Aaron T Stephan | Building Houses/Hiding Under Rocks: Quint Contemporary Art: 7739 Fay Avenue

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to present Aaron T Stephan's piece Building Houses/Hiding Under Rocks.  This will be Aaron’s first solo show at Quint Contemporary Art.  There will be a public reception on January 4th from 6 to 8 pm. The artist will be in attendance. 

Aaron T Stephan has spent the last year scouring library depositories to collect over 15,000 discarded books from across New England. The piece Building Houses/Hiding Under Rocks is the result of intense sorting, measuring, cutting, photographing, and arranging of this eclectic library of discards.  The result is a monumental sculptural work, which edifies the texts into a self-contained building with a surprising interior space. The work explores ideas ranging from contemporary philosophical issues to the basic need for shelter. Building Houses/Hiding Under Rocks challenges notions of self, loss, and understanding.

Stephan is a Portland, Maine resident who is originally from Western New York. He made his home in Maine in 2000 to attend the graduate program at the Maine College of Art, where he graduated with an MFA in 2002. He was the recipient of the 2002 Marguerite Zorach fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was the 2005 Louise Bourgeois fellow at YADDO in Saratoga Springs, NY. Stephen is a recipient of the 2008 John Michale Kohler Arts Center residence program. His work was featured in the 2003 Portland Museum of Art Biennial and the 2006 Center for Maine Contemporary Art Biennial.  Other recent exhibitions include ICON Gallery, SPACE, the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, The Hay Gallery, The Filament Gallery, The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The Nave Gallery in Boston, the DUMBO Center for the Arts in Brooklyn, and Northwestern Connecticut Community College Art Gallery. Stephan has also completed 5 public commissions in the state of Maine including LIFT, a dramatic work that at first appears to be a normal size table and set of chairs but upon closer inspection reveals the furniture is twenty-foot tall, sited in the new Joel and Linda Abromson Community Center in Portland, Maine. He is currently working on a public commission in Lewiston, Maine.