'Doorway to the sea'

“Christina’s World,’’ by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), the very popular American “realist “ painter. The woman in the painting, Anna Christina Olson (1893-1968), had a degenerative muscular disorder that prevented her from walking after she was 30. She refused to use a wheelchair, so she would crawl. The house and barn are in Cushing, Maine, where the Wyeth family had a summer house.

“The world of New England is in that house – spidery, like crackling skeletons rotting in the attic – dry bones. It’s like a tombstone to sailors lost at sea, the Olson ancestor who fell from the yardarm of a square-rigger and was never found. It’s the doorway of the sea to me, of mussels and clams and sea monsters and whales.’’

-- Painter Andrew Wyeth, on the home of his model Christina Olson, in Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life (1996), by Richard Meryman

The Olson House in 1995. The house and its occupants, Christina and Alvaro Olson, were depicted in paintings and sketches by Wyeth from 1939 to 1968. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in June 2011. The Farnsworth Art Museum, in Rockland, Maine, owns the house, which is open to the public.

Wood breaking against the Maine coast

Work by Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen in their show in the Ellis Beauregard Fellowship Exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Arts, Rockland, Maine, through June 16. The gallery says: ”Kavanaugh and Nguyen have collaborated in their art for more than a decade, and have become known for their inventive and immersive installations. For this exhibition, they use wood to mimic the coast of Maine and create a turbulent ocean breaking against the shore. The wooden waves look as though they may crash down and soak the viewer at any moment, and they keep the viewer immersed in the exhibition even as they stay dry.’’

Rockland is a major art center, anchored by the Farnsworth Museum of Art, as well as a fishing port.

The gallery says:

”Kavanaugh and Nguyen have collaborated in their art for more than a decade, and have become known for their inventive and immersive installations. For this exhibition, they use wood to mimic the coast of Maine and create a turbulent ocean breaking against the shore. The wooden waves look as though they may crash down and soak the viewer at any moment, and they keep the viewer immersed in the exhibition even as they stay dry.’’

Rockland is a major art center, anchored by the Farnsworth Museum of Art, as well as a fishing port.