Just Passing Through / An Appeal to Heaven opening reception

Just Passing Through + An Appeal to Heaven Exhibition Notice On view May 2 - June 21, 2025 at SPACE Gallery

Exhibition announcement for Just Passing Through, solo exhibition by Julia Arredondo, and An Appeal to Heaven, installation by Vin Caponigro. This exhibition takes places at SPACE Gallery, 534 Congress St. in Portland, Maine. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

About the artists:
Julia Arredondo is a Tejana with working-class roots, navigating the changing landscape of creative economies within the United States. With a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago, Julia has held appointments as a Visiting Artist at Illinois State University, the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University, Indigo Arts Alliance in Maine, and more. Formally trained in printmaking, Julia specializes in screen printing and countercultural design. Her graphic aesthetic, rooted in analog processes, grew from her work designing for DIY spaces, where she explored zines as a medium for storytelling, self-preservation, and community building.

In their research-based transdisciplinary practice, Vin Caponigro blends accessible and egalitarian concepts with ritual and performance to explore ideas of restriction and reproduction through writing, performance, and the creation of multiples. Caponigro's research includes how those in power have used storytelling and reproducible media to control history, and how marginalized communities have used independent publishing to tell their own stories and fight back against oppressive systems. Caponigro has attended residencies in Estonia, Sicily, Italy, and the United States, including Zygote Press, ACRE, Wassaic Project, Art Center Padula, and Women's Studio Workshop.

Just Passing Through | Exhibition Statement
Just Passing Through is an exercise in being seen. Transients often slip through the records of archivists, elude the tracking methods of government agencies, and go unaccounted for in the projected needs of a community. This invisibility is often deliberate-a safety mechanism for navigating new groups of people and unfamiliar regional customs. Just Passing Through offers me the chance to engage in conversation with Maine as someone "from away"-to exhibit the ways the region has shaped my creative practice, to reflect on the customs I've adopted (and also those I've resisted), and to express my gratitude for the craft traditions, popular motifs, and abundant landscape it has so generously shared with me. Read the full statement here

An Appeal to Heaven | Installation Statement
By the late 17th century, the British had completely deforested their own land and began harvesting and exporting eastern white pines from colonial New England. In order to provide masts for their massive navy of wooden ships, King George III laid claim to any white pine measuring 24 inches or more in diameter in 1691 and any white pine measuring 12 or more inches in 1722. The Pine Tree Riot was an act of resistance against British royal authority undertaken by settlers colonizing the unceded land of the Wabanaki, N'dakina, and Pennacook Peoples, in what is now known as Weare, New Hampshire, on April 14, 1772. Nearly two years before the Boston Tea Party, surveyors attempting to enforce the laws were severely beaten by colonists who disguised themselves as Native Americans, sinking their boats, and whipping them with long pine branch poles. To the settlers on stolen land, the pine tree became a symbol of resistance to colonization and a desire for independence.

An Appeal to Heaven includes documentation of a ritual performed less than 20 miles from the site of the Pine Tree Riot, prints, and magic made from fallen pine tree branches at my mother's house. Read the full statement here

Join us for the opening reception of Just Passing Through and An Appeal To Heaven on First Friday at SPACE Gallery, 534 Congress St. Portland, Maine. Opening Reception Friday May 2, 2025 | 5 pm - 8 pm EST This event is open to attendees of all ages, free of charge.