 Hi, welcome to CTN Member Highlights. Today I'm here with Abeth Russell. Hi Abeth. Hi Lozie. From the Hidden Ladder Collaborative and the Union of Main Visual Artists. Yep. Yeah, well we've got some exciting collaborations happening here with Community Television Network and the Collaborative and the Union of Main Visual Artists. Yeah, so let's talk about it. Yeah, so Hidden Ladder Collective has been putting on shows for like the last, just about two years now in Portland. We were doing shows every single month at the McPerry Center and they were always like super interactive shows that were all about art and music and just kind of engaging the public with art and like letting them come in and explore art. They're real happenings. Yeah, happenings. I've been with several of them and there's nothing, you really can't describe them. Yeah, totally. Yeah, we were doing them for like a year at the McPerry Center and we really were missing doing them and now that Hidden Ladder Collective is joined up with the Union of Main Visual Artists and CTN, we're coming back with like our biggest show yet, our biggest, most exciting show yet. And the first of many because the UMVA is taking over the gallery space here at CTN. Yeah. And we're thrilled, just thrilled to have so many artists from not only the greater Portland area which that's where the bulk of them will come from but with UMVA, they'll be coming from all over the state. Yeah, we're suddenly connected with all these people that we don't think we ever would have been able to reach before. It's like we've tapped into this huge, amazing network of artists and we can really pull them all into this gallery. I'm just really excited. And the first time really, they've had a gallery space. The individual artists have shown all over Maine and the world really but now there's a space right here on Congress Street in the heart of the arts district. Yeah, it's gonna be really cool to have a space that people know every single month, every single first Friday, there's gonna be an opening at this gallery and they'll know where to go to find the UMVA and Hin-Latter Collective. Well, let's talk about yellow. Now, how did yellow, why yellow? So, William Hessian who is the co-founder of Hin-Latter Collective, we've founded the collective together. We were just sitting down and talking about what kind of shows we could have and we had put on so many crazy shows before and so he was like, what if we just do a different show for each color and we'll just have a whole bunch of shows coming up in the next couple of years each based just completely on a certain color. So all the music, all the art, whatever performances it'll all be connected by this one color. So this month happens to be yellow because it's spring, so yellow seems perfect. Daffodils and busy sunshine again and yeah. Everybody wants some yellow. Yeah, yeah. And I've been seeing some of the art come in and it's absolutely amazing from all over. Tell us a little bit about who the artists are who are gonna be here. I did not expect to get so many responses to the open call. There's about 50 artists now, 50 visual artists that have submitted not to mention the musicians and the performers, but yeah. So we've got Kenny Cole, Abby Sean, Andrew Abbott, those are like some of our, you know, some that first come to mind and there's so many more. I mean, so many of the members of the Union of Main Visual Artists, lots of Mecca students, Baxter Hoplow from Mecca is gonna be doing a yellow installation out in the local Muscle Art Trek that's gonna be parked out front. So there's just some really great artists. And there'll be some musicians and dancers. There'll be musicians. So there's three performing acts happening throughout the night. Out in the local Muscle Art Trek, we have cassettes of life performing from five to seven and then eight to nine. We have a band called Four People. And inside from seven to nine, we have Laughing Animal, who will be doing interpretations of the color yellow through electronic music. Oh, it sounds like so much fun. I've gotta find something yellow to wear. I know, yeah. It's kinda hard to find yellow stuff. Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about Hidden Ladder and UMVA. Yep, so Hidden Ladder Collective is a collective that started a few years ago. And we have the philosophy that anyone can be an artist, anyone can be a musician, and that everyone has kind of this hidden ladder inside of them that they can climb up into this great world of creativity. And you know, you shouldn't be afraid to create. And we're very open and we don't exclude people if they haven't been doing art their whole lives. And then UMVA is a membership organization. Yup, UMVA. It has a sliding scale. Yeah, they've been around for quite a while too. And William also got that going here at the Portland Branch. Yeah, so he went up to a meeting. I can't remember, I mean, rock on or something. We've gotta kind of wrap it up, but I think we'll put the information about who the contact person is for submitting art, and which is coming to an end. So there's only, yeah, there's only about a day left to submit art. But also if people wanna join UMVA for further future shows and also the hidden ladder collaborative and collective. Yup, definitely, so they're both online if you just look up UMVA online. Well, I know, I'm gonna be there and I think everyone else should be there, so thank you for doing this. Yeah, definitely, stop by. I'm very excited. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Great.