The Passamaquoddy Suite is a cross-border collaboration between American printmaking students and faculty from Maine College of Art and their Canadian counterparts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Using nautical charts of the Passamaquoddy Bay as a common starting point, the series of 31 original prints re-envisions the map as a commentary on the history and culture. The project drew its inspiration, and many of its images, from the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, in Eastport, Maine, a cultural museum and institute dedicated to documenting and fostering new works (particularly printmaking) about the region and U.S./Canada cross-border cultural links along the broader North Atlantic.

ABOUT PASSAMAQUODDY BAY:

Spanning the coastal border between the US and Canada, the Passamaquoddy Bay has been home to generations of fishermen, Colonial settlers and exiles, escaping Loyalists, seafaring smugglers, immigrant cannery workers, and itinerant lumbermen. It has witnessed numerous border wars, shipbuilders and shipwrecks, and the trials and resurgence of the resilient Passamaquoddy and Abenaki peoples. The region’s extreme tides have created one the most diverse and distinctive estuarial/marine ecosystems on the planet, as well as a frequent focus of environmental policy debates in the wake of perennial plans for power plants, liquid natural gas depots, and dams.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

Each participant was randomly assigned a quadrant from NOAA/CHS nautical charts of the region. Each fragment of the map became the base layer of a print, with subsequent layers of sampled imagery, drawn marks, and other interventions combining to create a personal investigation and interpretation of the Passamaquoddy Bay. The finished suite, comprising all 31 contiguous sections of the original map, can be reassembled as a single work. The project unfolds into cross-border vision of the region, a running commentary on the line we cross in any act of mapping, between object and subject; information and knowledge; fact and imagination.  

EDITION AND EXHIBITION:

A limited edition of 40 suites have been produced, each housed in a hand-made clamshell case designed David Wolfe, along with a colophon and explanatory statements by the artists. The Passamaquoddy Suite will be exhibited throughout Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick this summer and fall. Touring and overlapping exhibitions of the project will start with the BFA Thesis Exhibition at MECA and will comprise the inaugural exhibition of the newly reopened Tides Institute and Museum of Art, following a major restoration of its building. Subsequent exhibitions will follow at the Maine State House, the Anna Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD University, and Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre.

Click on any quadrant to enlarge print.

Maine College of Art, 522 Congress Street, Portland, Maine.

Wed-Sun 11-5. For more info: (207) 775-3052  / www.meca.edu

The Tides Institute and Museum of Art, 43 Water Street, Eastport, Maine.

For Museum Hours or more info: (207) 853-4047 / www.tidesinstitute.org

The Maine State House, 193 State Street, Augusta, Maine 

M-F 9:30-4:30. For more info:  (207) 287-2724 / www.mainearts.com

Anna Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD University,1891 Granville Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia 

Tu-F 11-5, Sat 12-4.  For more info:  Peter Dykhuis (902) 494-8223 / www.nscad.ns.ca

Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre, 139 Water Street, St. Andrews, New Brunswick 

For Gallery Hours or more info:  Carol Baker (506) 529-3386 / www.sunburyshores.org