When Nat May founded SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine back in 2002, timing was everything. After one of the city’s few indie venues shuttered, May decided to fill the void by creating a multipurpose gallery and performance venue that would cater to both Portland’s indie art and music scenes.
May’s intent was to offer gallery patrons additional events to attend and allow regular concertgoers to check out SPACE’s art offerings. “Part of our goal is to get people to come in for one thing and see something else that they didn’t know that they were interested in,” he says.
Over the past decade, Portland’s creative community has transformed the city’s once seedy downtown area into an active arts district. SPACE has become one of the area’s creative hubs by offering community events, artist lectures, and film screenings. The volunteer-run center’s hybrid setup also is unique compared to the area’s more traditional galleries and venues.
“I think that the way that we are running the space is not unique nationally, but there aren’t a lot of places like this in Maine or New England where you’re combining a bunch of things,” May says. “It takes a little bit of learning to understand why we’re doing all of these things and what that means.”
SPACE also sets itself apart by featuring work by national and international artists that might not otherwise be displayed in Portland. The curatorial focus is predominantly on visual installation pieces that can withstand being shown in an active, non-traditional gallery space. Previous exhibits have included murals by Andrew Shultz, installations of found objects and wheat-paste prints by Swoon, and paintings by Korean-based designer Seokmee Noh.
This winter, SPACE will be hosting Burn the Lot: Splinter Heads, Nut Mobs & Ballyhoo by Cannonball Press that will feature its recognizable wood-block prints and large-scale canvas pieces. On the events side, there will be a slew of holiday-centric events and movie screenings through the rest of December. In January, SPACE will also host Found Footage Festival Vol. 5, which features a compilation of ridiculous VHS home-video snippets.
Next spring, SPACE Gallery will be the second stop for the nationally touring Notebook Project, which is being produced by Brooklyn’s Art House Co-op. The project showcases the sketchbooks of more than 28,000 artists worldwide and will be on view at nine galleries throughout the USA and then be cataloged for checkout at The Brooklyn Art Library.
Over the past eight years, SPACE has built a solid sense of community by displaying art that is challenging while supplementing it with amazing concerts and cultural events. “Because we are a non-profit, we are one of the few spaces in Portland that’s able to show work without worrying about the commercial end of the gallery,” May says. “We can take risks and have some bold exhibitions that just aren’t seen [elsewhere].”