Out of this world Artisdt Randy Fein draws inspiration from space and the arts for school mural

Artist Randy Fein squats in the center of a long, horizontal framework of tiles, stretching her legs from one space to another as gracefully as if she were a dancer. Though Fein’s art is of the static, fastened-to-the-wall kind, the movement she creates within her ceramic tiles clearly flows from an innate sense of motion.

The work Fein was dancing in and out of – with her graying hair tied back in a thick braid – was a tile mural, 16 feet long and 6 feet high. It was hung recently outside a brand-new auditorium at Gorham Middle School. A week before it was to be moved, most of the nearly 150 tiles were finished and resting on the floor of Fein’s Belfast studio on one of four plywood sheets that make up the backing for the mural. A few tiles, however, were still in the kiln, undergoing one final firing to measure up to her demands.

The piece has been 18 months in gestation, three of them nearly full-time. The massiveness of this project caused Fein, who lives in Lincolnville, to rent a second studio in Belfast and hire an assistant to help her build a reinforced table on which to work.

She estimates that she rolled out and sculpted 1,200 pounds of clay.

Before the clay came the idea. When the notice went out that the new Gorham middle school was looking for art proposals under the state’s Percent for Art requirement, Fein remembered how inspired she felt after attending a modern dance concert in Gorham the year before. Then she discovered that the Gorham community was so involved with the performing arts that the school district decided it needed a second auditorium, this one in the new middle school.

When Fein received the blueprints of the new space and saw the blank wall outside the auditorium, she was inspired. She would create an art piece about art, about what drives people to art. She would call the piece “Inspiration.”

She submitted the idea in August 2002. After appearing before three design panels, she learned in March 2003that she had landed the commission.

Fein was chosen, says art teacher and design

committee member Amy Cousins, for the uniqueness of the concept.

“We were looking for something that would be sculptural, not flat,” Cousins said. “We liked the idea that it had a theme, that it was not non-representational, and that it integrated the arts with its location within the school.”

Originally, Fein considered using symbols of the performing arts, such as tragedy and comedy masks, bass and treble clefs and dancing figures for the mural’s central motif. Then she began to think a little deeper about what inspiration is, where it comes from.

She recalled how she dreamed of being an astronaut as a child. Ever since, she says, the image of the Earth in space has been a powerful symbol for her.

“It’s very familiar, and that’s inspiring unto itself,” she said, showing a studio visitor her images of the Earth in space taken by the Hubble space telescope.

Fein decided to place the Earth front and center within the mural, in an atmosphere of stars and planetary dust. Then she began to consider other symbols, especially stars.

“I definitely used to look at the stars as a child,” she said. “Now that I’m older, I realize that stars are universes unto themselves – I find the concept of space awesome, it’s so vast.

“Then, too, as a child, I used to watch Mickey Mouse and I remember there was a star in Mickey’s dressing room,” Fein continues, her grey eyes crinkling a little, though her face remains serious: “I thought Mickey was a cool guy, and I thought of the concept of being a star, and of the stars in the sidewalk in Hollywood.”

Fein looks again at the Earth she created, which emerges as a half-sphere relief from the mural – a three-dimensional presence, though not so large that it presents a temptation for school children to climb. Elsewhere, she’s cut out the shape of stars in the firmament where mirrors are now placed.

“Inspiration’s a funny thing,” she said. “Once I called this piece ‘Inspiration,’ it freed me up quite a bit about doing the piece.”

The title continually challenged her – all the more important in commission work when, with all the meetings and design reviews and approvals, it can seem as if the bulk of a piece’s creative energy is expended in getting the job long before any clay is pounded, rolled, sculpted or glazed.

“Because ‘Inspiration’ is the title,” says Fein, “I felt compelled to keep feeling fresh about it. And when not inspired, I would think about that and get re-energized.”

With the Earth and heavens at the center of the mural, Fein wanted to be sure the children in the school would relate its expansiveness to the experience of the arts and their own creativity. Fein spent some time working with Gorham’s art classes, doing relief sculptures and showing slides of some of her other pieces. She also asked the students about their own inspirations: What encouraged them to do their best, to think of themselves as a success?

She decided to frame the heavens with symbols of the performing arts. Surrounding the celestial scene is a border featuring the masks of drama, musical notes, dancers, a piano keyboard and a French horn or two, with its dramatic spirals. These are glazed a soothing peach color, blending with the color of the cinder block hallway where the piece is installed. The inspirational words brainstormed by the students have been silk-screened onto the heavens and into the stars of the mural: simple words like “Imagine,” “Inspire” and “Pride.”

One seventh-grade boy, she says, had a hard time connecting to her questions about inspiration until she asked him, “What makes you do your best on the athletic field? What makes you keep going forward?”

Looking at her, the pupil said, “The Gorham Ram” – the school’s mascot. Fein sculpted a few rams into some tiles and included those in the border as well.

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” says principal Dennis Duquette.

Donna Gold can be reached at carpenter@acadia.net.