FARMINGTON —“Slow Forward,” a selected retrospective of the work of Joan Rachaelsdaughter (Joan Braun), will be on exhibit from March 10 through April 3 at the University of Maine at Farmington Art Gallery.

There will be an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, March 10.

Rachelsdaughter’s work reflects the collage aesthetic: “a layered, cumulative … dialogic approach … particularly effective for political art which makes something of contradictions,” according to Lucy Lippard, internationally recognized art critic. Melding her early conservator experience with Medieval and Renaissance art at the Gardner Museum with the realities of her environment, it explores the mystery, suffering and glory of being while reflecting evolving cultural and political realities.

In the 1980s, Rachelsdaughter brought her work off the painting stretcher to make free-hanging and adhered wax canvas pieces, transforming debris found on the walk to her studio into iconic garments. During that time, she also co-founded The Art Squad in Philadelphia, a group that organized street events about nuclear weapons, women’s issues, the overthrow of democratic governments in Central America, homelessness and the hypocrisy of the Philadelphia Bicentennial. An album on display in the gallery documents some of these events.

The exhibit also includes pieces from some of her larger installations: “Survival Clothes” and “Artist’s Theater,” created when Rachelsdaughter belonged to Nexus, Foundation for Today’s Art, in Philadelphia, and “Childhood,” a collaboration with poet Ruth Bookey created for the Belfast Poetry Festival.

After moving to Maine full time in 1989, Rachelsdaughter continued her explorations in melted wax, incorporating domestic materials such as used coffee filters, powdered pigment and thread into her work. For the last 10 years, captured by the Internet’s power to put the world’s art, news and images literally at her fingertips, she has been taking digital photographs and using Photoshop instead of wax to collage, layer and make images translucent.

This exhibit is sponsored by the UMF Department of Sound, Performance and Visual Inquiry.

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