Sure, the recent influx of Somalis to the Lewiston-Auburn area has made headlines. Portland’s foreign-born population grew by nearly 50 percent in the last decade of the 20th century. And Central American migrant workers who came Down East for the blueberry harvest have of late made the region their year-round home. But aside from pockets here and there, the 2000 Census numbers don’t lie: Maine is the whitest – the least racially, ethnically and otherwise diverse – state in the country.

Queens, N.Y., on the other hand, is the most ethnically diverse area in the United States. Its residents speak 138 different languages. The borough’s neighborhoods, once blocks of families who shared Irish, Italian, Jewish or Greek roots, have since become melting pots in and of themselves.

So what do these two dissimilar places have in common? Artists Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan. The husband and wife team, who live in Queens and spend summers in Sedgwick, have brought their widely acclaimed multimedia project, “Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America,” to the Hudson Museum in Orono. It is on view through Nov. 23.

“We’ve been in the state a long time – long enough to know how things have changed here,” Sloan said during a recent interview at the Hudson Museum. “I’ve been curious about this slow movement of new immigrants to Maine who are clearly different racially. … I think being up here, it’s almost an excuse to talk to people from other cultures.”

While installing the exhibit, featuring audio, photos and text, Sloan and Lehrer had interesting interactions with University of Maine students and community members. When Sloan was shopping at a nearby grocery store, she asked the shopkeeper where his family was from. He answered Pakistan. She mentioned that she knew many people from his hometown through “Crossing the BLVD.”

“In that way, would I have had that conversation with him if we didn’t have this exhibit here?” she said. “No.”

They also had a conversation with a student whose Franco-American grandparents moved to Maine to work in the textile mills. He said his parents didn’t really like all the new immigrants in the area. The irony isn’t lost on the artists, and it isn’t unique to Maine, either.

“They draw the line, even people who came to this country 10 years ago,” Lehrer said.

“I think [the exhibit] creates a great opportunity for dialogue on a lot of these issues,” Sloan added.

Based on the 2003 book of the same title, this exhibit shares stories and images of men and women who came to the United Sates after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments. Prior to the law, preference was given to white Western Europeans.

From 1999 to 2002, the couple traveled the world outside their front door. They interviewed and photographed their neighbors, who hailed from Bhutan, Kabul, Colombia and Egypt, among others. Each had a unique story, heritage and reason for coming to the United States, but they each shared a common bond. They had crossed the boulevard and lived to tell the tale.

The stretch of road in question is Queens Boulevard, a 12-lane expressway dubbed “the boulevard of death.” In the book, Lehrer and Sloan write, “Queens Boulevard was the site of 73 car accidents and over 1,500 injuries from 1993 to 2001.” Many of the victims have been new immigrants. It’s a treacherous crossing, even with three medians, because the lights change quickly.

So do fortunes, as the exhibit so sharply shows. Amy Li, a fashion designer in Guangzhou, China, turned to religion to ease the stress of her daily life. It worked – for a while – until the police asked her if she practiced Falun Gong. When she said yes, they beat her, tortured her and put such pressure on her husband, a lawyer, that he divorced her. She and her daughter moved to an apartment under constant police surveillance. She fled in the middle of the night and left her daughter with her mother.

Though she was able to practice her religion freely here, and she found work with a men’s sportswear designer in New York, Amy missed her daughter terribly. Repeated attempts to bring her daughter to the United States failed.

As a result of the publicity surrounding the book “Crossing the BLVD,” Amy was reunited with her daughter in 2003.

“That was unexpected,” Lehrer said.

The exhibit is full of stories of heartbreak and hope, told by immigrants in their own words through text and audio, accompanied by bold, color portraits taken by Lehrer.

When you cross the BLVD, you’ll meet men who left their families behind for their beliefs and lawyers who now deliver food. You’ll hear prayer and song, words and wisdom. You’ll see an Egyptian man who spent seven years turning his restaurant into a mosaic-encrusted work of art. You’ll meet a woman from Tajikistan so renowned for her dancing that her image was woven into tapestries, printed on posters and glazed on ceramic urns and plates. She now runs a dance studio that can only be accessed through a subway station.

The exhibit is broken down into five “movements” that correspond to the reasons why immigrants came to America – religion, asylum, family – and the neighborhoods and unlikely connections that bind them together.

Though the couple knew about refugees and people seeking political asylum, the project gave human faces to the articles they read in newspapers.

It also tuned them into stories that weren’t so familiar. At Champions Table Tennis Center, a “no-frills” hall located next to a loud set of subway tracks, they learned that pingpong is the second most popular sport in the world (after soccer). They also met immigrants from China, Jamaica, Israel and Czech Republic who rank among the best players in the States.

The “unbelievable journey” through the living rooms, restaurants, schools and streets of their neighborhood also opened their eyes to more subtle issues.

“The contradictions about being in America are much more complex and profound than you hear on the news,” Sloan said.

Take the story of Labib, who owns an Egyptian coffee shop. Five days after Sept. 11, 2001, at 3 a.m., four young men smashed into the shop, threw tables and chairs, broke the windows, a mirror and all of the glasses. Labib called the police. When they came, they asked him if he wanted to press charges.

“I said, ‘No. Denied,'” Labib told Lehrer and Sloan. “I understand the feeling they have. Everybody hurt. Everybody angry. We don’t want to make more hatred than what we already have.”

An hour later, the young men returned to apologize, to help clean up, to thank Labib for not pressing charges. When Labib’s friend Nasser asked the men why they vandalized the store, they told him, “You are Arab. You are speaking the same language as bin Laden. We thought he is someone who belong to you.”

To the young men, they looked like bin Laden. What they didn’t realize was that Labib and Nasser were as angry about the terrorist attacks as they were. At 4 in the morning, they found similarity in their differences.

Through “Crossing the BLVD,” so did Sloan and Lehrer.

“I actually know people in my borough now,” Sloan said. “It’s my home, which is really exciting and also to know you can be at home wherever you are.”

“Crossing the BLVD” is published by W.W. Norton & Co. and is available at the Hudson Museum store and large bookstores. Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

Crossing the BLVD

What: Exhibit of images and audio

Where: Hudson Museum, Maine Center for the Arts, University of Maine, Orono

When: Through Nov. 23

Related events: Multimedia performances, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 2, Alamo Theatre in Bucksport, 469-0924; 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 6 and 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 7, Center for Cultural Exchange, Portland, 761-1545. A series of public dialogues also will take place in the Bangor area in November.

Information: www.umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum; www.crossingtheblvd.org