Natasha Mayers brings her ‘Signs of the Times’ to Lewiston

LEWISTON – When the world’s in chaos – and too many people ignore it – art needs to be chaotic, too.

“I am making paintings of what the present world looks and feels like to me,” said artist Natasha Mayers.

Her images of stop signs and tortured Iraqis, lighthouses and terrorists, decorate the walls of the Atrium Gallery inside Lewiston-Auburn College.

The show’s title is “Signs of the Times.” Mayers calls it activist art.

And it helps her sleep at night.

There’s a certain catharsis that comes with spilling one’s feelings, whether on paper in a journal entry or on canvas with paint.

“A lot of my time is spent finding a way that can speak to people,” said Mayers, 50, of Whitefield. “What’s the opposite of complacency? I want a response.”

She seems to be getting it.

Her show, the first for the collection’s nearly 300 paintings, opened last Wednesday at the Lewiston school.

“A woman came over to me and said, ‘This makes me want to either dance or cry,'” she said. “I don’t want to make someone cry. But I do want them to feel some sadness about what’s happening.”

Things that need attention include the war in Iraq and global warming.

“I don’t watch much television,” she said. “But I read and read.”

Mayers’ conscience led her to join groups such as Peace Action Maine, for whom she works as an artist in residence.

And that connection, she can only guess, has led her to be watched by the FBI.

Last month, the Maine Civil Liberties Union announced that it had proof the FBI has been watching both Peace Action Maine and Maine Veterans for Peace.

“I was not surprised,” Mayers said. After all, the FBI kept the same kind of watch in the 1960s.

At the unveiling of her show, Mayers lamented the government’s move.

“Under new legislation passed by Congress, if the president thinks we are connected in any way to an organization considered terrorist, we could be imprisoned, shipped anywhere, stripped of our rights and access to an attorney, and not be protected by the Geneva Conventions,” Mayers said.

“Scary stuff,” she said. “We now have a government that is more dangerous to our liberty than the enemy it claims to protect us from.”

The images in the show – funny and sad, whimsical and frightening – shouldn’t draw the attention of the FBI.

“I’m a little bit concerned that they are too colorful and decorative,” Mayers said.

Study the images, though.

A razor wire fence hides an American flag. A world burns against a red background. They are powerful.

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