FARMINGTON — As the University of Maine at Farmington’s Emery Community Arts Center Flex Space Gallery reopens to the public, it is fitting that its first exhibit will be close to the heart of rural Maine life. The “Farm Tools Project,” a visual exploration of the use of hand tools on small farms by Michel Droge and Sarah Loftus, will be on display in the Emery Flex Space Gallery and on the Emery website from Monday, Aug. 31, through Thursday, Oct. 1.

According to University Safe Return plans, gallery hours will initially be on a limited basis, and patrons are encouraged to check Emery’s website for updated open hours at https://wpsites.maine.edu/emerycommunityartscenter/. All visitors are required to wear masks and maintain social distancing while in Emery and the Flex Space Gallery.

Over the last year artist Michel Droge and archaeologist Sarah Loftus traveled around the state with a portable cyanotype kit,  a 19th century form of nontoxic photography, creating images of tools with people in their fields, barns and greenhouses. They talked with farmers about their practices, the significance of the tools they choose to use, and how they engage with the earth to produce and harvest food.

As an archaeologist, Loftus has been researching American farming and the material culture of daily life for many years. Droge is a research based artist with a socially engaged practice that addresses the environment and climate change. They decided to collaborate to look at the material choices people make on small farms, the labor of it, and the objects they pick up each day to grow food and maintain sustainable relationships with the land.

Tools are embedded with their own histories and stories, extensions of themselves and partners in complicated relationships with the world. They have their own animus, but also speak to humanity’s collective capacity for invention and ingenuity.

As with farming, cyanotypes are produced with sunlight and water and the ghostly beauty speaks to generational relationships with the land and the enduring resilience of small farms facing a suite of environmental, social and industrial challenges.

Droge is a painter, printmaker and educator whose work engages with the environment and the human condition in an era of uncertainty.  Their public engagement projects involve field research and collaboration with conservation and environmental groups such as Maine Audubon Society and the Island Institute. They are a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Award and three Maine Arts Commission Grants. Their recent exhibitions include the Maine Audubon Society, University of Maine Machias, Bates College Art Museum and The Cue Art Foundation in NYC. Droge has a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Maine College of Art.

Loftus is an archaeologist at Northeast Archaeology Research Center in Farmington,e with a focus on the 19th and 20th century history of the United States and peoples’ relationships with the environment through material culture, labor and technology. She moved to Maine from Texas and spent two years working on vegetable and dairy farms as part of an ongoing interest in American farming. Loftus has an MA in archaeology from University College London and a PhD in anthropology from Syracuse University.

The exhibition is moving around the state and was at Maine Farmland Trust’s Gallery this winter. Fifty percent of artwork sales proceeds will go to Real Farmer Care, which raises funds for self-care for farmers who need it. The remaining 50 percent will go toward publication of a book for the project. The Farm Tools Project is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission and by the Kindling Fund, a grant program administered by SPACE as part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regranting Program.

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