Senior Sculpture major Redford Reece ’26 was recently selected as one of ten recipients of the prestigious International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. Reece talks to us about 24/7 access to studios, Cluster Truck, professors, confidence, and being silly.
What brought you to Maine College of Art & Design?
Initially, I was applying to schools for fashion design. I used to make clothes, and for a long time, I thought I was going to go to New York.
And then I realized, wait, I don't want to go to New York. I literally looked up schools in the northeast with fashion design programs, and one of the only ones is MECA&D. And I thought that Portland, Maine, sounded cool. I remember the level in Toontown that was in Maine. Then I applied to one school, this one, and I'm here.
How has your community of friends, peers, and professors influenced your experience?
Hugely. Especially with the sculpture department. It's just a really special group, and we're all doing a lot of different things, but it's very supportive. It is such a community.
In my sophomore year, I was definitely a very different person. I feel like I was much more in my shell, and I still loved sculpture. I loved making it, but I didn’t spend much time in the studio when I wasn’t working. Now, though, I'm here all the time because I'm helping someone else, or I'm in the cafe with my entire major at once. It’s really awesome, and it's really welcoming.
How has your education/faculty/community transformed you?
One of the biggest things with the culture here is having 24/7 access to studios. I can always be here, and I can always have access to stuff, which means I’ll run into different students and faculty late at night, early in the morning, during the day, depending on what classes they're running. I get input from a lot of different people within my department at different times, which is really helpful.
When it comes to specifically my professors in the sculpture department, they all have been here for a decent amount of time, but have different things that they're really strongly suited for. At MECA&D, sculpture is defined more broadly than in other places. There's a lot of new media and performance and things like that, both with professors and with students.
I think the biggest way that the community here has changed me is through my idea of what art can be and, therefore, what an artist can be. I came to do a trade, and I thought I knew that it was just, you're making real things that people use, or you're doing painting, or you're doing drawing. And then I got to the sculpture department, and I learned that it can be anything, and you can do anything.
How has living in Portland influenced your work?
I don’t know if it's influenced my work, but it’s definitely been a really great place to live for college.
Especially connecting to the department and the place. Like Professor Ben Spalding, also famously DJ Ben Spalding. There is a fun culture here, and Ben's also just a really good DJ.
It's nice living in a very walkable place. You can get to nature, you can get to these other things if you have a friend who has a car, but it's not an overwhelming space at all. And it's pretty chill.
How have scholarships and financial aid affected your experience here?
My scholarships have made my college experience so much less stressful, because there’s an inherent economic burden of college. It's made it so that I'm not constantly thinking about the financial burden, and I can actually focus on my education and my professional development. I can also go places with MECA&D and do things outside with that energy that I've gained from my scholarship. Like in October, I went to Dallas to a really cool conference for sculpture that I wouldn't be able to otherwise.
It's still expensive because it’s college, but for an art school with the scholarship I have, it's so much less than anywhere else that I would be interested in going to.
Because everyone gets something, there's not really a culture of elitism here. I feel like there are a lot of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, which is good socially.
Redford Reece '26
What types of opportunities have you had outside of the classroom, and how have they influenced your practice?
In one of my elective sculpture classes, we did Cluster Truck, which was a bunch of U-Hauls in a parking lot. We all just literally each got a U-Haul and did whatever we wanted, which was really cool.
So there have been opportunities like that, and I've applied to group shows. I've had my work in a couple of 82Parris shows. What’s also nice about Portland is that many galleries are often doing open calls, where you might as well just submit something because it's free.
It's not like in a lot of other places where there is an application fee. I think being in a less intimidating city makes you feel more like you can submit your work to places.
I went to Anderson Ranch last summer, which is where I made my horse marionette puppet. That was really cool because you had to make something in four days. That was another way of influencing my practice with time constraints. You don't have a month to make something, you have four days, and you don't have 24-hour access. It was a challenge to do it within a nine-to-five range on these four days.
What opportunities here have you had at the College that you wouldn't have even imagined possible for your life?
This is a boring one, but honestly, learning how to weld. The amount of transferable skills that I've learned is crazy.
Like, I can make a mold of anything I can weld. I knew that woodworking would be something I could learn, not necessarily in the sculpture department, but I knew that the school had woodworking classes. But I never would've thought that I would learn how to weld and that I could be a welder if I wanted to
I didn't consider myself an artist, like, I was a person who made things. I feel like there is a difference between a person who makes things and an artist.
I think working with, especially the head of the department, Josh Reiman, and the way that he thinks about sculpture and space as a material, and like anything being sculpture, really. I guess there's a way of thinking of art that I didn't even realize until our intro to the discipline class, that the way that sculpture is done here is not how sculpture is considered at other schools and other programs.
I feel like, with concrete opportunities, I've definitely been given space to do things I never thought I would do, like even just having the confidence to apply for shows. I guess having your mind expanded is the ultimate opportunity. Truly, education is the opportunity, which is why I'm here.
What are three words you’d use to describe the relationships you have built here?
Well, I guess it's fulfilling. For the first time in my life, I feel like I could call a billion people and they would pick up and be like, "What do you need?"
And like, that's insane. Um, fulfilling. Multiple and silly. Silly. We're so silly. I love that.