Talk: multiple meanings of ‘home’ explored

UMF Public Classroom


Jesse Potts will be the featured lecturer Wednesday, March 1 at the UMF Public Classroom series.

Jesse Potts will be the featured lecturer Wednesday, March 1 at the UMF Public Classroom series.

FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington is proud to feature an artist talk by Jesse Potts, UMF assistant professor of art, titled, “Homing- In.” This UMF Public Classroom lecture takes place at 6:30 p.m. with refreshments at 6 p.m., Wednesday, March 1, in the UMF Emery Community Arts Center. It is free and open to the public.

In this talk, Potts explores multiple meanings of “home” as a residence, an action and a state-of-mind and the relationships between place, memory and time. He discusses the ways his recent body of work reflects these multiple representations of home and the ways this symbol and others imbue his work with simultaneous sensations of permanence and transience.

A multidisciplinary artist, Potts’ work is a hybrid of experimental sculptural processes and time-based mixed-media installation.

Of his work, Potts states, “In the studio I am more interested in capturing time through tarnish rather than polish. I am invested in the unmaking or unraveling of the work over time. I am curious about the ways a piece can be “un-made” or how it breaks down, is accreted or is slowly mutated by time.”

His work combines constructed and repurposed objects and devices, printed images, video, light, performance and sound. These foundational elements are often combined with kinetic and interactive components to exist as sculptures, installations and residue.

“When I’m working, I like thinking about the positive and negative implications of an action like the way sanding the surface of a photograph is not only subtractive by removing information but, it is also additive. It produces a dusty residue that can become a source of material and significant content used to make another piece,” said Potts.

His recent work relies on a balanced approach of looking inward and outward to reflect the intimacy, universality and mutability of time, memory, place, perception and the self.

Potts received his MFA from the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has taught at VCU, Eastern Michigan University and Bennington College before coming to UMF in 2013.

The UMF Public Classroom Series is sponsored by the UMF Office of the President.


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