMA. 💛
Please welcome our newest family member: Cheese Rigatoni Rahn! We are over the moon to have him in our fam and so grateful to @rescue_charlies_friends for bringing this sweet boy to Maine and taking such great care of him. 🧀
Happy Birthday to my incredible love @prahn ! As all of you know, he is the kindest, funniest, the steadiest hand at the tiller, the most generous, handsomest, the most fun to make laugh, the best partner, friend, person. I am so grateful to share a life with Pete Rahn! Happy 4️⃣2️⃣ and every single year to my forever love!
Today, which would have been Joan Mitchell’s 100th birthday, I’m thinking about what it’s meant to me to immerse myself in the study of her and her work since I began my dissertation research in 2015. Ten years!
I’ve traveled to see her work, read her letters, traced her steps in search of the full contexts of her life and work. By the gift of these experiences, I remember her paintings like light bulbs glowing in the rooms of my mind, each one expressive and distinct. Her words, too, float back to me.
Recently, the thread of JM’s life that emerged in my work was the way she mentored and helped other people. The work mirrored the subject; I met and meet so many extraordinary people through “Joan” - fellow researchers, friends who knew her, gallerists, artists, archivists, curators, and writers. Sitting in chilly archives or over wine in Montparnasse, I’ve had so many rich conversations because of Joan and her work. Her big life has touched mine.
On her centenary, I will boldly say that if Joan Mitchell had lived to 100 she would still be painting, and having a drink with friends in the late afternoon, and adoring her dogs, appraising the world in her sharp and far-sighted way, and she would still cut a singular figure in the field of the arts, as she undeniably does regardless. I’m raising a glass to Joan Mitchell today in gratitude for all I have learned from her, with respect for her full and passionate life, and grateful for the gift of community she gives me.
