Take me IN to the Ballgame Art exhibits stir fondness for America’s pastime

Baseball season officially opened at 5 a.m. Tuesday in Japan, and critics had a field day with the irony of America’s pastime heading overseas for game one.

At least the Yanks lost.

The opening of two baseball-themed exhibits at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor promises to be a more auspicious beginning, however. Portland artist Jessica Gandolf’s imaginative paintings of old-time players and Boston photographer Jim Dow’s panoramas of empty major league stadiums have all the makings of a winning art season – just leave the peanuts and Cracker Jacks at home.

“How much is this about visual art is really almost irrelevant. These take on an aesthetic, jewellike quality because of what they’re around,” museum director Wally Mason said, pointing to Gandolf’s diminutive works. Then, he turned to Dow’s photographs. “Baseball fans and aficionados would look at these from a nostalgic point of view. It’s a moment in time. It’s what photography does best, but it’s really putting photography into service as a time capsule.”

When Dow cataloged the structures in the early 1980s, he had no way of knowing that most of them would be gone less than a quarter-century later, including Veterans Stadium, which was imploded in March. But that fact, along with the commercial frenzy that overtook ballparks in the 1990s, makes the photographs even more powerful today.

The “refurbishment of baseball as the ultimate nostalgia” that took place in the last decade, as evident in such parks as Camden Yards, adds to the effect, according to Dow.

“In fact, they’re corporate temples with girders that reinforce 20th century history,” the photographer said by phone from Boston.

Dow is an architectural photographer by training, and his spare pictures, taken from the most sweeping vantage point in each stadium, showcase the structure, rather than the fans. Because he used a big camera with a long exposure, it made sense to shoot when no one else was there. But the absence of people is intentional for another reason.

“The places are more interesting than the people,” Dow said. “The people leave their mark on the place – the designer, the players. I was more interested in the place, in its atmosphere, than the game.”

His contact prints, each mounted in three parts, show the parks in exquisite detail. You can almost make out each blade of grass, not to mention a cigarette butt next to a seat.

“It’s the kind of detail that baseball fans and aficionados crave,” Mason said. “It’s not statistical, but it’s minutiae.”

Mason knows all about the minutiae of the game – he’s the son of a baseball fan who could tell you the date each of Dow’s stadiums was constructed, whether or not there were any renovations on each structure and when each came down.

“Of course, he doesn’t know the name of the museum where I work,” Mason said, laughing.

And if he hadn’t become a gallery director, Mason might have become a professional baseball player – he was drafted by the New York Mets. But when he unwrapped Dow’s picture of Shea Stadium, he wasn’t overcome with emotion. As a photographer in his own right, Mason was more interested in the photographic process – the “creamy quality to the print that you only get from an 8-by-10 negative.”

“I have a background of playing baseball, but to be honest, I don’t care that they’re baseball stadiums,” Mason said. “I don’t have that nostalgic thing.”

The same could be said for Gandolf, whose small, rich paintings depict players from what Mason calls the “Crossley Field era.” Though it’s easy to say those were more innocent times, Gandolf disagrees – she thinks of the players working hard, without posh locker rooms and million-dollar salaries. They had their own problems, she says.

She works from old, mostly black-and-white pictures from newspapers, magazines and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Then she adds color and backgrounds of her own choosing, often “something floral and unbaseball-like.” Combining disparate elements is part of the creative challenge for Gandolf.

“I want there to be a disconnect,” she said. “I don’t think of my work as being naturalistic in any way.”

Though her paintings are almost photographic in their realism, they have a clear painterly quality that comes from her appreciation of surface and brushstroke. And their size and composition is reminiscent of religious icon painting.

“I think that’s really conscious on my part,” Gandolf said. “I grew up and studied with all that beautiful, religious, Renaissance painting. That’s my background. I am interested in this issue of what we worship. I don’t think of it in a sarcastic or ironic way. I just feel like I’m noting or putting it out there a little bit.”

Painting subjects from another era appeals to Gandolf – but not in a sentimental way. She likes the feel of old-style photography, the formality of the portrait poses and the look of the uniforms, not to mention the perspective that time gives her as an artist.

“I don’t have the context that I would working with modern-day players and I think that gives me more artistic freedom,” she said.

Though she is more interested in the visual aspect of her work, she is a bit of a baseball fan – she roots for the Yankees, though not as hard as her husband, a New Hampshire native, roots for the Red Sox.

“I’m a New Yorker, so we have a mixed marriage,” Gandolf said, laughing. “It’s more an intellectual interest for me. I don’t live and die by it like he does.”

“Jim Dow: American and National League Baseball Stadiums” and “Jessica Gandolf: Paintings” opens Friday, April 2, and will be on view at the University of Maine Museum of Art through June 19. The museum is located at 40 Harlow St. in Bangor. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 561-3350.