American Pop Artist and Author Michael Albert Will Tour the Eastern Usa This Summer with over Twenty Stops in Maine, One of Them Fort Kent!

The University of Maine at Fort Kent’s Blake Library, in collaboration with the St. John Valley Senior College, will host American Pop Artist and Author Michael Albert’s famous art program and discussion on Wednesday, August 2, from 1 to 3 p.m. in Blake Library.

The program is designed for ages 17 and up, and there will be limited seating. Please contact Sofia Birden, Blake Library Director, at 207-834-7527 or sbirden@maine.edu to sign up or for more information.

The “Modern Pop Art Experience” generally includes an artist appearance (Meet the artist!) and an artist talk and presentation, where Mr. Albert introduces himself to the group and shows examples of his works. Then he will hold a hands-on collage workshop, where participants will get to create their own collages using the same materials he uses to create his serious works of art.

At the end of the program, each participant will leave with a free poster. Mr. Albert will have on-site about 20 different prints, which he has self-published in limited quantities, to choose from as a special gift for coming to the event.

In addition, that evening, from 5 to 7 p.m., the Fort Kent Public Library will host Mr. Albert’s Pop Art program for families and their children.

Again, there will be limited seating, so please contact Director Andrew Birden at 207-834-3048 or by fortkentpubliclibrary1@gmail.com to sign-up and for further details.

Michael Albert will bring his nationally renowned “Modern Pop Art Experience” art programs to more than 85 cities in 11 states this summer and to many in Maine and Canada for the first time. He has run this program for over a decade and has brought it to more than 1,000 libraries, museums, arts events, and schools in 43 states. Michael Albert is in Maine from July 29th through August 12th and will run his programs throughout the state of Maine.

Mr. Albert was born and raised on Long Island in New York and currently lives and works in White Plains, New York. Albert is the author of an artist autobiography titled “An Artist’s America” (Henry Holt, 2008), and he is nationally known for making collage artworks from cereal boxes and other printed cardboard consumer brand packages. His work has been described as a cross between pop art, cubism, and recycling.

Albert’s pop art is often referred to as “modern” since he has been creating it for the past 25 years and continues to create new works on a regular basis, whereas the Pop Art movement began almost 70 years ago with the ‘old masters’ such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and others who started creating art themed about everyday things (products and objects) and subjects (current events, etc.).

Albert’s official beginning as a Modern Pop artist back in 1996 was his Frosted Flakes box collage. He calls this collage “Portrait of An American Classic: The Birth of Cerealism.” Since that breakthrough creation, he has created over 700 collages from cereal boxes such as this, and thousands more with different themes, using the same everyday materials in all artworks.

He said his true goal in all his works and effort is to create a masterpiece worthy of hanging in a major museum like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

Please be sure to sign up for this interesting and fun art workshop held at UMFK’s Blake Library and the Fort Kent Public Library.