Portland-based potter, civic activist, and native Mainer Ayumi Horie is carving her own space, as a creator, as a lesbian, and as a person of color, in a mostly white, historic colonial New England neighborhood. She’s a full-time studio potter, and her work is inspired by folk traditions from American and Japanese cultures, and adamantly defined by its utility—you’ll see more ramen bowls and mugs than decorative objects, and she expects them to be used—and the process by which it’s made. As a board member of the American Craft Council and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and curator of the popular crowdsourced project Pots in Action and civic engagement effort The Democratic Cup, Ayumi uses her position as a leader in the maker community to encourage civil, productive conversations about social issues, and to amplify the voices of makers across the country through these conversations.

Ayumi and her wife, Chloe Horie, don’t consider themselves collectors. While their home abounds with ephemera—from a 1960s mechanical Japanese massage chair to a stuffed grouse on the wall to the studio’s packing tape—the inclusion of these objects in the house reflects intent. It’s clear that nothing in the house is intended to be stared at from behind a museum rope, and while the house teems, there’s not the slightest hint of clutter.

Ayumi refers to herself as a maker more than a potter. While the maker moniker has become a symbol for those partaking in any sort of productive tinkering, Ayumi’s entire life is deeply ensconced in maker ideology. As she puts it, she’s interested in the “intersection of all making, whether you’re cooking or growing something in the garden. We’re all creative in myriad ways. It’s not about being a hermetic artist and showing off your genius; I really don’t believe in that idea at all.” Making, to Ayumi, means putting the requisite time and effort into all of one’s endeavors and engaging with the world in a consistently thoughtful way.

As Ayumi leads a tour of her idiosyncratic abode, accompanied by Chloe and Clover, their French bulldog, it becomes increasingly evident that she is serious about living up to her maker philosophy. Some of the inanimate inhabitants of each room—objects that may not, on the surface, seem to represent Ayumi’s practice as a potter or a civic activist—speak to her ideology as a breath-by-breath maker.

Ayumi Horie at work, at home. Photo by Aaron Flacke

1. A Revolutionary War Painting

Featured prominently in Ayumi and Chloe’s living room is a painting of the Burning of Falmouth (a Portland-famous Revolutionary War attack in 1775), featuring their house and the houses of their neighbors being struck by incendiaries hoisted by Royal Navy ships. In the version by painter Michael X. Rose that hangs above the Hories’ pellet stove, the houses burn while King Kong wrestles Moby Dick in the cove among the battleships, and Godzilla watches from the background.

“When I moved to this neighborhood, it was, and still is, predominantly white,” Ayumi says. “While my mother’s family came to Maine in pre-Revolutionary times, my Asian looks mark me as an outsider. Presenting a revised narrative of the neighborhood and city by using mythological monsters seemed like an effective way to make a point and create a place for myself.”

Ayumi further remarks that her house, now light and spacious after some bold renovations, was quite dreary when she purchased it. It’s doubtful the dreariness had to do with the fallout from the Burning of Falmouth or from any purported sea monster event, though houses in New England tend to wear their history on their sleeve far more than the residents themselves.

Though originally from Maine, Ayumi spent time in Seattle and Montana, as well as ten years in the Hudson Valley, before returning to New England. She’s compelled by the aesthetic of snow, the community, and the changing seasons. “Living in a historical environment reminds us that we are only stewards of a place and that we’re just one small part of a continuum,” she muses.

2. A Ping-Pong Table and a Potter’s Wheel

Yes, these are two separate objects with very different functions, though one would be remiss not to notice how easily the leisurely becomes functional, and reciprocally, how the professional tool becomes the center of social activity.

During the tour of the house, Janine Grant, Ayumi’s assistant, has been working on Ayumi’s signature decorated ceramic ramen bowls, which are in various phases of completion in the attached studio space. Some bowls are freshly pressed and need to have their rims hand-trimmed at Ayumi’s wheel, and some need to be glazed. The bowls sit atop the ping-pong table at the entryway to the studio, which sounds precarious if your idea of a ping-pong table is a painted waferboard rectangle that’s buckled in the middle from too much time spent folded in a garage. The Horie table is not this—it’s handcrafted from three-quarter-inch AC-grade plywood, and solid. It has likely borne the weight of well more than the dozen bowls currently waiting for attention.

At some point during the tour, Clover, the French bulldog who seems particularly adept at placing herself in the center of any action, is stepped on. Chloe says that Clover is an intrepid ping-pong ball chaser, and is prone to blisters and other foot problems from overindulgence in the activity. Repetitive stress injuries appear to be a recurring consideration in the Horie household—Ayumi works as many as 14 hours a day, between studio and computer time, though she is starting to dial back her work schedule somewhat. And Chloe seems just as natural sitting at Ayumi’s pottery wheel for a quick chat with Ayumi and Janine as she does anywhere else in the house; there are no closed doors isolating workspaces, and no space is too sacred for visits from bipedal or quadruped family members.

3. A Raccoon Pot, or Maybe It’s a Hedgehog

Ayumi raises one question several times during our talk: How do you talk about the nature of craft? Inherent in the question is a consideration of repetition and uniformity. Ayumi has created multiples before: bricks, cups, and decals of images. Even though her hand-painted designs have been drawn repeatedly, there are differences in how they’re drawn, and in these variations Ayumi finds evidence of her own skill. “I’m not interested in the idea of a masterpiece,” she states. “I’m interested in the idea of the beauty of craft lying in the skill of the maker. Through drawing it over and over, it changes.”

Examples of this approach are everywhere in Ayumi’s studio and storage space: ramen bowls that were folded in half when pressed, introducing variation to the process and showing how one vessel can literally be folded into another so that a bowl becomes a plate. A stack of leftover bricks from the Portland Brick project she completed with Elise Pepple, with memories of the city stamped to give them a “pillowy” human-created effect instead of the sterile water-jet-cut font one might expect with a piece of urban infrastructure. Or Ayumi’s custom-designed animal decals, which she applies to her pots individually so that they appear slightly different on each piece.

Her famous raccoon decal appears in various incarnations and at various levels of detail on assorted pieces. When it’s misidentified as a hedgehog, Ayumi points out, “It has fangs. And an overbite.” Her point is inarguable. It’s a raccoon.

A Laptop at the Kitchen Table

In addition to the demands of full-time studio work, an increasing amount of Ayumi’s work time is dedicated to managing her various social networking, activism, and crowdsourcing projects. Her slow-movement ethos bleeds into this online work, too. The crowdsourced Pots in Action project, with over 106,000 Instagram followers, is arguably the world’s largest online community for ceramics makers, and Ayumi relies heavily on Chloe’s opinions when presenting the online work. “Coming up with paragraphs-long captions takes time, and maybe not many people read them,” she admits. “But I want to give people depth, when often what’s most popular is superficial and predictable. I want people to be more thoughtful about the media they put out there, and the way they engage with the world.”

Ayumi has also recently forayed into filmmaking, applying her same methodical attention to detail to the craft of videography. “Chloe’s a far better video editor than I am, and taught me everything I know,” she says of her most recent experiments. Whether the training was formal, the influence is evident in the outcome: Ayumi’s videos contain a professional polish against an online video universe largely comprising hundred-edits-per-second stroke inducers. “I hope to redefine for people what video and photography can be,” she explains.

4.  A Japanese Massage Chair

The chair in the Hories’ living room appears to be a cross between a 50-year-old wheelchair and the bespoke musical instrument of a street busker. Instead, it’s a perfectly functional mechanical massage chair that Ayumi’s uncle brought to the States in the 1960s. It’s never needed restoration or modification, which, as she puts it, “is just the way machines were built back then. I spend a lot of time here at the end of the day. It’s the antidote to manual labor. I sit in it many nights while Chloe and I watch some BBC show or other. It’s a workhorse that I remember my grandmother using, and it gets rid of my aches and pains.”

A grouse hangs above Ayumi Horie, her wife Chloe, and their French bulldog, Clover. Photo by Aaron Flacke

5.  A Stuffed Grouse

The stuffed bird in the entryway could be a pheasant or grouse, so a text for clarification to the resident game bird expert is in order. A photo is sent with a discreet message: “Is this a grouse?” He writes back immediately: “It’s two women and their dog.” Then: “And a grouse.”

6.  A Custom Sideboard

Few, if any, of the dishware pieces in the Horie kitchen sideboard are part of a conventional set, and while most are, unsurprisingly, handmade, very few are Ayumi’s own work. “I hope that all the things I do are generative in some way and create a spirit of sharing, and aren’t just about navel-gazing,” she explains, and mentions that she has no need to feed her own ego with her craft.

The sideboard was custom designed to fit her salad and dinner plates—the result of a barter with Hudson Valley woodworker Andrew Hunter. The pots were mostly made by friends and other makers. Some are Japanese antiques, and the few that are hers are largely included because Chloe wants them around. Ayumi considers them markers of how her aesthetics have changed over time and where she’s been in the world. “What ties it all together is the owner’s aesthetic,” she notes. “In some ways, the future of handmade ceramics depends on the idea that [those] pots aren’t part of a conventional set.”

7. Last Year’s Wood Stack

Ayumi’s interest in examining temporality and impermanence in her craft extends to her day-to-day life, as one might imagine. Ten years ago, she founded the International Society of Woodstack Enthusiasts, a Facebook group designed to explore the nature of crafting something as temporary and ever-changing as one’s winter wood stack, and to allow enthusiasts to compare how different cultures approach the task.

“The point of stacking wood is that it dries out and burns better, and you can do it in a lot of ways. The aesthetic perk is that snow looks really good on a perfectly stacked beehive stack,” Ayumi describes. “And stacking wood is yet another thing that you could do thoughtlessly, or take a little more time and derive real pleasure from it.” At the Horie house, last year’s wood stack was in the shape of a small house, with walls, windows, and a gambrel roof.

Last year’s wood stack may no longer be a physical object in the house, but this conversation with Ayumi has proven that’s clearly just a technicality—and not simply this year’s ashes.

Ayumi Horie
Portland, Maine
Website

Photos by AARON FLACKE

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Maine comic artist Liz Prince may be best known for her humorous and relatable awkward autobiographical comics and graphic memoirs like Tomboy, but she has also done work for Cartoon Network properties like Adventure Time, and The Regular Show. Most recently, she was a featured artist at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, an event dedicated to celebrating independent comics and graphic novels.

In her most recent book, Coady and the Creepies, Liz sets aside her usual autobiographical format to bring us into a fantastical world of punk bands and ghosts. The four-part book follows a punk band comprised of triplet sisters a few years after they all survived a serious car accident — or so they thought. Coady, the singer for the band, is actually a ghost now and is doing her best to hide the truth from her sisters. Despite roadblocks at every turn, the group is determined to finish their tour in the spotlight even if it means fighting off their male rivals…and the undead.

From the cover of Coady and The Creepies

Prince describes her entry into fiction this way: “I wanted to tell a story about punk that really reflected my experiences with the scene, but that also combined a fun supernatural plot line as well. The series is actually continuing the storyline thread that I started in my memoir Tomboy, about how punk really helped me understand my own identity as a woman who didn’t necessarily fit in with what was expected of me as a woman.”

A page from Coady and The Creepies

Coady and the Creepies also addresses gender stereotypes and the lack of inclusivity within facets of arts and music communities. Near the end of the book, the band is expecting to play a concert in a basement venue for the final show of their tour. It becomes clear that one of the sisters, Criss, can’t actually get into the venue to play since she uses a wheelchair and every entrance is only accessible by stairs. “I wanted to point out how even in subcultures that have branded themselves as being outcasts and prided themselves on inclusivity, there is still a lot of room for improvement.”

Liz Prince–comics artist
Portland, Maine
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Twitter

The post Punked in Maine appeared first on Take Magazine.

The artist-run gallery Able Baker Contemporary seemed to burst into the Portland scene at a time and place it was needed most. Noticing a weird, sudden absence of serious contemporary art galleries in town displaced by a flowering of boutique and pay-to-play galleries, longtime friends and Portland-based painters Hilary Irons and Stephen Benenson opened their high-concept white-cube showroom in the heart of the city cultural district, in a space vacated by Ed Pollack’s Fine Art Gallery next to dramatic arts fixture Portland Stage.

That was 20 months ago, and over the 11 exhibitions since, Irons and Benenson have only invited challenges. Using an open-curatorial model that encourages “local-ish” artists to exhibit their own work in context alongside contemporary and historical painters and other artists, the duo have created a forum of aesthetic inquiry in New England, positioning Able Baker as a necessary part of the arts discourse in Maine.

Take: How does an Able Baker show generate? Does an artist or curator will propose a theme for a show?
Hilary Irons: For the most part, artists will submit proposals for a show, but they have a lot of ideas about reaching out to people.
Stephen Benenson: There are more or less two types of shows here. There are ones that Hilary or I will curate together based on themes and work that we want to show. And the others, generally speaking, have been what we call the Artists’ Context Series, where an artist basically curates themselves into a group show. We’ve really loved what’s come out of that. It gives artists an opportunity to put their work in a context with peers and influences, sometimes even historic work. Our first show [You Yes You in April 2016] was like that—Meghan Brady curated it. Tessa Greene O’Brien did one [Selvedge in June 2017]. And Jimmy Viera did a show called Periscope [in February, 2017] that was really amazing.
HI: One of the things I like about that series is that when the artists are putting their work into context, they have to decide the conceptual parameters of that context. That can lead to really interesting surprises, not only for us, but for the artists themselves.

T: You’d both been in Portland for a number of years before this. Was that a model you found that was working here at any time?
SB: We’d never seen this model at all.
HI: There must be a lot of other places that operate like this, but I’ve never seen it in action. It just made sense when we were setting up this place to be really pro-artist and allow artists a lot of agency.
SB: We knew we wanted to be involved in an artist-run gallery. We tried to do that in a way that keeps a consistent curatorial structure where we’re able to involve the people that were really exciting to us, while also allowing the flexibility to allow for when we have our own ideas.

T: When the two of you are curating a show, do you make an effort to keep it New England-based?
HI: Yeah, we always make a pointed effort to include people who are local and/or regional. Part of our mission is to continue to do that. Of course, we also have to have a broad net. For example, we had this great artist from Portland, Oregon, showing in our self-portraiture show. I had seen his work as part of the SPACE Gallery residency jury. We’re able to bring people in, which is really helpful for opening up a dialogue.

T: Had you two worked together before?
SB: No, we had both been in the Artist Studio building above SPACE Gallery. I’d been there 14 years and Hilary had been there 13. Hilary went to grad school, and then I ended up going to the same grad school [Yale School of Art] four years later to get my MFA. When I came back, Hilary approached me with the idea of opening up an artist-friendly gallery. Then this space came open. I think Hilary had envisioned something more modest.
HI: I saw something more provisional in my mind. We were very lucky in the timing of this space and the generosity of Portland Stage, who is our landlord, granting us the lease. It’s great to do something in a building that’s already dedicated to the arts. It’s nice to feel like we’re part of that bigger conversation.

T: Is that a pointed effort of theirs? I know Ed Pollack’s Fine Art Gallery was here before.
SB: I think it was a consideration. They wanted daytime traffic and I’m sure it was a bonus that we were involved in the arts. We were fortunate it was already set up as a gallery, because the costs would have been totally prohibitive to turn it into one.
HI: Another great thing about the fact that Ed Pollack was here is that we continue to have a relationship with him. We borrow work from his collection very regularly, and he’s been a great collaborator. He’s awesome to work with and has beautiful work.

T: Is there anything about an artist-run gallery or the model you’re using that allows you to play with ideas that other galleries can’t?
SB: Yeah. We don’t ever put together a show based on saleability—we just put together the most interesting shows that we can. We’re much closer to a museum model in the way that they curate stuff and borrow. But the idea is to be something that people will want to be part of and be involved in. Every once in awhile we’ll sell something, which is nice, but that’s not the main focus. The idea really came out of the fact that Portland had lost all of its serious art galleries—or many of them—in the last five years, and there were very few places to show contemporary painting. We know that it’s difficult to sell art these days, and in Maine, but we felt it was important to have a place it can be viewed.
HI: We allow the artists (or a gallery if they’re represented by a gallery) to set their own prices. And we also borrow from collections. That allows us the kind of range that we want, where we’re including historical vantage alongside more contemporary work to give context in both directions.

T: Would you say there’s been an overall theme of the gallery’s shows?
SB: Not really. I’ve found that when Hilary and I curate shows, we’ve been attracted to curatorial concepts that are challenging in terms of how to put together a good show that’s not cynical about particular themes. Our second show was called American Optimism. We tried to curate a show that had to do with artists that were engaging in a discussion and a sort of attitude about the United States that was optimistic and not cynical, and even involved in consumer culture. It’s really complicated to walk that line between not being cynical and also not being hokey—
HI: —or not being naive. I feel like the idea of sincerity—or the avoidance of a bitter perspective—is something that a lot of the people who have curated here are also adhering to. If you read Tessa’s curatorial statement (in Selvedge), that was a really important thing for her, that artists were referring back to the tradition of textile art in a way that was wholehearted and generous. That idea comes up again and again.
SB: We also had a show about artists for whom faith and spirituality was part of their work. That was challenging for us, and I feel like this show (Nostalgisms, curated by Nick Benfey) is in the same vein, where there’s things that can be a little bit taboo in the art world to talk about. In a certain way, that makes them an interesting curatorial challenge. Nostalgia is one of them, certainly. Literally, in our discourse, nostalgia is actually a bad word. People think of flowers and vases and lighthouses, and so then it becomes interesting to look at really serious artists who are looking at it in a different way.

T: Having been here 15 years, do you have any perspective on the type of art that people are making around here now?
HI: That’s a hard question because it’s always changing. I don’t think that anyone still thinks of Maine painting as centered around a picture of a lighthouse or a guy digging clams. I’ve been teaching at MECA for about eight years, and the students there are extremely creative and very motivated. The faculty comes from a lot of diverse and formal directions. We’re really lucky that this incredible institution is part of our city.
SB: We wanted to open this space because there was a huge amount of talent and a shortage of places where it’s being shown.
HI: One of the results of that shortage is that it’s not just us that opened up. There’s a lot of compelling new spaces. The Institute for American Art was around before we were. Border Patrol is really interesting. New Fruit is incredible.
SB: Speedwell Projects. Grant Wahlquist Gallery.
HI: Avon Street Gallery. It’s really exciting.

Hilary Irons and Stephen Benenson – Co-founders, Able Baker Contemporary
Portland, Maine
Website
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Top image: Untitled by Dan Dowd. Found raincoat and snorkel coat, 14x27x2″, 2016. Photo courtesy of Able Baker Contemporary.

The post Aesthetic Optimism appeared first on Take Magazine.

In order to understand Amanda Hawkins, you need to know that she grew up next to a salt marsh in Newburyport, Massachusetts. As a child, she spent hours exploring the marsh’s channels and paths, until she knew it as well as the seabirds that nested there. Hawkins is connected to the marsh on a level that transcends easy understanding — it is both a favorite place and an emotional touchstone. The land itself contains layers of meanings and memories, a deeply personal sense of place that she attempts to evoke in her abstracted landscapes.

“I have to paint places that I have an emotional connection to,” Hawkins says. When she begins a painting, however, that relationship between emotion and landscape isn’t always logical or immediately apparent. “They’re kind of like puzzles for me,” she says. “A lot of times when I’m painting, it takes me a while to find the landscape, but then I’ll recognize the colors.”

Labeling her paintings as landscapes, Hawkins says, allows viewers to immediately orient themselves in the work. “It gives people a jumping-off point,” she says. “Every person in the world can relate to a landscape.” That familiarity allows viewers to engage more deeply with the abstract elements of the piece — the emotional content layered over the landscape. This tension between the literal and the abstract helps elevate her paintings beyond the typical limits of the genre. “I always want to make the argument that landscapes can be contemporary,” Hawkins says.

Marshscape, Summer Haze

Her creative process, then, requires a strong relationship to her environment, and Hawkins continues to draw energy from the New England coast. She is currently based in Portland, Maine, which she values for the city’s close proximity to nature as well as for the diverse color palette found in Portland’s working waterfront. “That’s driven a lot of my aesthetic, actually,” she says, “that contrast between neon buoys and gray fog. It’s beautiful yet still kind of grimy.”

She also values Portland for its vibrant artistic community. Having a nucleus of other artists in the area provides her with both a sounding board and a source of inspiration. “I find it really inspiring to see how other artists set up their studios,” she says. “Seeing their process in person allows me to bring something new back to my own practice.”

Pier.

But Hawkins has also increasingly become a part of the art community outside of Portland. Over the past year, she has worked hard at building her social media presence, which has sparked connections with artists and fans across the globe. “I see social media as a place to be honest and incredibly genuine with my audience,” she says.

This approach has not only yielded another group of artists for Hawkins to interact with, but has also provided new markets for her finished pieces. To date, she’s sold paintings to buyers in California, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Social media — particularly Instagram — has allowed her to amplify her reach more quickly and effectively than other, more traditional routes. “Trying to advance my career through the gallery scene was good,” she says, “but there are a lot of people outside of Boston who want to see the work too.” Hawkins’ direct-to-consumer model also makes her art more affordable. It’s a side effect she is happy to encourage. “They say that artists live on the doorstep of the rich, and I’m trying to change that,” she says.

At the same time, though, Hawkins is clear about her priorities. “It’s really important for me to keep putting the art first,” she says. “No matter if I’m shipping a piece of art to Boston or to Australia, I’ve got to make sure it’s the best possible work I can do. It’s a part of me on the wall.”

Amanda K. Hawkins–artist
Portland, Maine
Website
Instagram
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Top image: En Plein Air. All photos courtesy of Amanda K. Hawkins.

The post Heart/Land appeared first on Take Magazine.

With the country careening into the abyss and my personal problems both increasingly difficult to ignore and comparably banal, I embraced a cultural cliché. I ran away and joined the circus.

Housed inside a repurposed 5,000-square foot 20th century railroad car repair facility, Circus Maine offers an exciting circus journey for the uninitiated and the experienced. The overarching organization includes Maine Circus Academy, a circus school with youth and professional level training programs; and Pinion Productions, a production company through which Circus Maine organizes its large theatrical performances and intimate cabarets.

Kat Finck, Circus Maine co-founder and producing/casting director, aims to merge the pure physical spectacle of traditional circus with modern circus’ artistic potential for making statements. “I don’t think that it’s possible to do a contemporary art and say that you’re not drawing on what came before you,” she says.

“In so many ways Cirque du Soleil is a traditional circus. It’s just there’s no animals. And that’s where people draw a huge line,” Finck says. “But I don’t think the line between traditional and modern is about whether or not you have animals. I think it has to do more with what the message you’re trying to give your audience is. I think there’s value in both.”

Mike Kelly and Sierra Nicholls. 

My run-away day started with an introduction to the basics of contemporary circus art by Finck and Circus Maine instructors Mel McGovern, Sierra Nicholls, and Mike Kelly. That was followed by handstands, at which point I quickly remembered that my overall athleticism could use some improvement.

My choice of trampoline over high wire for a second activity makes little sense in retrospect. I’m afraid of open uncontrolled heights, so the guided assistance for a high wire demonstration would have probably been more comfortable than my freeform flopping on the trampoline, which left me with momentary lower back compression after I butchered proper landing technique.

The Opening Act for Circus Maine

Circus Maine began in earnest in the fall of 2015 after a company called the Circus Conservatory of America shuttered. Finck and her partner and fellow co-founder Josh Oliver inherited the space. “We were essentially the anchor tenant here when there were no streetlights, no parking lots,” she says. “It was really Wild West.” A supportive arrangement with the landlords helped them get the company off the ground and undergo a massive build-out that involved repouring the concrete floor (which now boasts hydronic heating) and digging the trampoline pit “by hand with shovels.”

Finck, who hails from a small fishing village on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, began her journey to the circus while nannying in Germany. “I didn’t speak the language and I didn’t know anybody and was really lonely, so I spent all of my free time juggling in the attic of these people’s house in Germany. And of course I’m six feet tall and I’m under the roof so it was really low so I was kneeling so that I could have room to throw the balls. Eventually I really enjoyed it and I stuck with that.”

Kat Finck

In a circus troupe in Newfoundland she joined upon moving back to Canada, Finck juggled and learned a variety of traditional circus acts and took up partner acrobatics. She moved to Maine with the plan of going to school to become a midwife while her husband (who’s from the west coast of the United States) was living in Montreal. The two were hired by Circus Conservatory of America. “It’s just been following our lives where they lead us that led us to New England.” She says. “It was in America but it was on my coast, so to say. I came across the border and he came across the country.”

McGovern, who was one of Maine Circus Academy’s first students, also had a unique journey to the circus. She’d done yoga before, and started training in aerial fabric while living with her partner in Colorado. The two moved to Portland as Circus Maine was starting up. McGovern threw herself at the three-year professional program, which introduced her to a variety of circus arts, dance, and acting skills, unlocking “so many doors that I didn’t even know were there to open.”

After specializing in aerial straps and aerial fabric, McGovern now hopes to continue making circus art and growing the school and company. “I love coaching,” she says. “I’ve been working with some people now around a year and it’s really cool to see their progress and help them achieve that, and also internally their confidence is higher. I find that just as gratifying as being onstage and getting applause.”

Mel McGovern

Finck recently produced an all-women’s cabaret, a performance she notes happened to take place in the wake of reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexually assaulting and harassing women in Hollywood. “I felt like it was important to give women a chance to step to the forefront. And I feel like I want to do that as a producer and as a director as much as I can — create space where everyone can be heard, not just the people who we always are listening to.”

McGovern notes her mission “to put out a different message than what is shown on the stage in some parts of the world. Even though people think of the circus as counterculture, in a lot of the world there’s still that heteronormative girl-meets-guy love scene and that’s not what I’m interested in putting out there. My world isn’t like that.”

Finck explains that Maine Circus Academy in particular provides a useful space to help kids understand the fundamentals of consensual platonic touch. “I feel like one of the things that we give to the kids that come and train with us is actual physical connection to other humans that’s really healthy and really safe,” she says.

“I feel like it’s such a useful tool for kids to grow up meeting people and interacting with them physically in a way that is safe and healthy and normal. It makes it so that it’s possible for people to have a context to understand what good is and it’s something to contrast against when — I hate to say it, but almost inevitably in this world — when people run into others taking liberties with their bodies. I think that’s an interesting thing we’re able to provide to young folks specifically is perspective on that front.”

Aerial fabrics reassured me of my circus prospects. Hanging upside down, my legs splayed out to secure my center of gravity over the knot in the material, I took a moment to meditate. Should I forget about the whole writing thing and stick around with this group of intelligent, talented, and disciplined performers? After insightful conversations with Finck and McGovern, I’m leaning toward trying to find a middle ground.

Kat Finck and Mel McGovern–Circus Maine
Portland, Maine
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Top image: Mel McGovern of Circus Maine. All photos courtesy of Adam Policky.

The post Run Away with Me appeared first on Take Magazine.

Artist Ethan Hayes–Chute thinks a lot about the spaces we inhabit and how we experience them. His three-dimensional installations, built from salvaged wood and other materials, reflect his thoughts on self-sufficiency, self-preservation, accumulation, and nature. “I’m enchanted with working in different mediums, at different scales, and offering different entry points for people to encounter my work,” he says. His current work, a photographic series called Beacons, is part of We Might Climb a Tree, at Least, an exhibition celebrating naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts (MMPA) through January 27th, 2018.

The photos in Beacons, shot in the woods surrounding Hayes-Chute’s family camp on Lake Sebec in central Maine, juxtapose the familiar (ordinary household lamps) with the ominous (a dark forest). Each lamp, pictured hanging from a tree, creates a small, familiar circle of light. “My inspiration for the series happened by accident,” Hayes-Chute says. “I was working outside at the camp with a lamp and was really taken by the light’s interaction with the leaves against the darkness.”

A builder and maker during his childhood in Freeport, Maine, Hayes-Chute became fascinated constructing small sculptures and miniatures as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. His family (his father, James Chute, is an artist who recommended the Beacons series to MMPA Director Denise Froehlich) and experiences growing up in Maine are reflected in his art. “The settings and similarities I create or recreate from imagination and my family history creep in quite often in my work,” says Hayes-Chute. “I’m always happy to have those moments.”

From the series Beacons, 2015, Digital C-Print, 18 x 27 inches. Photo courtesy of Ethan Hayes-Chute. 

Last year, Hayes-Chute used his maker skills to explore familiarity in a space, building a room-size workshop — complete with with workbench, tools, and assorted odds and ends — in an installation at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. More recently, with collaborator and Finnish performance artist Dafna Maimon, he combined large-scale installation with performance art by creating Camp Solong. It’s an immersive three-day summer camp for adults emphasizing play, community, and the universality of saying “goodbye,” whether to others or to one’s emotional baggage.

Camp Solong, Dafna Maimon and Ethan Hayes-Chute, 2016 – (ongoing), as seen in the garden of Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 2016 Photo by Mike Terry

Hayes-Chute and Maimon built the camp, a one-walled cabin with a roof, platform, and eight bunk beds with a table and benches, which pops up each summer in different locations, including Finland and Germany (Hayes-Chute hopes to bring it to Maine). “I always wanted to integrate performance in to my work and activate my own structures,” Hayes-Chute notes. “Dafna and I came up with the idea of summer camp through discussions about how people need to learn how to empathize and communicate with each other.”

Hayes-Chute is also experimenting with video. His “New Domestic Woodshop,” a humorous riff on popular do-it-yourself television shows and YouTube videos, was developed for CONGLOMERATE TV, a collaborative project in Berlin. As the host, Eth, Hayes-Chute uses the many materials he has in his workshop to solve minor problems (for example, in this video, how to create a lap desk that enables him to work from bed). His next project is creating an experience around making customized cooking spices, a theme touched on in his installation at the List.

Whether it’s video, performance art, or large-scale installations, Hayes-Chute is still tinkering. “I want people to see these collections of objects and have the experience of seeing something familiar,” he says.

Ethan Hayes-Chute, Artist
Freeport, Maine/Berlin, Germany
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Top image: List Projects: Ethan Hayes-Chute, 2016, installation view at MIT LIST Visual Arts Center, wood, found objects. Photo by Peter Harris Studio

The post If You Build It appeared first on Take Magazine.

A chilled puddle of cocoa and sugar rests on a tray in the Bixby & Co. candy kitchen. Kate McAleer developed this newest, single origin batch, utilizing cacoa beans from Guatemala. She breaks off a piece, handing it to me.

The chunk is velvety, dark, and rich as it melts in my mouth. Tastebuds awaken, aflame with pleasure. Hints of fruit linger. The dark chocolate is not too sweet, not too bitter, perfect. Like a fine wine, McAleer’s bean-to-bar chocolate has depth, and its taste is sumptuous.

Bixby & Co is an artisanal craft confectionary based in the old ice factory in Rockland, Maine. McAleer is the owner and mastermind, with a fervent ardor for her craft. Sold nationwide, Bixby Bars can be found in over 3000 stores, including Whole Foods, TJ Maxx, Amazon, and Hannaford, to name a few. Many of her products are non GMO-verified, organic, vegan verified, Earth kosher, and gluten free. The company is woman owned.

Kate McAleer and her Bixby & Co. chocolates

The chocolate, an extension of McAleer, represents an investment of time and focus, as well as fundamental principles of food. With a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies, and minors in French and art history, Kate pursued a graduate degree studying history of decorative arts and design. A year later she switched schools, attending the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. It was during this time her passion for chocolate came into focus.

Bean to bar is the newest venture for Bixby & Co. A two-ounce bar of dark chocolate rests inside a red envelope. Contrasted in black ink is the image of an octopus, its tentacles writhing in all directions. This is the bookplate of her great, great, grandparents, Lillian and William K. Bixby, for whom the company is named. Altered in the slightest way, this heirloom is the mold that shapes these single origin chocolate bars, only available at their Rockland location. “We are the first in Maine to make craft chocolate,” McAleer notes, with little under 90 small scale artisanal craft makers in the United States.

The bean-to-bar chocolate has two ingredients — cacoa beans and cane sugar. Sourcing direct trade beans from Haiti, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, McAleer traveled to Haiti to meet and learn about the people growing the cacoa. “Different origins end up with different flavor profiles. Much like wine or different grapes,” she says. “You can have cocoa beans from Haiti and Dominican Republic, which is the same geographic island, but different flavor profile entirely.”

McAleer wants to enhance Americans’ chocolate experience. “There is this mystique around chocolate. People don’t know where it comes from, or where it’s grown.“ She seeks to demystify chocolate, one bar at a time.

Kate McAleer–owner, Bixby & Co.
Rockland, Maine
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Top image: Bixby Bites from Bixby & Co. All photos by David Jester.

The post Raising the (Chocolate) Bar appeared first on Take Magazine.

Experimentation and connectivity are the foundation of Jackie Brown’s artistic process. The Maine artist works with malleable materials like clay, plaster, foam, and concrete to create immersive experiences that express her ideas about nature, science, and the interconnection of living systems. Her colorful organic sculptures are part of Materiality: The Matter of Matter, an exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) through February 11, 2018. “Each artist (in the exhibit) engages matter in different ways and examines the relationship between materials,” Brown says. “That’s a huge part of what I do.”

Brown plays with structure, a concept reflected in the synthesis of her work. Her sculptures are imagined biological systems. “I generate a lot of parts that I combine in to larger forms,” she says. “I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of sculpture and 3D. It helps me look at what’s under the surface of things.”

The connections between various living systems have fascinated Brown since she was an undergraduate at Hamilton College, taking classes in biology, philosophy and psychology. “That was the beginning,” she says. “I made connections between different subjects I studied and I really got involved with process and material.” At first she worked on images of the human figure; her art evolved after she discovered the work of neurologist and author Dr. Oliver Sacks, noted for his writing and research about the human brain. “I was really excited about his work,” she says.

Jackie Brown in Mutated Growth installation

Sacks’ writings inspired Brown’s preternatural “Brain Fruit” series, created using, among other materials, plaster molds of wrinkled Osage oranges (the series is part of the installation by Brown in the Materiality exhibition, each with their own visual language but all ultimately united conceptually). The forms are both grotesque and playful. “I was interested in creating something that was otherworldly but also imaginative and playful,” Brown says. “The colors counterbalance the grotesque qualities. It makes you think: is this a healthy growth? Harmful? Benign or ambiguous?”

Brain Fruit

Brown is also an educator. Three years ago, she joined the art faculty at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, as an assistant art professor. She’s on sabbatical this year, combining extended studio time with residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana and at Emmanuel College in Boston. Her new work – “It’s so new I don’t really have a handle on it yet,” she says – is influenced by Maine. “My work is really shifting because of the landscape here and my interest in human interaction with living systems.” She trusts her materials and process to shape the final result.

Jackie Brown, artist
Brunswick, Maine
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Top image: Part of the Mutated Growth series. Photos courtesy of Jackie Brown

The post Playfully Connected appeared first on Take Magazine.

Take is going on the road, checking out New England’s corners for everything from the best bodegas to tiny galleries and music spots. We’ll be adding towns as we come across them. Read our other New England finds. Up now? Scarborough, Maine.

Maine is full of nooks and crannies and while most of them are rocky and cold for the majority of the year, they are gems nonetheless! One of those fabulous little nooks is Scarborough, Maine. Located just south of Portland, this town has sandy beaches, tasty restaurants, and some talented artists. Let’s take a look at our five finds in Scarborough!

Shade Restaurant

Just a stone’s throw from Higgins Beach, the Shade Restaurant at the Higgins Beach Inn is the lively local hangout that you always hope you’ll come across on your travels. Serving up dinner Thursday-Sunday and breakfast every day of the week, the restaurant does the classics well, with its own spin on them, of course. The breakfast is particularly spot on, especially as fuel for a day at the beach or a day shopping in Portland.
Location: Higgins Beach

Sea Dog Brewing Co.

Maine has no shortage of craft breweries and one of my favorites is Sea Dog. Not too far from the Portland Airport, Sea Dog Brewing Co. is a cool brewpub offering up some hearty bar food and craft beer. You have to try their popular flavored beers like the blueberry and raspberry ales. And paring that with a warm pretzel makes for a tasty afternoon. But full disclosure, this is located just over the border into South Portland from Scarborough, but is a Scarborough favorite nonetheless.
Location: 125 Western Ave.

Winslow Homer Studio

A stylish enclave jets out off of Scarborough called Prout’s Neck. Filled with lovely homes and waterfront views, Prout’s Neck is the crown jewel of Scarborough. And at the tip of this lovely point, sits a historical site that all art lovers need to visit while in the area, the Winslow Homer Studio. The former home and art studio of the famous American artist, Winslow Homer, this is the site of one of the most important American artists of the last century.
Location: 5 Winslow Homer Rd.

Chart Room Restaurant

And after you’ve had your fill of art and history, head back up the point to the Black Point Inn’s Chart Room restaurant for a classic New England style meal. The historic hotel is a blast from the past in the best way. The traditional architecture and the warm service will remind you of all the New England charm filling the area. Grab some seared scallops and fresh oysters for a classic seafood dinner while you over look the water at the Chart Room.
Location: 510 Black Point Rd.

Edgecomb Potters

While, not Edgecome Potters is technically located in Scarborough, I always associate it with Scarborough because I first saw a piece of their work in a friend’s home in Scarborough. And when they told me where they picked it up, I just had to make the quick drive to Portland to check it out. The beautiful designs and the quality craftsmanship are a refreshing alternative to its mass produced competitors.
Location: 145 Commercial St.

Top image: Courtesy of Edgecomb Potters

The post Five Finds Around Scarborough, Maine appeared first on Take Magazine.

Named president in the spring of 2017, the journalist, creative entrepreneur, and world traveler Laura Freid is in her first full semester at the helm of Portland’s Maine College of Art, the state’s sole accredited visual arts institution. The former publisher of Harvard Magazine, who last year ended a 12-year run as CEO of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad project where she traveled for 4,280 days with a troupe of 30 classical musicians, artists, and production staff performing through the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Freid has lived a lot of lives.

As she charts the next path for the private arts institution in the heart of the fast-growing port city, we spoke with her about empathy, political responsibility, and how to get artists and businesspeople to play together.

Take: You have a degree in philosophy of aesthetics, you wrote the narrative for Silkroad’s The Music of Strangers documentary, and you traveled for 12 years with a touring troupe of classical musicians. Do you think of yourself as an academic or an artist?

Laura Freid: I like to illustrate without words what cultural harmony would look like. I feel like once people get attached to something, like an idea, they can’t see another person’s point of view—particularly when using words. Through art or music is how to get people’s hearts engaged. I feel like I’m still a storyteller. I’m very visual, but I have a standard of excellence that’s higher than my mind-hand coordination. Growing up, I was always asking, Why is that? Why does it inspire us? Why is it something that gives us hope? We all need hope. It’s an existential quest.

T: Can you walk us through how you first connected with Yo-Yo Ma?
LF: I wrote an article about Yo-Yo and other thought leaders for Bostonia Magazine. At the end of the interview, I asked, ‘What do you really want to do beyond being the best cellist in the world?’ He said, ‘Y’know, I really want to unite the world through music.’

He had studied anthropology at Harvard and is fascinated by people and cultures. Years later, he called and asked, ‘So, do you wanna do that thing?’ A friend who is an art historian had described the idea as a kind of Silk Road, where people a thousand years ago couldn’t speak the same language but they’d share or trade art along the road. That’s what this is really all about.

So I became the CEO. I’m not a musician; he didn’t need another musician. I worked on the story—what happens when strangers meet, when we look for something in common. We think of classical music as starting in Italy in the 1700s, but in China, Persia, and India, classical music started thousands of years ago. Nobody remembers who the kings were or what the politics were at the time. You remember Beethoven or Mick Jagger or DaVinci. Art is the through-line that connects our cultures.

T: What was it that attracted you to MECA?
LF: The musicians we worked with who were in their twenties when we started were now in their forties, many of them with children of their own now. I realized that I really like that 18-to 24-year-old time period where everything comes together and you become this person you are today. I wanted to get back to student creativity and help artists in this crazy world where the economy doesn’t support creative art makers very well. I started asking, couldn’t we have some creative entrepreneurship? Couldn’t we encourage people who have money and people who are creative to start working together in their twenties and not in their sixties? There were patrons of the arts years ago. And up until recently there was a lot of government support. In our country, art has corporate support, but corporate support started eroding 10 years ago after the financial crisis and it has been a free-for-all since then. I wanted to encourage that creative entrepreneurship.

I got a call about MECA, and I thought their mission statement sounds like mine—artistic excellence, creative entrepreneurship, artists at work. I didn’t even really know about the college. I think people in Maine are really aware that it’s Maine’s only accredited visual arts college, but it would benefit if people beyond Maine knew about it.

I went through orientation with the first-year students. Entering students can decide to take one of six courses. One is “A Field Guide to the New World.” It talks about new ideas and solutions for the changing environment and they read [Rebecca Solnit’s] A Field Guide to Getting Lost. They include fundamental drawing, painting, and bookmaking in their eventual field guide, but start in the environment. Another is called “Slow Fashion: Fibrous Fashion and the Farm.” Just like slow cooking, this is about how to connect fashion close to the fabric and the dyes. Another is “Species of Spaces,” which asks what are the characteristics of the spaces we inhabit? How do our senses affect our experiences with them? Why am I claustrophobic and you’re not? All end results of these courses are drawing and writing and abstract art-making, but it starts with these kinds of essential questions.

Spring Fashion Show at MECA’s Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), part of the annual MECAmorphosis event celebrating student thesis work. Photo by Kyle Dubay.

T: With Silkroad, you worked on a global scale, forming partnerships with RISD and Harvard Business School. Why?
LF: I really like artist environments. My thought was that we could connect the Harvard campus through the arts. Traditionally, Harvard had not been into the practice of the arts. It’s very theoretical, very academic. It turned out to be a great collaboration, and as I started thinking about the business-art connection, we created a challenge for artists and businesspeople to work together and create new ideas.

T: Did the cross-pollination of artists and businesspeople take off immediately?
LF: Y’know, there’s some natural antipathy toward suits [among artists]. There’s a creative versus business, church-and-state feeling. From business too. I think with any cross-cultural navigation, you have to develop trust. The musicians did some instant concerts, where Silkroad musicians including a bagpiper from Galicia, Spain, a drummer from India, and a sheng player from China would perform on campus, and then we’d have a conversation about it. Turns out a lot of students at the Harvard Business School come from different cultures and were really excited for that conversation. First you have to establish trust, and then have some fun together, get to know each other, and then you can start working together.

T: How do you see MECA students integrating into the community post-graduation?
LF: I think we’re lucky that Jessica Tomlinson and the Artists at Work office here encourages internships and experiences. I’ve been to some campuses that are beautiful, but [students] aren’t near any cities—they’re in a cocoon. That can be a great way to learn, but if you’re an artist learning in an urban environment, you’re interning, you’re performing, you’re doing public art, you’re speaking at the museum.

When I interviewed here, I stayed at the Press Hotel. Erin Hutton [class of ’98; artist and director of special projects at the ICA at MECA] did the typewriter display there. Have you seen it?

T: That’s the most memorable thing about that place!
LF: I used to use one of those typewriters. I wish I still had it. I love to look at edits on old manuscripts and rare books. I miss looking at old drafts in the digital age.

T: I know, there’s just a flattening of experience with computers.
LF: Yeah, the texture of creativity is gone.

T: Yeah. I find that it’s hard to recall information that I process through a computer because I’m always in the same position when I’m consuming it.
LF: There’s some research I just read about that. I googled it, and there’s definitely less retention of information if you’re taking notes on a computer. My first articles were all written by hand in coffee shops. I think it’s a romantic notion, but it actually helps retention, too.

T: I read a distressing thing about how humans are losing their facial empathetic response instinct. Before, when we learned something shocking we’d often be in dialogue with somebody, so we’d have this natural facial reaction to convey that. Now, I’ll read horrifying tweets or something, but there’s nobody I’m expressing anything with my face to, so I’m learning to feel shock while having a blank face.
LF: One of the reasons I love the arts is that our culture has an empathy deficit. Art brings us back to that home button. You see something and immediately feel the empathy you should have felt when you might have felt it [in real time]. I hope more and more students consider a visual arts education, because I don’t know what society is going to look like when you can’t see expressions of empathy. Or facial expressions of any kind.

T: You posted a response to President Trump’s DACA repeal in September. You don’t see a lot of institutional heads doing that.
LF: Well, my first response was that a college is a community. I just wanted people to know that we care about them. I have to say that I’m shocked [in these days] that I have to speak out against things like racism. But once you realize you do, then you must. The students, they’re 18-22; they’re vulnerable. These people were kids during 9/11, then there was an economic crash—it’s already not the sort of world where you can feel very secure. Then you have political power threatening your existence and the existence of your friends. There are things we can do, and what we have to do is note it and stand together.

Laura Freid – president, Maine College of Art
Portland, Maine
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Top image: Laura Freid. Photo by Kyle Dubay.

The post Take Q&A: Laura Freid, MECA President appeared first on Take Magazine.