“Freezetag” and “A Maritime Album”

Where: University of Maine Museum of Art, 40 Harlow St., Bangor

When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, through April 2

Admission: $3, free for museum members and UM students with Maine Card

Information: www.umma.umaine.edu, 561-3350

When you enter the small gallery at the University of Maine Museum of Art, you’re enveloped by panels of padded white muslin. At first, it looks like you’ve walked into a mental hospital. Then you notice the tiny, intricate gray figures striking all sorts of unusual poses.

In one corner, a man in pinstriped pants and an oxford hunches over as if he’s about to charge at the wall, a pinched look on his face. Across the room, a woman in a black dress reclines on the ground, her legs propped up on the wall in front of her. She looks content. Bemused. Near the window, an Asian girl in pigtails and overalls prepares to hop over a block on the ground. Or is she about to kick it?

Welcome to “Freezetag,” the spare and spellbinding world of Anya Lewis. In this minimalist space, the 26-year-old Bangor High School grad has created an installation that invites the viewer to imagine what’s going on with these diminutive, lifelike characters.

“To a visitor stepping into this room, the figures don’t necessarily correspond with the way we interact,” Lewis said during a recent trip home from New York, where she has lived and worked for the last 41/2 years. “There’s always this sense that what they’re doing makes sense to them. I think there’s enough emotion in the figures that the viewer can maybe imagine what this character might be thinking or feeling. I think people can relate to it on a lot of different levels.”

Children may look at the figures suspended in space and imagine scenes and stories for the characters, while adults may look at the emotions inherent in each figure and relate to them in a more mature way.

“I hope when people look at the work they also project something of themselves in it,” Lewis said.

It is her hope that viewers walk away from the show with “a greater awareness of the people around them” and with a desire “to look at life in general in a little less literal way, to pay attention to all the details around them … to learn something about themselves based on what they read into the characters.”

In the time-intensive process of creating each of the doll-like sculptures, Lewis learned a lot about herself – and about the limits of perfectionism. She is a craftsman in the truest sense of the word, spending hours upon hours creating a steel armature for each figure, then applying a layer of epoxy clay, then applying a translucent clay similar to Fimo.

This is where the characters come to life, as she molds the clay into expressive faces and bodies. No detail goes overlooked as she creates clothing with buttons the size of pinheads, argyle socks sized to fit a grasshopper and a purse small enough for Barbie’s little sister.

“I get really excited about building the scale of the human into the scale of these miniature figures,” she said.

Lewis works from photographs, often using a blurry person in the background as her muse. But the personality comes from the thousands of people she encounters on the streets of New York – Wall Street investors, mothers picking up their children from school, creative types on their way to work, teenagers hanging out on the weekend.

“I wouldn’t say they’re universal, but they’re basic types of people that someone can relate to in their life – maybe themselves,” Lewis said. “It’s very much about the way I look at the world and the way I interact with people and look at people. It’s also very much about empathy.”

New York is a hard city for empathy, and Lewis admits she doesn’t smile and say hi to people on the street as much as she did when she moved there. But living in the city provides fodder for her art that she wouldn’t necessarily find in Maine.

“Being surrounded by so many people in the city gives you so many opportunities to observe people,” she said. “You just get to observe so many different kinds of people. That’s definitely influenced my work and given me more to draw on when making my characters.”

Living in New York has also made her appreciate her home state and the things she took for granted as a girl. She grew up in Bucksport and moved to Bangor as a teen. Her parents still live in town, and her father’s architecture firm, Lewis + Malm, sponsored the exhibit.

After she graduated from Bangor High, she went on to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2000. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, however.

“I was naive about the art world,” she said, smiling. “I went with my own agenda. I didn’t realize the ways it didn’t fit in with the contemporary art world. I went in wanting to make beautiful figures. That was not necessarily conceptually strong.”

Lewis’ interest sprung from her fascination with the visual and performing arts. She has a background in dance – she studied with the Robinson Ballet and worked during her art school days with a professional company in Cambridge, Mass. And her intricate, detailed figures reflect her lifelong love of dolls.

The idea of doll making wasn’t a huge hit with her professors, but she stood by her love for craftsmanship, enlisting fellow students to teach her techniques she couldn’t learn in the classroom. The initial concept for “Freezetag” involved two-dimensional panels, but she found herself wanting to make the pictures come alive in three dimensions.

The result has been shown in three New York galleries – two in Chelsea, one in Brooklyn – and one figure was included in the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s biennial in 2004. Last August, she got a call from Wally Mason at the University of Maine Museum of Art.

“It’s really a fantastic opportunity for me as a young artist to have a solo museum show,” she said.

When she’s not working on her art, Lewis spends her days raising funds for the New Museum of Contemporary Art. And she continues to shop “Freezetag” around to New York gallery directors. Many say it’s not the right fit, but they appreciate the work she put into it. Still, some galleries are willing to take a chance on something beautiful, a touch sentimental, with a focus on representation.

“It’s not the trendiest thing for the art world, but I do believe it’s valid,” Lewis said. “I’m not saying the art world is changing, but there is a place for different kinds of work these days.”

She’s about to move on from “Freezetag,” but she will continue to explore the figure. She’s passionate about her work, and she won’t give up.

“I’ve had my struggles with art school and the art world, where I fit into it all, but I just keep on doing what I do, and things will happen. Things are happening.”

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.