Summerguide 2016 | view this story as a .pdf

This summer, a striking new Robert Indiana series is blowing in the wind.

From Staff & Wire Reports

Maine art star Robert Indiana is unveiling new work this summer in the show “Robert Indiana: Now and Then,” on view at Bates College Art Museum through October 8. “His latest series is the extraordinary Like A Rolling Stone, in which he creates dynamic visual works with the lyrics of this Bob Dylan song,” says Bates Museum of Art director Dan Mills, an edgy artist himself. “The twelve works in this series merge the work of two of the most iconic American pop culture figures of the 1960s, Bob Dylan and Robert Indiana.”

Neither Robert Indiana nor Bob Dylan rolls with his original name. Indiana was born Robert Clark, in New Castle, Indiana. Bob Dylan changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman to his present stage name out of admiration for the poet Dylan Thomas. Together, the two have changed the world.

A perfect pairing would be to see Indiana’s show on Saturday afternoon, July 16, and then go to Thompson’s Point in Portland that same night and hear Bob Dylan sing under the stars. Just more proof that at the peak of summer, Maine is the right place at the right time.

Indiana takes us closer with his perspectives on Maine and his art in the exchanges below:

On his 1964 EAT sculpture:

“The day they turned it on, a line formed. People wanted to know where the food was. I didn’t see it there. But recently I saw it lit for the first time–it’s now here on the island [Vinalhaven].”

On childhood:

“My Aunt Ruby murdered my grandmother. My mother was elated, as she’d hated her mother, and she went to South Bend to watch the trial. In her absence, my father found another women and left.”

On Andy Warhol:

[Warhol filmed a 40-minute documentary, entitled “EAT,” showing Indiana holding his cat and eating a mushroom.] “You can imagine how exciting that was. Andy loved to bore people.”

On creating an icon:

“In 1964, I was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art to do a Christmas card. It became the most popular Christmas card ever issued, and from there things just snowballed.”

on Defending against “Love” knock-offs:

“I gave up on that a long time ago.”

On reaching a milestone:

“Last night was very lavish, the fanciest and biggest birthday party I’ve ever had. I would have preferred my eightieth in quiet solitude.”

On moving to Maine:

Star of Hope was the reason I came to Vinalhaven. It’s an old Odd Fellows Hall. That’s what I dreamed of all my life, a house like this. I have a studio in Star of Hope, another one in what was the island’s first theater during the Civil War, and a third studio in what was formerly the Odd Fellows outhouse. It was an eight-seater, with a door for the officers, one for the enlisted men, and one for the lady Odd Fellows.”

On hope:

“Now what I’m preoccupied with is the subject of hope. I did a sculpture for Obama’s campaign. Living in the Star of Hope for 25 years, I’d done HOPE designs for myself, but it was really Obama and his book, The Audacity of Hope, that triggered my current involvement.”

On inspiration:

“Living on Vinalhaven has no effect on my art. My art comes from within myself, though LOVE kind of stands apart. Most of my work is very autobiographical: I’m painting my own history and my own life. This is called egocentricism. My own feeling is that artists are more interesting than their work. It’s been my ambition ever since I was six years old to be an artist.”

On future projects:

“My goal is to plant a LOVE in every city around the globe.”