Beau-frog: The Art of Peter Archambault

Beau-frog:The Art of Peter Archambault

April 13 - August, 2018Michael Klahr Center Exhibit SpaceThe HHRC is thrilled to present Beau-frog: The Art of Peter Archambault, a spring exhibition of cartoon drawings, political commentary, Franco-American cultural exploration, and personal discovery.In the 1970s and 1980s, Madawaska, Maine native Peter Archambault (1939-2015) was staff artist for Le F.A.R.O.G. Forum, a monthly bilingual publication of the student-led Franco-American Resource Opportunity Group, and later the Franco American Centre, at the University of Maine at Orono. In addition to the rich cartoon commentary on local and national political landscapes he inked during his tenure,  Archambault developed the character, “Beau-frog,” in a creative re-imagination of the slur directed toward francophone and French heritage people. Beau-frog’s daily trials and exploits as featured in Archambault’s work move from the mundane to the extraordinary, the hopeless to the hopeful, and illustrate some of the pressures and challenges of a minority figure coming to terms with a personal and cultural identity in the midst of an Anglophone majority. Drawing comparison to Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” Beau-frog illustrates a cartoon Franco-American’s experience in Maine from the point of view of its thoughtful artist and his collaborators.