Profiles

Curiosity and the Artist

PROFILE- Frederick Lynch-March 2010

by Suzette McAvoy
Photography Irvin Serrano

A studio visit with Frederick Lynch

Design Is in the Details

PROFILE- Michael Roy-March 2010

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

Michael Roy and his team at Phi Home Designs build homes, furniture, and relationships

Free Rider

PROFILE- Seth Wescott-Jan/Feb 2010

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

Seth Wescott on Olympic gold, Alaskan snowpack, his first house in Maine, and Sugarloaf’s next big move

Bountiful Harvest of Creativity

PROFILE- Susan & Rufus Williams-Nov/Dec 2009

by Suzette McAvoy
Photography Irvin Serrano

A Rockport couple share an artful life

Textile Treasures

PROFILE- Yosi Barzilai-October 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

What SoHo’s Sarajo is doing on Congress Street

Once, many years ago, Yosi Barzilai shopped until he dropped.

It was during one of his semi-annual trips to the Far East—this time, Thailand. As he was combing the region for antique textiles, he stepped into a hole that had unwisely been covered with cardboard and fell right through the floor. He broke two vertebrae and an elbow, but that didn’t keep him from shopping. “I got some really great things on that trip,” Barzilai recalls from inside his gleaming antiques gallery, Sarajo, in Portland’s Arts District. “The thrill of the hunt is one of the most adrenaline-producing things in my life,” he says with a smile.

Being Green

PROFILE-September 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

A furniture designer discovers his passion for the process

If there were a mascot for the saying “Life is more about the journey than the destination,” Doug Green would be it. That isn’t to say the furniture maker, inventor, industrial designer, wood tamer, and founder of Green Design Furniture in Portland doesn’t love a fine finished product; it is just that, for Green, the process of design is the most compelling part of his work.

Virtue and the Ventriloquist

PROFILE-September 2009

Urban Archaeology

PROFILE- Kaja Veilleux-August 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

An auctioneer with a photographic memory and an obsession with preservation

On a muggy morning at the end of May, the sheer volume of people and antiques inside Thomaston Place Auction Galleries makes the building, a former chicken coop, feel like it could bust its seams. Just before the auction starts, Kaja Veilleux—owner, appraiser, auctioneer, and founder—is walking around distributing handshakes and promises of a great show. “Going to be some fireworks here today, I tell ya,” he says with a wink. In the heavy air, the smell of antiquities and an excited energy mingle as people start taking their seats.

A Photographer’s Point of View

PROFILE-August 2009

by Suzette McAvoy
Photography Irvin Serrano

Patrisha McLean’s hilltop gardens bloom with inspiration

Photographer Patrisha McLean is sitting on top of the world—at least it seems that way from the vantage point of her hilltop home on the outskirts of Camden. Lakeview, the gracious Georgian-style house that McLean shares with her husband, the singer and songwriter Don McLean, and their two teenage children, Jackie and Wyatt, is located on two hundred private acres overlooking Megunticook Lake. The home’s lofty perch offers sweeping views of Camden Hills State Park, and the protected park land ensures that their pristine panoramic vista will never be sullied by development.

The Eye of the Intimist

PROFILE-July 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

The poetic nature of photographer Joyce Tenneson

On Joyce Tenneson’s kitchen table, a single pink rosebud rests in a white clam shell, the tiniest pool of water quenching its thirst. Beyond the flower, past sliding-glass doors, Rockport Harbor is barely visible through the fog. When Tenneson placed the rose in the shell this morning, it was only a bud, but by afternoon its petals have unfurled into a full blossom. In this one delicate decorative touch, the major features of Tenneson’s photographic style are encapsulated: nature, simplicity, intimacy, transformation, and exquisite beauty. “Surrounding myself with small things like this gives me such happiness,” she says. “It’s never about the big moments for me; it is always more about the intimate details.”

Drawing the Line

PROFILE-June 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

In the second grade, while his classmates were sketching stick figures and coloring pictures, Rob Whitten was drawing the world exactly as he saw it—three dimensionally. From an early age, he had a passion for building things and a gift for putting his surroundings in perspective on paper. While his childhood peers were impressed by his talent for rendering life in three dimensions, the young Whitten didn’t quite understand what the fuss was about. “Well, isn’t that what the world is?” he would wonder innocently.

Forever Wild

PROFILE-June 2009

by Stephen Abbott
Photography Irvin Serrano

Despite all our engineering, all our planning and scheming, we all end up somewhere, doing something, we never could have predicted. Such is life that, if the serendipities of fate were written as fiction, we might have trouble believing our own reality.

Roxanne Quimby’s life seems tinged with the aura of folklore, but her story is so improbable, so profoundly inspiring, that it couldn’t be anything other than the unembellished truth.

The Creative Chameleon

PROFILE-June 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

How one designer’s performance background influenced Portland’s newest performance space

This is huge!” exclaims Joshua Bergey as he eyes the enormous steaming latte that has just been placed in front of him. At first, its size is daunting, but soon an eagerness to dig in takes over. It is the kind of reaction one might imagine the interior designer had when offered the job of designing the new 13,000-square-foot Port City Music Hall. Just a few blocks away from the Hall, though, there is little talk of intimidation from Bergey. Instead, the 34-year-old designer’s face is animated as he shares how working on Portland’s newest music venue was a full-circle journey for him, both artistically and physically.

A Life by Design

PROFILE-May 2009

by Stephen Abbott
Photography Irvin Serrano

For those who follow lifestyle design, the Angela Adams story is now well known:

Spunky, towheaded girl prone to doodling is raised by lobstering family on the remote Maine island of North Haven. Driven by lofty but unfocused artistic ambitions, enrolls at the Art Institute of Philadelphia to study interior design. Wanders back home after college and works for prominent Maine painter Eric Hopkins; learns the business of selling art. Launches entrepreneurial career by cobbling together a succession of odd jobs painting stylized, organic patterns on objects, furniture, and homes. Meets fledgling furniture designer Sherwood Hamill; falls in love. Inspired by rug samples in the office of a local interior designer, realizes that area rugs could be the ideal vehicle for her patterns. With Hamill, cofounds Angela Adams, LLC, in 1997. First rug and furniture collection is introduced at Chicago Design Show; international press follows, catapulting the designer to near-instant stardom. Company grows and diversifies rapidly, licensing deals are struck, and a working studio and retail store are opened in the old Tommy’s Hardware building on Congress Street in Portland. Following a spate of awards and product placements, Angela Adams becomes one of the most recognizable brands in lifestyle accessories and home furnishings.

The House Whisperer

PROFILE-May 2009

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

Scott Horty lives to connect the things he loves most: people, houses, and his town

Over the din of clattering plates and silverware in an 1890s pharmacy-turned-deli on Main Street in Camden, just steps from his office, Camden Real Estate founder Scott Horty quietly confesses that he has never actually considered himself a real-estate broker. He also reveals that he is an introvert—the only one from his office of fifteen (at least, according to the Myers-Briggs personality test he had everyone take). This last comment is particularly surprising, considering the number of people who, in only a matter of minutes, have stopped by the table to say hello.