The opening reception was crowded with old friends, students and colleagues. As Portland’s Channel Six attempted to get a few words with Juris Ubans, aglow in suit and tie and standing taller than the camera man, he kept interrupting the interview, surprised as another familiar face brushed by,
“Oh Hello!” Juris belted, ignoring the camera and energetically shaking hands with a former student who had returned to USM for the art show, a retrospective exhibit of the work and history of Juris over his long career.
UBART: a Juris Ubans Retrospective runs until February 15 in the Gorham art gallery, documenting more than the artist’s own work. Over half the work in the 160-piece-show is by other artists he knows personally, including former students and friends. “I look at the work and think of the people that did it,” Juris says, “The work is sort of like a surrogate of the artist.” Juris says that the show highlights the relationships built through his art career and the strength of an art community.
When asked to do a retrospective show on the eve of his retirement, after 41 years at USM as a professor and gallery director, Juris admitted he wasn’t too excited. “A retrospective? That’s what you have when you’re dead or retired!” After talking to friends like Dennis Gilbert, who said “you’ve got to do it.” It was decided that he would involve the art community that he’d been part of as the focus of the show.
Longtime friend of Juris, Gilbert curated the show and wrote the essay for the catalog that accompanies his Retrospective. The essay begins with a phrase constantly used by Juris, “Fantastic!” – fitting to explain his encouraging and lively relationship with students and friends and their art.
The essay also attempts to summarize Juris’ life, which he describes as at times “complicated.”
Juris was born in Latvia, where he grew up until the age of 6. “The Russians were coming, so we skedaddled. In 1950 we immigrated to the United States; they were trying to resettle displaced people. I went to school when I arrived, we lived in Syracuse, New York. Later I went in the army, I was drafted, then I continued school – I wouldn’t say sporadically, but not for Jenna Howard
Staff Writer
The opening reception was crowded with old friends, students and colleagues. As Portland’s Channel Six attempted to get a few words with Juris Ubans, aglow in suit and tie and standing taller than the camera man, he kept interrupting the interview, surprised as another familiar face brushed by,
“Oh Hello!” Juris belted, ignoring the camera and energetically shaking hands with a former student who had returned to USM for the art show, a retrospective exhibit of the work and history of Juris over his long career.
UBART: a Juris Ubans Retrospective runs until February 15 in the Gorham art gallery, documenting more than the artist’s own work. Over half the work in the 160-piece-show is by other artists he knows personally, including former students and friends. “I look at the work and think of the people that did it,” Juris says, “The work is sort of like a surrogate of the artist.” Juris says that the show highlights the relationships built through his art career and the strength of an art community.
When asked to do a retrospective show on the eve of his retirement, after 41 years at USM as a professor and gallery director, Juris admitted he wasn’t too excited. “A retrospective? That’s what you have when you’re dead or retired!” After talking to friends like Dennis Gilbert, who said “you’ve got to do it.” It was decided that he would involve the art community that he’d been part of as the focus of the show.
Longtime friend of Juris, Gilbert curated the show and wrote the essay for the catalog that accompanies his Retrospective. The essay begins with a phrase constantly used by Juris, “Fantastic!” – fitting to explain his encouraging and lively relationship with students and friends and their art.
The essay also attempts to summarize Juris’ life, which he describes as at times “complicated.”
Juris was born in Latvia, where he grew up until the age of 6. “The Russians were coming, so we skedaddled. In 1950 we immigrated to the United States; they were trying to resettle displaced people. I went to school when I arrived, we lived in Syracuse, New York. Later I went in the army, I was drafted, then I continued school – I wouldn’t say sporadically, but not for four years straight. I took semesters off, I worked, I finished my BFA painting in 1968, completed some training at Yale, and then after grad school at Pennsylvania State and a lot of time spent in California-I moved to Maine 1968.”
Maine, specifically USM, has been Juris’ home for 41 years, and now, freedom from his day job as an art professor has its perks for Juris, who has a plan for what is in store, although guarantees this could change.
“Without having to be somewhere Monday and Wednesday at 9 a.m., I’ll certainly do more work, and I’m looking forward to that. And I love to travel, so this will give me that opportunity!” In the 1980s when Juris was asked to go to Brazil with students, the experience changed him. Several years ago Juris started an exchange program between USM and a school in Riga, Latvia. Since then, USM has also gone on to partner also with two schools in France and one in Germany. He has taught through this exchange program and will keep visiting, improving the program, and teaching there. He recently received a Fulbright grant to work between Latvia and the U.S., which he hopes will widen the community of artists he is part of.
His show wraps up this week, but has served to show that the life and work of an artist doesn’t have to be an isolated affair. “I tried to show that there was and still is a community of artists, a continuum, hopefully that comes though in the show.”