This is a personal project by artist and photographer Morgain Bailey.
As a curator, Morgain is looking for visual artists who live and work in rural Maine and who are doing work that resonates with her. Work that resonates can be of any media in the visual arts or can be art community activism and development. She is looking for artists who are both masters of their media and have strong conceptual development or those who have an activist approach to arts community development.
As an artist, Morgain brings a collaborative approach to portraiture. This means that she creates a different aesthetic response for each individual artist and takes into consideration what the artists communicate about themselves. The work is inspired by studio visits and open-ended conversations. The artists are encouraged to consider the physical environment of their studios and homes as creative material while spontaneously sharing ideas based on the concepts behind their work, life stories and experiences as working artists. Morgain has an art and business background which includes her bachelor of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and over thirty years of experience as a multi-media artist. She has worked as an art studio manager, art gallery manager, art teacher, designer and photographer. Outside the art world, she has had a variety of business and entrepreneurial careers.
As a photographer, Morgain brings an obsessive focus and passion for the media to every new situation. Ultimately, this project is about the art of photographic image making. Morgain has been working with photography since the mid-1980’s, when she began to study darkroom and film photography at Santa Barbara city college while she was going to high school in California. Her path as an artist and photographer has been a process of discovery and visual problem solving where she uses the camera as a creative tool to allow her subconscious free expression within the technical constraints of the media. She has multiple bodies of conceptual and traditional work that can be viewed at mbaileyphoto.com. This project is designed to allow her to fully explore a personal vision of portraiture.
The project has community development ripple effects that she hopes will enable the artists who she chooses to work with to have new opportunities for branching out and growth either on a personal or professional level. Every artist she collaborates with has shared a piece of themselves with the project in a way that is both educational and inspirational.