ROCKPORT

Fundraiser for nonprofit will feature graffiti art

Additional Photos

Graffiti artist Too Rich will show his work and demonstrate “tagging” at the Dunk the Junk event Saturday in Rockport. Courtesy of Center for Maine Contemporary Art

Dunk the Junk, a local nonprofit campaign against childhood obesity, will present the Hip Hop Dance Hall at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. The evening will feature an exhibition of graffiti art by Too Rich (aka Mike Rich of Portland) and other graffiti artists, as well as live graffiti “tagging” by Too Rich, music from DJs Mark Kelly and Owen Cartwright, sushi by Suzuki of Rockland and a cash bar by 40 Paper of Camden.

The event, which will take place from 7 p.m. to midnight Saturday, is a fundraiser for Dunk the Junk and CMCA’s ArtLab. Tickets cost $30, and are available at HAVII (Harbor Audio Video), 87 Elm St., Camden, or by calling CMCA at 236-2875 or (203) 257-6778. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Rockport pediatrician Kevin Strong founded Dunk the Junk to curtail the eating of junk food through street art, music and other means of reaching kids and to help conquer obesity and obesity-related diseases in children. The program is supported by private donations, health food companies and foundations. CMCA offers classes and free workshops for children and adults in its new ArtLab studio space, supported in part by Camden National Bank, the Milton and Sally Avery Art Fund, and individual donors.

The exhibition of graffiti art will be open by appointment to educators for school visits and to the public through Feb. 17. To schedule a visit or for more information, call CMCA at 236-2875 or visit cmcanow.org and dunkthejunk.org.

PORTLAND

Artist Andrea Zittel to speak at Museum of Art

At 6 p.m. Jan. 23, the Nelson Social Justice Fund at the Portland Museum of Art will present a lecture by internationally known artist Andrea Zittel. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and admission is free. Zittel will sign books afterward.

Zittel is known for her sculptures and installations that explore how we live, what we need and personal freedom. From her first “living unit” that experimented in reducing all that a person needs into a small compact space to her commission from the Indianapolis Museum of Art to build Indianapolis Island, a fully inhabitable floating island for the museum’s lake, her work explores individualism, community and sustainable living. For Zittel, home, furniture and clothing all become the sites of investigation in an ongoing endeavor to better understand human nature.

In 2010, Zittel launched her new project, the Group Formerly Known as Smockshop, as part of Space Gallery’s outdoor art and music block party. Artists from Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Berlin and Portland created and sold garments as reinterpretation of Zittel’s designs. This artistic enterprise generated income for artists whose work was non-commercial or not yet self-sustaining.

Zittel was born in 1965 in Escondido, Calif. She received a BFA in painting and sculpture from San Diego State University and an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Zittel’s work has been included in group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Doccumenta X, Skulture project in Munster and both the 1995 and 2004 Whitney Biennials. She has had solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh; the Diechtorhallen in Hamburg; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, N.Y.; the Museum for Gegenwartskunst in Basel; the Louisiana Museum in Denmark; the Schaulager in Basel and Magasin 3 in Stockholm.

Andrea Zittel is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City, Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Sadie Coles HQ in London, Massimo DeCarlo in Milan and Spruth-Magers in Munich. An entire room of her work recently has opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on view into 2014.

— Compiled by Bob Keyes, Staff Writer

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