"As the prospect of a controversial wall looms on the U.S.-Mexican border, as immigrants and refugees are caught in an ever-expanding limbo, and as ICE stakes out courtrooms, it is unsurprising that American writers and artists have begun incorporating the concepts of “borders” and “boundaries” into their work. For their collaborative project Boundaries, on view at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, photographer Jacob Bond Hessler and poet Richard Blanco address the subject from a range of angles, using handsome large-scale color prints and poignant words.

The show consists of nine photograph-poem pairings. For the most part, Blanco’s poems were prompted by Hessler’s photographs, but they are not ekphrastic. There are no direct descriptive references to the images, although here and there the connection is made tangible. Rather, the poems run parallel to the photographs, often adding a narrative to what is a wide-open image."

Boundaries by Jacob Hessler and Richard Blanco has been featured in an article in the Portland Press Herald. The exhibition is currently on view at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockland. Bob Keyes writes, "It's a quiet, reflective exhibition that asks viewers to consider the boundaries that divide us by race, gender, class and other ways. As artists, the two attempt to tear down barriers to create understanding, empathy and compassion."