 The main artist collective is a non-profit organization that has a mission to support artists through classes and professional workshops and to also support through studio space and in space where artists can display their work. Constellation Gallery started a little over four years ago. About a year ago we formed the main artist collective and that organization took over operations of Constellation Gallery about six months ago so that was in July of 2012. At some point David was proposing to change to a collective instead of he being the owner of the gallery. So we formed a team. It exploded in growth. I think we have now about 40 members and several of us have a studio space. This is my space. We have nine different studios in the gallery right now. They're all sort of open format and artists will pay fees on a monthly basis in order to be able to access those studio spaces. A collective is generally a group of artists that have sort of a common mission to work on something together. In this case our mission is an educational mission and also to really connect a main artist to the public. I like the idea of collective ownership just because when you can get a group of artists together a lot of ideas are exchanged and then you get a really interesting product out of that. So I can say personally my own art is grown from my relationships and experience and just being surrounded by the work of other artists. Well besides having a space or the opportunity to have art in downtown Portland it's stimulating to be surrounded with people that have the same mindset instead of sitting in your own little cellar or whatever your studio is and it's a stimulus. On a monthly basis we do a call for art and we have a new show lined up and artists that are members can submit images to be considered for those shows. We have the possibility to have a permanent exhibition and you can do whatever you want. You can change it, you can join the main gallery with rotating exhibitions every month. There's another scene. Artists that would like to join the main artist collective just need to fill out a simple membership application and then we have a $50 annual fee and that fee can be reduced for people under certain income levels and that annual fee allows artists to submit images for our upcoming shows and also we have a website and each artist gets a page on the website in order to upload images. Artists who are members can propose class ideas so that way we can have classes in here and bring in other members or members of the public who are interested in participating in those classes. Some artists will come in and do things like focus on cleaning and other artists work on doing promotions. Some artists will work on website building so all those different parts of the gallery were able to pull together in support with volunteer hours. So far the vast majority of hours I'd say 95% of the hours that have gone into the gallery have been volunteer. Really to have a sense of ownership for each person who's participating because at the end of the day your work is benefiting the group and a lot of artists really enjoy that philosophy. We're in the process right now of setting up our annual schedule for events that we want to have. One is going to be an international event where we try to bring together people who have come to Portland and Maine more recently and were born in countries around the world and also solicited artwork from people who live in other countries. Also we're planning on having another annual art show for Southern Maine Community College. Last year we partnered with SMCC in order to do their senior art exhibition. The Maine Artists Collective has actually been attracting a lot of artists from around the world. We have artists in here who originally from the Netherlands or Iraq or Russia or Germany and that's been a really exciting thing for us because we've got a lot of new ideas coming together. Our website is mainartist.org and people can check us out there and we're located at 511 Congress Street in Portland, Maine. I think Portland is a little bit the hub of the northeast if it comes to art. Of course I've seen all the places but in this region it's amazing how much art there is. When you come around downtown Portland you see life on the streets. The artists are out there selling their art on the streets during the summer and also creating work outside. It's really brought a lot of life to our arts district. It's part of the society art in many ways and it can be performing, it can be visual arts or whatever. It's basic for life and so the more art the better. Portland is often cited as being the top in various categories and I think the cultural aspect of the city is one of the big shining stars.