Art Outdoors Explores All Our Emotions

Pamela Moulton has created a fascinating experience using her beautiful art to explore our beautiful – and not so beautiful – emotions.

After working on the art and presentation for a couple of years, Pam launched her project on May 17 at the Ogunquit Museum of Modern Art. Linda and I were in Ogunquit for a travel column visit to Meadowmere Resort, and spent a couple hours at the museum, which features a wonderful display of the art of Dahlov Ipcar, there until the end of June.

I’m sure you’ll agree that Pamela’s art is stunningly beautiful. But it’s the presentation that I believe she should take all over Maine, because many will benefit from it.

Look carefully and you will see five emotions in the center of the art: enjoyment, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust. Her goal is to help us explore our emotions, and she’s got a fun way to do that.

You roll a large dice with the five major emotions, and see which one comes up. Then you take a card and record the things that cause that emotion in you.

No big surprise, Linda and I both rolled “enjoyment.” And I told Pam, her card didn’t give me enough room to list all the things that give me enjoyment, including travel writing! Once your card is completed, you can talk about it, or just tape it to the piece of art.

I would have enjoyed rolling the dice a second time, but we had to get into the museum for a scheduled tour, which was also fascinating. I particularly liked their World War One room, part of their permanent collection.

I also enjoyed learning more about Henry Strater, the museum’s founder. Henry was a close friend of Ernest Hemingway, but that friendship foundered when Hemingway took credit for a large fish that Henry had caught.

Both Jill Burke, the museum’s Education Coordinator, and Alison Gibbs, the Marketing Director, were very generous with their time, giving us a tour of the museum and telling us all about their collections. I was particularly taken by James Linehan’s impressionistic paintings of Schoodic Point, one of our favorite places in Maine.

Outside, the museum features beautiful gardens and seating overlooking the ocean. I could have sat there all day, but Linda needed to get home to work in her own gardens.

You can learn more about the museum at www.ogunquitmuseum.org and Pamela Moulton at www.pamelamoulton.com. I encourage you to book Pamela for an emotional presentation!

And I also need to let you know that Meadowmere is an awesome place to stay in Ogunquit. You can read our column about that visit here.

Explanation of Pamela’s project

Willy-nilly and capricious, emotions can be real troublemakers. They have the capacity to be both constructive and destructive; our life force. Suspended in OMAA’s garden, these five Universal Continents of Emotion will be woven in great circular colored zones with a multitude of richly textured materials ranging from rope fibers from a local manufacturer to Christmas garland.

Moulton will invite visitors to become participants by playing an artist’s game dealing with emotions, helping to map out our emotional moods, triggers, and actions. Moulton is determined to expand the Continent of Enjoyment! This project is inspired by the on-line Atlas of Emotions commissioned by the Dalai Lama, which is a 21st century tool for navigating our emotions and ultimately cultivating more compassionate peaceful human beings.

 

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.