Two Maine high schools will represent Maine at the New England One-Act Drama Festival, set for April 17-19 in Rutland, Vt.

Maine schools invited to attend are Freeport and Falmouth high schools. Falmouth won the Class A title at the Maine Drama Festival, and Freeport finished second in Class B.

Freeport will perform the original play “Conversations In a Box.”

Going to the regional drama festival is the highest honor a school can receive. The Freeport recognition is especially noteworthy: It will be the first time in the festival’s 80-year history that a student-written play will be performed, said Tim Ryan, Freeport’s drama director.

The schedule is tentative, but the Maine schools likely will perform on April 18.

Ryan said the drama club must raise between $3,000 and $4,000 to attend the event.

“As you can imagine, the students – and director – are pretty pumped and honored to be invited to perform at this prestigious event,” he said in an e-mail to theater friends.

Donna McNeil, newly installed as chairman of the Maine Arts Commission, recently addressed a gathering of artists and arts administrators in Brunswick.

I thought it would be worthwhile to share her thoughts, if for no other reason than to put her on record about how she sees her role in the arts.

Here are some of her remarks:

"As director of the Maine Arts Commission, I intend to engage with the field one to one as much as I can – to really listen to your needs, to come and see your efforts in the field. Those are the things that will inform me and will help make me your true champion.

"I see my role as your representative with government, business and the public. I am your advocate, your tax dollars at work, and I take that all very seriously. I am devoted to the arts. I believe they are the mark of our humanity, that they are the vehicle for expressing what words alone cannot deliver."

Kate McKeown, a 10th-grader from Leavitt Area High School in Turner, will represent Maine at the National Poetry Out Loud finals in Washington, D.C., in April. She will compete for a $20,000 college scholarship.

McKeown won the state finals in Lewiston earlier this month.

Poetry Out Loud is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation and all of the nation’s state arts agencies. It began with more than 100,000 students across the United States competing, including more than 1,000 in Maine.

As winner of the state final, McKeown receives $200, and her school receives a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books. She also receives a paid trip to compete in the National Finals in Washington, D.C., April 28-29. The second-place finisher, Lydia McOscar of Bangor High School, will receive $100, with $200 going to her school library.

L.L. Bean just announced the lineup for its summer concert series. As usual, it's an impressive mix of performers.

April Verch, Scottish fiddle, June 14;

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, swing, June 21;

Martin Sexton, contemporary folk, June 28;

Toby Lightman, contemporary pop, July 4;

Daryl Hall, pop, July 5;

Kathy Mattea, acoustic country, July 12;

Portland Symphony Orchestra, classical, July 19;

Buddy Holly's Original Crickets, '50s rock 'n’ roll, July 26;

Brandi Carlisle, contemporary folk, Aug. 2;

Richie Havens, folk, Aug. 9;

The Jerry Douglas Band, contemporary bluegrass, Aug. 16;

John Hiatt and the Ageless Beauties, contemporary folk, Aug. 23;

Lonestar, Pop country, Aug. 30;

Keb' Mo', pop blues, Aug. 31.

This just in from the University of Maine at Presque Isle:

The University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Reed Fine Art Gallery is adding 153 original Andy Warhol photographs to its permanent collection, thanks to a major gift from the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program.

Reed Art Gallery Director Sandra Huck said that university officials signed a contract on March 19 to receive the black and white photographs and Polaroid images, valued at more than $100,000. The Warhol Foundation is donating a total of 28,543 original Warhol photographs – valued in excess of $28 million – to 183 college and university art museums across the U.S. This unprecedented gift is being made through the legacy program in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The foundation oversees the legacy program.

“That this small campus is able to participate in this program and is a recipient of this gift is nothing short of remarkable,” Huck said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

The aim of the Photographic Legacy Program is to provide greater access to Warhol’s artwork and process, and to enable a wide range of people from communities across the country to view and study this body of Warhol’s work, according to foundation officials. The program offers institutions that do not have the means to acquire works by Warhol the opportunity to bring a significant number of photographs into their permanent collections.

For the Reed Art Gallery, some of those photographs include images of Carly Simon, Wayne Gretzky, and Victor Hugo. Fittingly, the gift includes a black and white print titled “Owl” – an owl serves as the University’s mascot.

“What’s really significant about these images is that they are the tangible documentation of the American art scene from the 1970’s to the 1980’s through Andy Warhol’s eyes,” Huck explained. “These images are important in and of themselves, and because of the larger body of work they represent.”

The Reed Gallery expects to receive the photographs by the end of April. Huck said officials hope to get some of them framed and available for public viewing in the coming months.

One of the byproducts of a bad economy and a pensive mood is the need to create community. People tend to gather when the chips are down.

Certainly, we saw that after 9/11 and other recent national tragedies. I sense we’re starting to see it again these days, as the mood in America sours.

Is it coincidental that the Portland Museum of Art drew 5,000 people to the March 7 First Friday Art Walk or that 1,000 people turned out on Sunday for the “Taking Panes” opening at the Ames Mill in Richmond?

I think not. Art brings people together. Art creates community, because it encourages people to look within themselves and to reflect.

It feels good to be with friends and neighbors. There is substance in a gathering of like-minded people.

“Taking Panes” involves nearly 100 artists from across Maine. Each took an old window from the Ames Mill on the Kennebec River and created an original piece of art. The resulting projects are displayed on the mill’s top floor through the end of March.

Christine Macchi, who heads up Maine FiberArts and is the partner of “Taking Panes” organizer Richard Lee, said the Richmond show has created a strong sense of community.

“A small cadre of worker bees now appears at the mill each morning to just hang, to talk art, and to help out. They've read through the artists' bios in the book and accompany onlookers to share a bit of background about each piece. People are loving connecting over art and are proud of Richmond, proud of Maine and of the artwork,” she wrote in an e-mail.

“Then there are the starry-eyed folks who are dreaming about what they would create for the top floor of that mill – an art gallery, artists studios, the library.”

With the downturn in the economy and a seemingly endless winter, creativity offers hope, beauty and curiosity. At this exhibition, people come to see people, Macchi said.

“That's the power of the arts, witnessed once again, in spades this (past) weekend.”

The Portland Museum of Art has had remarkable success with its exhibition “Bright Common Spikes: The Sculpture of John Bisbee.”

The show, which closes March 23, has drawn more than 23,000 visitors since it opened in late January. While that figure is not a record – an Ansel Adams photography exhibition drew more winter visitors – it is impressive.

Dan O’Leary, museum director, said daily attendance at the Bisbee show often has been double that of attendance during the same time last year. At last Friday’s First Friday Art Walk, more than 5,000 people attended.

Bisbee, who lives in Harpswell, will speak about the show at 2 p.m. March 22 in the museum auditorium.

“This exhibition has had such a broad appeal and achieved major success for us,” O’Leary said in a press release. “We are thrilled with the response to an exhibition by an extremely talented contemporary Maine artist.”

The exhibition is an overview of Bisbee’s work. He is known for making sculpture from brads, nails and spikes.

I get hundreds of e-mails a day, but few cause me to pause what I am doing. Check out this video from Grand Central Station.

I’m not sure if it qualifies as performance art, but it sure seems that way to me.

I just got off the phone with Joan Baez, who performs March 24 at the Waterville Opera House.

She was in good spirit, and effusive in her praise for presidential candidate Barack Obama. The folk singer, who marks her 50th year in music this year, has never endorsed a candidate for president before, but felt compelled to get behind Obama.

She said the Illinois senator brings her back to the 1960s in terms of inspiration and spirit. Baez was at the forefront of America’s musical-activist movement in the '60s.

“It throws me so back into the civil rights movement. The things that he says, the ways he says them and the hope it produces are just irresistible,” she said.

Baez hopes Obama resists the temptation to allow his campaign to turn ugly and negative, but also feels that such a turn might be inevitable in light of Hillary Clinton’s big victories in the Tuesday primaries.

“I don’t know what happens next. I know the general talk is that he has to put his boxing gloves on and step on her neck, because she does all traditional nastiness. It will be interesting to see, because he is so intelligent, so eloquent and so elegant.”