By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Robyn Holman flipped a switch and lighted the inside of a metal sculpture that was shaped like an upside-down road cone.

She gingerly turned the piece on its pedestal as beads of light shifted in unison on the nearby walls. The light shone through holes in the illuminated sculpture, which also cast spiral lines on the ceiling.

Artist Joe Hemes of South Portland calls his creation a “pentacone.”

“This needs to have its own little place,” said Holman, the director of exhibitions at Lewiston-Auburn College. That’s a luxury that few pieces receive.

Several yards away, a gilded mirror was hanging beside a tiny still life, each with a gold frame. All around the concave walls of the school’s Atrium Gallery are landscapes and abstracts. There are tapestries and furniture. There is even a sculpted cat, lounging on a straight-backed chair.

For Holman, her artistry comes in the arrangement, the careful placement in which no item overpowers another.

“I would like everyone who comes to leave with a favorite piece,” Holman said. Yet, she also wants people to feel the power of all of the pieces combined.

For 12 years, she’s been arranging the artwork that comes into the All Maine Invitational, an annual art exhibit that features museum-quality pieces in a wide variety of media and subject matter.

The works, 63 this year, range from paintings to sculptures, furniture to jewelry. It takes more than a week to arrange them all into a coherent show.

Holman’s work begins with the placement of pieces along the walls. Once they are in their groups, Holman tries seeing them from every perspective, including from the second-story railing that looks down on the open air lobby.

She looks for combinations that seem unbalanced, where colors or sizes or moods get too strong. She also looks for conflicts, where the artwork clashes.

Then, she wheels around her cart of tools. Among its items are levels, putty, glue, safety glasses and soft, white gloves.

“I call it my fancy pastry cart,” Holman said.

Carefully, she installs each piece, positioning each in its own light.

For the show’s six weeks – until each work of art is auctioned off – she imagines the collection belongs to her. And she’s proud of each one.

Two days before the show began, she protected some of the pieces in her office. Among them was a wooden sculpture of a bird’s nest. Holman carefully grasped the nest the way a historian might hold Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hat.

In the sculpture’s center sat a single blue egg with carved feathers.

“I think this is perfect,” she said.