Inspired: History | Culture | Place
2022 Art Show
Artists
Joshua Adam
Susan Parish Adam
Starr Blackwood
Steve Brookman
Marianne Buchanan
Gregory Dunham
Stow G. Dunham
Lisa Tyson Ennis
Juliane Gardner
Leah Jacobs
Jean Lamontanaro
Lyn Mayewski
Jess Morehouse
Basha D. A. Olson
Lucy Jane Webster
Jocelyn Willis
David Wyman
Rosemary Wyman
Edith W. Young
Andrew Young
Phoebe Zildjian
Castine in Winter
Medium: Oil
Size: 20” x 30”
Price: $2800 | SOLD
JOSHUA ADAM was born in San Rafael, California. He graduated from Colorado College with honors in Studio Art. Later, he attended Chelsea School of Art, London. Adam is co-owner of the Adam Gallery in Castine, now in its 19th year.
Artist’s Statement
Castine is a different world in winter. With this painting I’m trying to capture the stillness of the late-day light (though it’s only 3:30). It reminds me of a snow globe, shaken, then given time to come to rest, the town at peace.
Weather Watcher
Medium: Oil on Board
Size: 20” x 16”
Price: $1800
SUSAN PARISH ADAM has been a professional artist for over 30 years. She is co-owner of the Adam Gallery with her husband Joshua. A long-time love of Castine and its people have inspired her work for decades.
Artist’s Statement
From the beginning, one of the (many) perks of being married to Josh has been tagging along on his plein air painting adventures to spectacular and secret spots, and taking advantage of his ability to predict dramatic impending weather events.
Baby Jane
Medium: Mix
Size: 33” x 42”
Price: $3000
STARR BLACKWOOD, born and raised in Centreville, Maryland, spent summers at Tide Island Farm in Penobscot. His family regularly attended shows in the various museums of the Smithsonian, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Maryland Federation of Art. At fourteen he moved to Castine to live with his grandmother, Virginia Lampson, and attended school at George Stevens Academy and Portland School of Art. He also studied at the Maryland Institute of Art, Academy of the Arts (Easton), and Goucher College. Currently Starr works at Brooklin Boatyard, promotes art in his children’s and friends’ lives, does sign painting, and produces new work in his farmhouse studio.
Artist’s Statement
I grew up next door to David Gray. I could paint a million stories. It was great fun for my brothers and later my children. David introduced me to silkscreening and has been a major influence on my life and art.
Tides in at Trask Rock
Medium: Egg Tempera
Size: 8” x 10”
Price: $275
STEVE BROOKMAN I’ve been a lifelong doodler, sketcher, and now mostly a seasonal painter. I’m unschooled with the exception of taking a few private lessons several decades ago when I took a leave of absence from my real job as an airline pilot and took a few watercolor lessons. Since retiring from the airlines and moving to Maine in 2016 I started taking adult ed watercolor classes in the fall and winter after a 20 year hiatus from doing any painting. Other than occasional pen and ink I paint mostly with watercolors. After taking an egg tempera workshop given by a local and very accomplished artist Phil Schirmer, I’ve been exploring that ancient medium.
Artist’s Statement
Trask Rock, located off Castine’s western shore, is named for Israel Trask, a 14-year-old fifer who found shelter from British gunfire behind this large rock during the ill-fated Penobscot Expedition. Perhaps the abandoned lobster buoy placed on the shore is showing the way to where the British forces were entrenched above the steep embankment. It was painted on a gessoed panel using the ancient medium of egg tempera.
Lupines on the Bagaduce
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 14.5” x 10.75”
Price: $750
MARIANNE BUCHANAN has always dabbled in the creative arts and took up watercolors about ten years ago. She has studied with some renowned artists and has been invited to exhibit her work in art shows in Connecticut and Florida.
Artist’s Statement
Early morning view of Brooksville and the Bagaduce River seen through pink and white lupines.
Serpentine
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 5” x 7.5”
Price: $750
GREGORY DUNHAM has 52 years of experience as a professional artist. Notable collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University; Wilson Museum; Art Bank Program, U. S. Department of State; Lord Dunleath, County Down, Northern Ireland; Donald Sussman & Representative Chellie Pingree; and Sir Nigel Elton Sheinwald, Former HM Ambassador to the United States. Selected group exhibitions: American Watercolor Society, National Academy of Design, Art Institute of Boston, University of New Hampshire, Butler Institute of American Art, Penobscot Marine Museum, deCordova Museum, The University of Maine, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Selected awards: Rockport Art Association’s Silver Medal, William Meyerowitz Memorial Award, Guild of Boston Artists Award, and New England Watercolor Society Award. After moving to Castine, he and his wife Pat ran the McGrath Dunham Gallery for 20 years.
Artist’s Statement
While visiting the Home and Away sculpture at the Museum, I was struck by the serpentine quality of the sculptured granite waves that seem to be reaching out beyond the harbor to the open sea.
Post Office on Main
Medium: Acrylic
Size: 8” x 10”
Price: $500 | SOLD
STOW G. DUNHAM grew up and spent most of his youth with his family in Castine. Though he no longer lives in the area, years of memories inspire his renditions of local landmarks and places.
Artist’s Statement
My overlapping interests and influences have led to no specific process, and varying visual outcomes.
Dream Catcher, Navajo Nation
Medium: Toned Silver Gelatin Photograph
Size: 5” x 12.5”
Price: $650
LISA TYSON ENNIS works solely with historical photographic processes including the beautiful 19th century processes of cyanotype, tintype, and wet plate collodion. Lisa hand prints her silver gelatin photographs in a traditional wet darkroom. She has directed her large and medium format cameras towards subjects that symbolically explore the elusive passage of time and change as expressed by the concurrence of ethereal light and landscape. Her work is in many public and private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Tides Institute, the Delaware Art Museum, and the Portland Museum of Art, and has been included in more than 80 solo and group exhibitions. Lisa and her husband, John, live on a circa 1780 farm in the town of Castine, Maine.
Artist’s Statement
I made this image, “Dream Catcher” on the Navajo reservation on the border of Arizona and Utah earlier this Spring, where the legacy of colonization and the intentional cultural dismantling was evident. In light of the recent (and long overdue) acknowledgement of the tragedy of the hundreds of thousands of Indian children who were stolen from their families and forced to attend boarding schools throughout the country, I wanted to try to make an image that spoke directly to that devastating and enduring damage, both economic and cultural.
January Thaw - Backshore Castine Me.
Medium: Oil on Panel
Size: 24” x 24”
Price: $500 | SOLD
JULIANE GARDNER, artist and musician, lives in Castine and draws her inspiration from the beauty that surrounds her. Be it a ship at port or a sunset at the beloved back shore, she is in awe of both man-made and natural beauty. When she is not chasing sunsets, you can find her singing in her band New Shades of Blue, with her husband, Chris Poulin.
Artist’s Statement
There is no other scene in the world that brings me as much joy as the view of Blockhouse Point from the Backshore Beach. In any season, it never disappoints, it represents home.
On Winter
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 16” x 20”
Price: $700
LEAH JACOBS participated in her first group show in Maine, Castine Paints, at the McGrath Dunham Gallery. Her first one-person show in the area was at the Penobscot Eaton Gallery in Belfast, Maine. Following this she had a one-person show at the Bath Iron Works Gallery in Castine. She has also exhibited in Maine at the Frick Gallery, Belfast; Cygnet Gallery, Blue Hill; Blue Hill Bay Gallery, Blue Hill; and Gallery B., Castine. Leah is a life member of the Art Students League in New York City. At the Arts Students League’s annual exhibit in 2019, Leah’s painting won “Best in Show,” the same prize Georgia O’Keefe won in the League’s 1928 show.
Artist’s Statement
Sometimes, in mist and ice, I’ve experienced a poetry in the winter landscape. This is what I think to capture.
Connecting Place and Time
Medium: Mixed Media
Size: 14” x 11”
Price: $500
JEAN LAMONTANARO works as the director of sales and marketing for Penobscot Bay Press. She is also the creator of the Around Maine coloring book. Over the years, she has pursued many creative endeavors, both personally and professionally. Jean grew up in Bucksport, Maine, and is a graduate of Bucksport High School. She received her bachelor’s degree in art education from the State University of New York at New Paltz. She currently resides in Castine with her husband and two children.
Artist’s Statement
I collaborated with the museum’s staff on a new logo and graphic identity for the museum. When searching for inspiration that would speak to the diverstiy of the collection, the staff discovered a connection between many of the objects in the museum. Across long periods of time and from places all over the world, artifacts featured designs made of bands of repeated shapes and lines. This became the inspriation for the logo and for this work of art. The repetitive mark making I engaged in while creating this work connected me to others around the world and throughout history.
Red Squirrel
Medium: Needle Felted Wool
Size: 8” x 6”
Price: $125 | SOLD
LYN MAYEWSKI started needle felting a few years ago and got unexpectedly hooked. She especially enjoys making Maine animals, as well as animals from around the world, shells, and abstract pieces. She often combines wet felting techniques with the dry needle felting. Lyn also creates jewelry and utilitarian items in silver, paints in various mediums, and plays with a variety of art and craft techniques. “I love making things that make me feel happy or content. Patterns and motion in nature are a strong influence. I especially love creating things that bring some joy to the wearer or viewer.”
Artist’s Statement
The natural beauty around us includes the numerous wild creatures who delight - and sometimes vex us. The red squirrel is one of those. Adorable and cunning, they show determination in survival. They spend much of their time searching for food and storing it in multiple caches (sometimes, unfortunately, our attic). They are very territorial, especially when our Golden, Duncan, spies one of them!
A Sea Horse
Medium: Collage
Size: 22” x 15”
Price: $400 | SOLD
JESS MOREHOUSE is the retired owner of the Sandcastle Ocean & Nature Store, which, for 31 years, represented artists with a theme of the natural world. An artisan of windchimes, Jess has always had an appreciation for the works of his consigners. Since retiring he continues to develop his windchimes, but now has the opportunity to try his hand at new art forms. Collage allows him to use his love of natural objects to create in a new way. Jess roams the shore and works part-time for the Wilson Museum in Castine, while making his home in Orland with his wife Debbie and their lovable dog Cooper.
Artist’s Statement
Inspired by the art of Mimi Carpenter and Kathy Bateman, I began creating collages using natural objects and findings such as sea glass, shell, coral, sea fans, driftwood and more. Over the past 5 years I have collaged several creatures including a dragonfly, Luna moth, butterfly, fish, and now a seahorse. There is a joy in being able to turn many years of beachcombing treasures into a work of art.
Tweet Mistress
Medium: Bronze
Size: 8” x 10” x 4”
Price: $2920
BASHA D. A. OLSON Art has always been there for me and I have immersed myself in the study, the giving, and the imagination of it. In the year 2000 I sailed, my traveling home for eight years, to Seal Ledge Marina on the Bagaduce River on the Coast of Maine and saw George Motycka’s astonishing bronze sculptures.
George became my friend and mentor. I listened to his every word and watched all he did. I am so grateful of the knowledge he shared and for the gift of meeting the medium which suits me so well.
This all has allowed me to develop a profoundly deeper respect for the natural world I draw my inspiration from.
Dum Spiro Spero
I am the featured summer artist of the Witherle Memorial Library’s Signatures exhibit.
Artist’s Statement
Dawn’s awakening light, Dusk’s soft dance to darkness, my mistress of flute-like-song... fragile, beautiful moments of the Hermit Thrush’s voice floating through the forest.
Oriole
Medium: Oil on 3 Birch Panels
Size: 6” x 23” x .75”
Price: $450
[hung in one of three possible orientations]
LUCY JANE WEBSTER’s ties to the Castine/Penobscot area are strong. Her summers were spent with her grandparents and great-grandparents Conner on Perkins Street, then with her parents Forrest and Marian Myers also on Perkins Street. Art has always been Lucy Jane’s focus with formal training at Cleveland Institute of Art. The award winning artist has been accepted into many juried shows, art galleries, and museums, and she has prepared/presented talks on other artists. Lucy has served on the Board of Trustees at Wilson Museum, as secretary and treasurer of Toledo Museum of Art’s Library League, as secretary and historian of the Toledo Federation of Art, president of Athena Art Society, Inc. and as exhibition juror. She published Letters Home From Sea in 2007, a true story about a young man of Penobscot in the 1800s, co-authored with Meg Noah. Abstract or representational, her work often links viewer with nature.
Artist’s Statement
While I was sketching in December 2020, I remembered the glide of Venus Velvet pencils I used in the 1950s. I decided to paint one on 3 panels in oil paint. One painted Pencil is called “Baltimore Oriole” featuring the common Oriole who nests in the area. It connects to our heritage. We travel the world and come home. The pencil was made by Dixon. Pencils are used universally by artists, writers, tradespeople, farmers, professions, etc.. The history and development of pencils is fascinating. Much area history is recorded with a pencil. Tributing the Pencils in my body of work has been captivating.
Warmth
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 18” x 24”
Price: $350
JOCELYN WILLIS is an artist who was born and raised in Maine. They have been drawing since the first time they picked up one of those oversized crayons in kindergarten, and they haven’t put it down since. They have drawn, painted, and blacksmithed pieces that have arrived in various places for display, whether around theirs and others’ homes, on their father’s work desk, or in the Wilson Museum exhibit cases as part of the experience.
Artist’s Statement
The view of the forge from the eye of the blacksmith, those who experience the heat and glow of a coal fire at the side of an anvil, with the steady beat of a hammer falling in their ears. Blacksmiths get it hot and hit it hard, or in the words of a wonderful teacher: “Give ‘er Hell.” -Joe Meltreder.
Stool
Medium: White pine
Size: 33” x 13” x 9”
Price: $60 | SOLD
DAVID WYMAN has been fascinated by boats and their shape from an early age. Over the years he has designed and built a variety of boats for both his personal use and for others. His boats have spanned the gamut from traditional small craft to historic ship replicas to modern high-tech craft in use by navies. David resides in Castine and earns his living designing and surveying boats. Earlier in his career he taught at Maine Maritime Academy, sailed on both commercial and Coast Guard ships, and worked at a naval research laboratory designing and developing Special Operations craft for the U.S. Navy, all while working on, designing, and building boats in his own time.
Artist’s Statement
Wood is my medium of choice for the art pieces I create. Each type of wood is inherently beautiful with its unique color and grain, which I allow to show in each piece. Originally drawn to making wooden nautical items – boats, oars, paddles and half-models – I have recently turned to the creation of small, functional, decorative wooden pieces. Of particular interest to me at present are techniques of joinery, specifically dovetails and mortice and tenon joints, as you will see in this white pine stool, reminiscent of the ‘Shaker stool with handle.’ This stool is finished with marine varnish to protect the wood but leaves it visible.
Sea Smoke Sunrise
Medium: Photograph
Size: 7” x 9”
Price: $195
ROSEMARY WYMAN is an award-winning professional photographer and photographic artist. Among the honors she has earned in her career are the Kodak Gallery Award, the Fuji Masterpiece Award, and the coveted Wyman Tracy Memorial Award: Maine Photographer of the Year, which is presented by the Maine Professional Photographers Association. Rosemary’s images have been exhibited both locally and nationally, have appeared in WoodenBoat and Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors magazines, and have been featured on the covers of Mariner and Ash Breeze magazines. She has been an instructor of photography at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Florida, and Maine Maritime Academy. She is a freelance photographer for Penobscot Bay Press. Rosemary’s images have been exhibited under the name “Rosemary’s Point of View.”
Artist’s Statement
As I searched for the perfect location from which to photograph sea smoke on a zero-degree January morning this past winter, there was a magical moment when everything came together: sea smoke swirled, sunrise provided glorious color, and my decision to include this iconic structure on the Castine Town Dock provided the perfect sense of place. An addition of a soft vignette to echo the shape of the roofline was all that was added to create this stunning image.
Witherle Woods
Medium: Acrylic on Paper Collage
Size: 12” x 9”
Price: $700
ANDREW YOUNG grew up in Lexington, MA, where art was core to the K-12 curriculum. Classes at Truro Center for the Arts in the summer reinforced the exposure. Like adjacent Provincetown, Truro is steeped in art and art history. After graduating from Princeton, Andrew moved to Manhattan to pursue a career in financial services. There, he continued studies at the Arts Students League and The Salmagundi Club. His work has been exhibited at The Salmagundi Club, Gallery B., and The Cape Cod Museum of Art. In addition to painting, Andrew has spent decades researching and adding to a modest collection of Maine and Cape Cod art. He embarked on The William Holst Project in 2004, launching williamholst.info in January 2020. Andrew lives in NYC with his wife, Stefanie. He has lifelong and abiding associations Downeast (Maine) and Down Cape (Cod). In Castine, you might know him as Edith’s and/or William’s father.
Artist’s Statement
My recent work is grounded in sixteen years of research on little known artist and educator William Holst (1912-1995), prompting investigation into “push and pull” and “fathoming” a surface. Holst studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, MA, 1949-1952 and 1954 and taught and painted in New London, NH, and Deer Isle, ME, for over a half century. That project, a window into non-objective formal modernism, helped chart a course exploring Holst’s reductive process and reflecting on Jack Tworkov’s “cracks of light” (Cooper, “A Compound Eye”).
Still Life of Foxgloves and Spongeware
Medium: Inkjet Print
Size: 11” x 8.5”
Price: $150
EDITH W. YOUNG, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and author.
Artist’s Statement
In the summertime, there are flower arrangements around the house just waiting to be drawn - like these spindly foxgloves from the garden in nineteenth century spongeware.
Core.
Medium: Copper, linseed oil, ash, charcoal, and gouache on panel
Size: 6 panels, 8” x 8” each
Price: $2400
Phoebe Zildjian was born and raised in Castine, Maine and holds a BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from Maine College of Art. Zildjian spends her life on the coast, creating work that reflects on the solitary lifestyles of Maine people. Her creative practice hinges on using landscape as a primary source; returning again and again to inspect familiar details of her surroundings. The pieces she builds look to the land, and she can often be found monitoring the world around her, inspecting coastal details such as stone, salt bleached structures, and the ebb and flow of the tide in an effort to uplift the landscape as a historical document.
Artist’s Statement
Build it right and a spirit will live inside.
Core is an archaeological artifact that explores the narrative of a house as a living craft object. Home structures expand and contact in tandem with the energy that is nurtured within. Taken from measurements of the most recent addition to the Wilson Museum campus, this piece shows how living experiences break in a space and leave lingering energy. Over time, the bones of the house are forged out, and hard edges are softened with age and patinated by subsequent inhabitants, creating a spiritual landscape to mirror the physical space.