My creative practice is embedded in a curiosity and a questioning of the spaces we encounter every day, both physical and temporal. The different states of being and experiences they elicit; often resulting in anxieties produced by current social and environmental concerns. Mining investigations into philosophy, sociology, psychology, and pop culture, my work relies on producing shared experiences to connect with others. This has led me recently to reflect on these spaces with explorations of time, place, labor/work, care, and motherhood with a focus on fusing digital and more traditional media in an expanded manner.
My current installation and video work is a consideration of care and the work involved in motherhood, the work of being an artist, how to work at both, and how this suggests concerns of care for the environment for future generations. This includes a series in which I complete different durational tasks with a 5-gallon bucket of natural materials including water, salt, or stones filled with an amount that weighs the same as my young daughter. The works began while at residencies, away from my family and home, and the idea of being away. It has since transformed during the pandemic to include an awareness of how these roles expand and shift in unexpected and sometimes difficult ways. The settings of the videos look to both the natural and constructed landscapes as a means to interact with and reflect on both, culminating in new considerations of how video is viewed and expanding on methods of presentation.
Bethany Engstrom is an artist, curator, and educator living and working in Belfast, Maine. She received a BA in Art History 2002, her MFA in Intermedia in 2011 and Interdisciplinary PhD in Intermedial Collaborative Practices in 2014, each from the University of Maine.
Engstrom’s recent work utilizes objects, installation, audio, and video, focusing on how these materials can express ideas of time, environment, labor/work, and motherhood. She has participated in residencies at the Volland Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation and Mildred’s Lane. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island; Gallery 263, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Collar Works in Troy, New York; Speedwell Contemporary and Cove Street Arts in Portland, Maine; Asymmetrick Arts and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine; Waterfall Arts in Belfast, Maine and the University of Maine.
Engstrom is a part-time Assistant Professor in the Intermedia MFA program at UMaine and an adjunct Lecturer, Visual Arts at the University of Maine Augusta, and Bowdoin College. Formerly Associate Curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine, she is currently the Managing Director of SPEEDWELL Contemporary in Portland, Maine and co-founder and director of the Performance Art Initiative in Maine.
