enlarge Courtesy of Whitney Art Works

“Sort,” beads by Amy Stacey Curtis for “Tiny.”

enlarge Courtesy of Whitney Art Works

“Objects 2,” wood by Ben Butler for "Tiny."

enlarge Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Curator Bruce Brown poses with some of the approximately 300 pieces by 90 artists in the exhibition “Tiny,” now up at Whitney Art Works in Portland. “For me, this was as much fun as I’ve ever had curating a show,” Brown said.

enlarge Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Deborah and Peter Whitney in their gallery with some of the pieces in “Tiny.”

enlarge Courtesy of Whitney Art Works

“Tiny 1," metal by John Bisbee for "Tiny."

IF YOU GO

"TINY" -- An exhibition featuring the work of 90 artists with Maine connections who were asked to submit works that would fit in an 8-inch-by-8-inch space.

WHERE: Whitney Art Works, 492 Congress St., Portland.

WHEN: To Dec. 22. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m., or by appointment.

HOW MUCH: Free.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Call 774-7011 or go to Whitney Art Works.

The Bath artist did painted copies of "American Gothic," "Whistler's Mother," "Starry Night" and 10 others, each less than the size of your average postage stamp. None was larger than an inch in size.

Branca says he wanted to help people get a better look at these classic works.

Huh?

"These are all big, iconic images. We've seen them so much we can't even see them anymore," said Branca, 33, an artist who teaches drawing at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland. "So painting them tiny makes people come back to them and really look at them."

When something is really small, you have to look carefully to really see it. You have to strain to see the details. You have to pay attention.

That becomes immediately apparent when one enters the current exhibition at Whitney Art Works in Portland, aptly titled "Tiny." The gallery's two rooms are filled with the works of 90 artists with Maine connections, who were asked to submit something that would fit in an 8-inch-by-8-inch space.

The show's theme and parameters were thought up by Bruce Brown, who spent 20 years as curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport and now curates shows on a freelance basis.

Brown said the idea came to him when he was thinking about curating a show at a very small gallery in New York City.

Brown said he began taking note of Maine artists who might be suited to working on a small scale, as well as those who work large but might like the challenge of thinking small. Brown personally selected and invited the artists in the show.

"I tried to think of people who would have fun with it," said Brown, 67, of Portland. "For me, this was as much fun as I've ever had curating a show."

The show's small scale seemed to bring out a sense of whimsy in some artists, creative wit and cleverness in others.

Consider the works of scrimshaw by Sam Van Aken, a Maine artist who teaches at Syracuse University in New York state. Van Aken likes to assume characters for his work -- a few years ago he did a show in which the work featured images of him as Richard Dreyfuss' character in the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

SCRIMSHAW WITH A TWIST

Lately he's taken on the character of a sailor from times past, so scrimshaw, the art of engraving images on whale's teeth, seemed perfect.

But a whale's tooth is not exactly small, so Van Aken picked human teeth.

"I got them from some shady doctor on eBay," said Van Aken.

Van Aken said he took a sewing needle and filed it down to about "a hair's width." Then he donned some jeweler's glasses, the kind that magnify, and he set about etching different images of windmills on each of 10 teeth. He figures he spent about eight or nine hours on each tooth.

He said he picked windmills, at least partially, because of his interest in the fictional character Don Quixote and how he carries "fictions into reality." Quixote, thinking he is a knight on a grand adventure, attacks windmills he believes to be giants.

Van Aken often works with bigger pieces. Another piece he did for a show at Whitney Art Works included an 8-foot-by-5-foot utility trailer. Inside the trailer he constructed a replica of a "snug," or small booth from an Irish pub. The installation included a keg of Guinness stout and a bottle of whiskey.

Amy Stacey Curtis, an artist based in Lyman, put together a piece for the "Tiny" show called "Sort." Curtis constructed the piece by laying out 11,664 tiny beads -- about a sixteenth of an inch each -- on the top of a small table. There are nine different colors of beads, and 1,296 of each color. Near the beads are nine little glass containers.

Instructions with the piece ask people to pick up a bead or beads and put them in a container with other beads of the same...