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The nonprofit group hosts free story-sharing potluck suppers around the state in an effort to combat the epidemic of loneliness.
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The nonprofit group hosts free story-sharing potluck suppers around the state in an effort to combat the epidemic of loneliness.
Kevin Callahan carries paintings by Robert Shetterly out of the elevator Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. Callahan is preparing to hang almost 300 paintings in the largest ever exhibition of Shetterly's work.
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Mara Sapon-Shevin waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Sapon-Shevin's quote reads: “The lessons we teach our students — whether overtly and intentionally or mindlessly and inadvertently — are what will shape the world … Our goal cannot be to mirror the injustice and inequities of the broader society (and the world) but rather to provide students with the skills, attitudes, and confidence they need in order to actively transform the world.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Winona LaDuke waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. LaDuke's quote reads: “The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world’s resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Utah Phillips waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Phillip's quote reads: “Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs. That’s why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Sandy O waits alongside others to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. O's quote reads: “If they can make cash machines that register each sale/ Why can’t they count our votes?/ But they made voting machines that leave no paper trail and/ Why can’t they count our votes?”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of D. Bernard Lown waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Lown's quote reads: “Securing a future free of genocidal weapons requires above all eliminating the political and economic inequities that sunder rich and poor countries. As the Berlin Wall divided East and West, so inequality now creates a fracturing divide that augurs global chaos, terrorism, and war.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Susan B. Anthony waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Anthony's quote reads: “Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!"
Paintings by Robert Shetterly of Joahn Alston, left, and Will Allen wait to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portraits are part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Alston's quote reads: "We gave America The Blues, Jazz, and R&B; we were given inferior schools, penitentiaries, and redlined neighborhoods. With love, rigor and lots of humor, Chester children, like all children, will fulfill their potential and grow into the people the world needs them to be." Allen's quote reads: “In order to build a new food system, we’re going to need a world without fences. We all have responsibility to work together. We need everyone at the table. We’re going to need black and white, young and old, rich and poor. …Not least, we’re going to need a new generation of farmers.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Wendell Berry waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Berry's quote reads: “The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Jane Adams waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Adam's quote reads: “…Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experience of other people.”
Paintings by Robert Shetterly of Mark Twain and others wait to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portraits are part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Twain's quote reads: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
Paintings by Robert Shetterly of Frances Perkins and Scott Nearing wait to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portraits are part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Perkin's quote reads: “Very slowly there evolved … certain basic facts, none of them new, but all of them seen in a new light. It was no new thing for America to refuse to let its people starve, nor was it a new idea that man should live by his own labor, but it had not been generally realized that on the ability of the common man to support himself hung the prosperity of everyone in the country.” Nearing's quote reads: “Could this be the country I had loved, honored, worked for, believed in? The general welfare was forgotten. The land had become a happy hunting ground for adventurers, profiteers, and pirates who called history bunk and used their privileged positions to promote their careers and fill their pockets at the public expense. Peace, progress, and prosperity had become scraps of raw meat, thrown to a pack of venal, military minded ravenous wolves.”
Paintings by Robert Shetterly of Martin Luther King Jr., left, and David Korten wait to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portraits are part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. King's quote reads: “Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon … which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” Korten's quote reads: “... our economic crisis is, at its core, a moral crisis. Our economic institutions and rules, even the indicators by which we measure economic performance, consistently place financial values ahead of life values. They are brilliantly effective at making money for rich people. ... Our children, families, and communities, and natural systems of Earth have paid an intolerable price. If the world is to work for any of us, it must work for all of us.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Robert Koehler, right, waits Thursday alongside others to be hung in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Koehler's quote reads: “How does one live in a world that needs to be reconceived at its core? We have to change course and I have no idea where or how to start, except in a million places at once, but all of these starting places have at least this much in common: reverence for the planet and life itself; acknowledgement and awe that the universe is alive and we are connected to everything in it; and a sense that even the small, mocked, discarded fragments of civilization are to be valued … that they are sacred.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Peter Kellman waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Kellman's quote reads: “We need to recover the disappeared story of the struggle of common people to create a democratic culture. We need to inject into the current debate a vision of a just society where competition is replaced with cooperation, where greed is replaced with love allowing power to be shared by all.”
Paintings by Robert Shetterly of Langston Hughes, left, Chris Hedges and Helen Keller wait to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portraits are part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting.
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Daniel Hale waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Hale's quote reads: “With drone warfare, sometimes nine out of ten people killed are innocent. You have to kill part of your conscience to do your job. But what possibly could I have done to cope with the undeniable cruelties that I perpetuated? The thing I feared most was the temptation not to question it. So I contacted an investigative reporter … and told him I had something the American people needed to know.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Anne Braden waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Braden's quote reads: “As long as people of color can be written off as expendable, and therefore acceptable victims of the most extreme inequities, none of the basic injustices of our society will be addressed; they will only get worse."
A painting by Robert Shetterly of Edward Abbey waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Abbey's three quotes read: “The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chainsaws”; “It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it”; and “Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”
A painting by Robert Shetterly of George Seldes waits to be hung Thursday in the Bates Mill Atrium in Lewiston. The portrait is part of Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth" exhibit of American activists, and each includes a provocative quote etched into the surface of the painting. Seldes' quote reads: “The main threat to democracy comes not from the extreme left, but from the extreme right, which is able to buy huge sections of the press and radio and wages a constant campaign to smear and discredit every progressive and humanitarian measure.”
