Zillman Art Museum Exhibition- GERRI RACHINS: Selected Works on Paper, 2008 - 2025

Zillman Art Museum (ZAM) announces Summer Exhibition

BANGOR - The Zillman Art Museum - University of Maine, located at 40 Harlow Street in Bangor, ME, opens a new exhibition that will run May 15 - September 5, 2026. ZAM is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am - 5 pm and brings modern and contemporary art to the region, presenting approximately 21 original exhibitions each year. Admission to the Zillman Art Museum is free in 2026 thanks to the generosity of Birchbrook.

GERRI RACHINS: SELECTED WORKS ON PAPER, 2008-2025
May 15 - September 5, 2026

This exhibition features an array of works on paper by Gerri Rachins, who splits her time between studios in Boston and Cape Cod. Spanning over nearly 20 years of practice, viewers are offered a glimpse into two distinct but connected aspects of Rachin's creative process. Works defined primarily as drawing-focused occupy their own space, while colorful paintings on paper fill other galleries. The two creative approaches are connected. The flow of the fluid color in the paintings provides structure, not unlike that of the mechanics of drawing.

The activity of drawing is central to the artist's process but with marks that are laid down in a non-traditional manner. For instance, experimentation in the studio was the genesis for a series of large-scale drawings. Rachins' attached graphite to a hand-fashioned tool on a chain that was suspended from the ceiling. Natural forces unite with the artist's hand to create the works. Through the artist's interventions with the makeshift pendulum, the graphite moves around the paper to create energetic marks. The arching lines coalesce into forms that the artist discovers, accentuates--and in some of the compositions--further defines through color.

A focal point of the exhibition are dynamic paintings on paper, rich with vivid color and implied depth. Controlled and spontaneous pours of fluid acrylic ink create rich layers and intersecting passages in these abstract compositions. Surfaces are built further through the addition of Flashe vinyl paint, gouache and colored pencil. Color permeates the exhibition, with compositions that range from intense warm tones of reds, pinks and fluorescent oranges to cool tones of rich shades of blues. Transparent passages contrasted with solid forms of color add to the special interplay in the works.

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