FARMINGTON — The work of visual artist Maggie Libby is the next featured exhibit at the UMF Art Gallery on the University of Maine at Farmington campus. The exhibit is on display from Feb. 7–March 14, with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 7. The event is free and open to the public.

Libby’s interactive installation, “across references,” speaks to the intersection of geological time, the course of rivers and women’s lives. Featuring erasable drawings of glacial retreat and the Sandy and Kennebec Rivers, interactive portraits, self-portraits and mappings, women viewers are invited to mark their presence on the environment as a challenge to the “heroic” (masculine) American landscape tradition.

Libby’s portraits of local Maine women and female international human rights activists who have spent time in central Maine celebrate women’s stewardship of climate-change and environmental dialogue. Viewers must struggle to decide whether to interact and change an artwork’s surface, creating a parallel to human behavior in the natural world.

The artist will be in residence at the gallery for several days throughout the show to conduct oral interviews, offer help with constructing life maps, instruction for self-portrait drawing, and prompts for journaling.

Libby is based in Waterville. She is an alumna of Colby College and studied at the New York Studio School, the Vermont Studio School, and in 1987 was awarded the William and Marguerite Zorach Scholarship for an emerging-artist residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

The UMF Art Gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m.Tuesday through Sunday and by appointment.

For more information or to make an appointment, contact Sarah Maline at maline@maine.edu or 207-778-1062, or visit artgalleryumf.org.