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As an interdisciplinary artist, my work is a passage through the layers of identity, emotion, and shared experience. Drawing inspiration from both personal introspection, mental health and external socio-political influences.

My practice is rooted in material exploration. I work across sculpture, sound, and mixed media to create tactile experiences that question systems of power, consumption, and identity. Using materials such as glass, metal, found objects, and fabric, I investigate the tension between fragility and resilience—how something can simultaneously protect and expose, silence and amplify.

Each work begins with a visceral response to the world around me: the noise of protest, the excess of wealth, the quiet labor of care, the female experience. Through these themes, I explore the body’s role as both vessel and voice. My pieces often invite touch or participation, emphasizing the sensory and emotional connections that form between object, viewer, and space.

I am drawn to materials that carry history or contradiction—objects that are worn, discarded, or overlooked. By transforming them, I highlight cycles of use and renewal, destruction and reconstruction. This process mirrors the ways we rebuild ourselves and our communities through acts of resistance, empathy, and repair.

I aim to make visible the unseen—our shared vulnerabilities, our capacity for endurance, and the beauty that persists amid struggles. I seek to create an emotional bridge between my art and the viewer, encouraging dialogue and exploring the beauty that emerges from life’s chaos.

Education

Graduate School 

MFA-Intermedia, The University of Maine

Expected graduation May 2027- Honors

Undergraduate Studies

BFA- Studio Art/Mixed Media

Completed May 2005

Minor in Art History

Completed May 2005

Awards

2025

Member of Honors Society- University of Maine

2005

UMaine department award/scholarship to attended Haystack School of Arts

Blue Hill, ME

2001

Liberty Graphics College Scholarship Art Competition

Liberty, Maine

2001

Eagles Club College Scholarship

Brewer, Maine

Group Exhibitions

2025

MFA 25' Open House- Process/Presence

2024

MFA 24' Open House- UMaine Creates

2013

Juried Exhibition/ permanent installation- Sears Island photo

St. Joseph’s Hospital Demasco Lobby, Bangor , Maine

2008

Juried Exhibition:  “2008 New Hampshire Institute of Art Biennial”

New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH

2004

Juried Exhibition:  Senior Show “Sense Is” and Co-Chair

Department of Art Galleries, The University of Maine, Orono

2004

Juried Exhibition:  “Student Show"

Department of Art Galleries, The University of Maine, Orono

Course Work: 

Psychology, Child Development, Art History I & II, 2D Design, 3D Design, Communications, Medieval Art & Architecture, Painting I & II, Digital Art I, Women's Studies, Japanese Art, Ceramic I, Sculpture I,II & III, Book Arts, Women & Globalization, Drawing I, II & III, Museum Studies, Film & Video Theory, Entomology, Print Making I, II & III, 20th Century Art & Architecture, Digital Art, Digital Photography, Habitats, Histories & Theories, Creative Concepts, Media Production, Studio Critique I, II, III, IV, Social Practice, Art & Senses.

Contact Me

Celena Powell ~ Maine Based Artist

© 2026 by Celena. All rights reserved.

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