Cubans, Mainers talk art at potluck dinner

BROOKSVILLE – The gallerylike home of artists Robert Shetterly and Gail Page was the supremely perfect setting for a Tuesday night, neighborhood party with an art theme. The tall white walls of the Brooksville home were designed to display paintings, after all. The cushiony chairs and sofas in the airy rooms encourage conversation and comfort. So where better to hold a potluck dinner to honor three visitors on an art exchange from Cuba?

The exchange is the first collaboration between two Maine sponsors – the University of Maine at Augusta and the Union of Maine Visual Artists – and the Cuban sponsors at the Asociacion de Artistas Plasticos de la UNEAC, or the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. Shetterly, Page and Shetterly’s son, Aran, a writer, organized the exchange more than a year ago to establish a dialogue between artists in Cuba and Maine.

The Cuban artist Arturo Montoto, his wife and business organizer, Maria Eugenia Lopez Rossitch, and the Cuban art critic and historian David Mateo arrived last week in Maine and have traveled throughout the state giving presentations and talking with artists, students and community members.

“To some degree, our desire to do this was political,” explained Shetterly. “Whenever a country becomes stereotyped or demonized, it’s a good idea to have face-to-face contact with the people because, inevitably, that will be different from what we get from newspapers and the government. And it is. These artists are very much like us.”

Certainly that was clear the other night at the party where guests arrived bearing gifts of food that were decoratively placed on a long table in Page’s studio. The menu included Latin-style dishes as well as chocolate cupcakes and cheesecake and home-baked bread. Conversations, some aided by translators, focused on art and lifestyles, and only occasionally turned to politics – to Elian Gonzalez, to Fidel Castro, to freedom of artistic expression in both countries.

The Americans wanted to know whether the Cubans had seen Julian Schnabel’s controversial film “Before Night Falls” about exiled Cuban writer and poet Reinaldo Arenas. They hadn’t because it was never released in Cuba, but they had secretly read the book.

After dinner, the Americans danced to salsa music, and the Cubans danced to Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye.

But the real attraction of the evening was a print by Montoto, one of Havana’s best-known artists. On the dining room table, he spread a copy of “La duldura del abismo,” or “The Sweetness of the Abyss.” In the print, a half-peeled orange rests on a distressed wall against a deep black background. The artists in the room asked questions about the color etching process. How many plates had Montoto used? Did he use a separate plate for each color? Was it tricky to control the mix of hues? And was there a reason the poignant sparseness of the piece reminded some of paintings by Andrew Wyeth?

Turns out that Montoto, who studied art in Havana and Moscow, admires Wyeth’s work and was looking forward to spending a day at the Farnsworth Art Museum, where Wyeth’s work is stockpiled, and at the Olson Home, the historic site in Cushing where Wyeth painted the famed “Christina’s World.”

“It was always a dream for me to come to Maine and be so near the places where Andrew Wyeth lived and worked,” said Montoto. “It will be an honor to see his house and now I am going to walk there where he painted. It’s a very, very important experience for me as an artist. After this experience, I will not be the same, I assure you.”

Montoto also spoke of the particular brand of Maine hospitality he and his companions had encountered. Still, he said, artists are the same around the world.

“Artists have an international language,” he said. “We understand each other. The Americans have been very curious about our culture and our thoughts and how we live. When the artists of Maine come to us, we will share our space, art and thinking in Cuba.”

Montoto has exhibited his work in Russia, Spain, France, Argentina, Mexico and America. He hopes to have a show in Maine someday. In the meantime, the visitors from Cuba will continue their odyssey in a state with a long, prestigious tradition in the art world. Eventually, said Shetterly, the exchange, which includes Maine artists going to Cuba, will be extended to artists in other fields, such as dance and writing.

“In general, you can count on good artists to become very engaged in what it means to be alive at a particular time and to be capable of expressing that in words or paintings,” said Shetterly. “If you can count on that, then you get a dialogue started about who we are and what we are. With the world the way it is today, we get a simplistic view of other countries. You are either with us or against us. But it’s more complicated than that. We are much more alike than different when it comes to what we want to get out of life. These exchanges mean a huge amount in that way.”

The party proved that, too. The next day, before the Cubans left for College of the Atlantic to give a slide presentation, Montoto and Shetterly did a private exchange. Montoto gave Shetterly a print. Shetterly gave Montoto a work of his. Possibly they spoke in English. Possibly they spoke in Spanish. But certainly, it was the language of artists.

Arturo Montoto, Maria Eugenia Lopez Rossitch and David Mateo will speak 5:30-7 p.m. today at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, and 5-7 p.m. Friday, April 19, at the Art Gallery of the University of New England in Westbrook. For more information, call 621-3274.