UMF Emery Community Arts Center Summer Season Exhibit: Paintings & Photography by Phil Poirier and Milton Christianson

Time: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Location: The UMF Emery Community Arts Center

The UMF Emery Community Arts Center is pleased to launch its 2017 summer season with an exhibit entitled, “Places: Two Views – Paintings and Photography by Phil Poirier and Milton Christianson.”

The show opens Thursday, June 15, with a gala reception from 5-7 p.m. and runs through Friday, August 18. It is free and open to the public.

Born in Rumford, Poirier considers himself an observational naturalist where photography, the visual transcription, has now supplanted painting. “Working with digital imagery, I push the images, pulling out work that feels more painterly than anything I ever did with a brush,” said Poirier.

He attended Rumford High School and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Southern Maine in 1976. He has since been awarded the Carina House Monhegan Artists Residency. As a recipient of this award, he spent five weeks on Monhegan Island, painting and hiking the island's natural wonders. He is also a singer/songwriter in the pop/folk tradition.

“Nature, art and song, have encoded my life,” said Poirier. “While I’ve focused my life around creative work, the battery powering this bus has been my connection to nature. Nature is a mystic thread that spans the whole catalog of my creative work.”

Milton grew up in Minneapolis, Minn. While attending Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., he made many friends from Maine and moved to Maine in 1970.

He owned Fiddlehead Graphics, a silkscreen printing business, for 20 years where he designed and printed posters and t-shirts. He has been painting professionally since 1985. Currently, he exhibits his work at Art North Light in Millinocket and Jane Hamilton Fine Art in Tuscon, Ariz. He also exhibits at outdoor shows around Maine in the summer, predominantly around Greenville and Moosehead Lake.