AUGUSTA, ME.- The Maine Crafts Association and Maine Arts Commission seek pre-­‐payments to offer a new specialty license plate supporting the arts in Maine.

The Maine Crafts Association, with the Maine Arts Commission as the sponsoring state agency, is offering an exciting new Maine specialty license plate supporting the arts in Maine. The plate design features the artwork “LOVE” of long-­‐time Vinalhaven, Maine resident and internationally recognized artist, Robert Indiana.

The specialty plate will serve as a fundraiser for the Maine Craft Association and will have a direct positive impact on the arts in Maine through the organization’s marketing, business and outreach programming. The Maine Arts Commission will receive a portion of the funds to put toward their statewide arts initiatives.

Register for the new plate
The MCA seeks 2000 Mainers, with cars registered in their name, to pre-­‐pay $29 for the specialty plate. Upon reaching that goal the Bureau of Motor Vehicles will release the plate to the 2000 pre-­‐paid registrants and make the plate available for purchase at all Maine BMV’s.

Robert Indiana
A seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, Robert Indiana designed the iconic LOVE image, featuring stacked letters and a tilted “O” as a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1964. A three dimensional version (sculpture) in COR-­‐TEN steel followed, and received international attention when it was installed in New York City’s Central Park in 1969. The image epitomized the ideals of the 1960s so-­called “Love Generation.” The artist never copyrighted his LOVE image, which has become one of the most reproduced and recognizable images in modern history. It was put on an eight-­‐cent stamp by the US Postal Service in 1973, the first of their regular series of LOVE stamps, and holds the record as the best-­‐selling stamp in USPS history (320 million).

Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana in 1928, and after achieving fame in New York with fellow artists from the Pop Art movement, including Jasper Johns, Robert Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol, he moved to Vinalhaven, Maine where he has made his home and studio for the past 45 years. In 2005 he donated a painting titled First State to the Augusta State house in his adopted state. Based upon the template of LOVE, Mr. Indiana designed the HOPE image for President Obamaʼs first campaign, which was unveiled outside Denverʼs Pepsi Center during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. All proceeds from the sale of reproductions of the HOPE image were donated to Obamaʼs presidential campaign, raising in excess of $1 million. A retrospective of the life and work of Mr. Indiana, "Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE"; will open at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on September 26th through January 5th, 2014.