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Trick or Treaters get treated to some Sol Lewitt
A few weeks ago I took students from a printmaking elective I'm currently teaching at Maine College of Art called "Gathering Influences: Collecting, Collections, Collectors, Collectibles" to visit the remarkable collection held by Bruce Brown of Portland, Maine. I am encouraging (or more accurately requiring) these students to collect art themselves, something many of us do not think we can afford. Brown began his remarkable collection (exhibited at the Portland Museum of Art) in 1987 on a public school teacher salary. He collects both national and internationally renowned artists as well as the work of emerging local and regional artists, festooning his home with a fragment of his rich collection.

Bruce showed us dozens of prints and work in other media, all the while regaling us with stories that revealed his strong connections to each piece and many of the artists. The students were amazed to see someone living with so much art and were gratified to learn that someone like Bruce exists.

These students are currently working on a covered slip case sructure to house an exchange portfolio around themes of collecting. To thank Bruce Brown for opening his home to us to share his collection, we plan to give him a copy of this portfolio. Other recipients of the boxed set will be an artist who gave us a great slide talk, Lauren Fensterstock, whose work strongly relates to Cabinets of Curiosity, and Marilynn Gelfman Karp, author of In Flagrante Collecto: Caught in the Act of Collecting. Gelfman Karp lectured at MECA in October and critiqued germs of new collections the students began in response to an assignment Gelfman Karp gave them to amass a collection of something no one else collects. Below are two images of a discussion of sophomore Luc Collette's Collection of Spills.