Profiles

Mark White: On Display

PROFILE-Mark White-August 2010

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Sean Alonzo Harris

Creating exhibits for the windows of the world

The creative chaos of Mark White’s waterfront workshop on Commercial Street in Portland couldn’t contrast more with the string of polished storefronts that line Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

But despite their differences in atmosphere and even echelon, the two have a before-and-after relationship that makes them inextricably linked; the “before” happens in Portland by the working hands of White’s team, and the “after” is the eye candy that fills retail windows and stores all over the world.

The Vintage Wood Tamer

 

PROFILE- Michael Perkins-July 2010

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

Michael Perkins channels the histories of wood

 

On his farm in Brunswick, the mid-March sun takes its first stab at thawing the winter ground. Inside the big red barn, Michael Perkins tiptoes around precarious floorboards, surrounded by piles of wood, weathered and worn. Salvaged pine, Douglas fir, oak, chestnut, beech, elm, and walnut in various states and of various ages line the walls or sit clustered in piles. Nail holes, saw marks, and smooth foot-worn patinas hint at the wood’s prior use. Some of the wood is centuries old, the skeletons of disassembled Maine barns or Midwestern factories. All of it will be crafted into heirloom furniture that people will grow old with.

Joseph Nicoletti’s Excellent Art Adventure

 

PROFILE- Joseph Nicoletti-June 2010

by Carl Little
Photography Irvin Serrano

A retrospective at Bates College reveals a remarkable aesthetic journey

A Fresh Vision

 

PROFILE- George Kinghorn-May 2010

by Suzette McAvoy
Photography Sean Alonzo Harris

George Kinghorn brings new vitality to the University of Maine Museum of Art.

Western Maine’s Ambassador of Art

 

PROFILE- John Day-May 2010

by Suzette McAvoy
Photography Irvin Serrano

John Day leads the new Pace Galleries at Fryeburg Academy

Anatomy of an Artist

 

PROFILE- Jesse Salisbury-April 2010

by Carl Little
Photography Sean Alonzo Harris

From Steuben, Maine, to Japan and Egypt, this sculptor has learned the ways of stone

 

On a frigid morning this past December, the sculptor Jesse Salisbury welcomed a visitor to his humble abode off Joe Leighton Road in the woods of Steuben, a small coastal town in Washington County. Seated in the warm kitchen of the house he grew up in, the 37-year-old Salisbury was coming down off a kind of artistic high. The day before, in equally brutal cold, he had successfully installed his Anatomy of a Boulder sculpture at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. With a little less than nine hours of daylight to work with, he and his assistants had moved fifty pieces of heavy granite over a hedge and into the museum’s sculpture garden.

Returning to Maine

PROFILE- Alex Katz-April 2010

by Suzette McAvoy

Artist Alex Katz paints big and gives bigger

Artist Alex Katz does not think of himself as a collector. “No, I throw things out,” he says. But over the past six years, he has significantly enhanced the collections of several art institutions in Maine with gifts from his private foundation.

From Moscow to Maine

 

PROFILE- Ilya Askinazi-April 2010

by Bruce Brown
Photography Sean Alonzo Harris

Photographer Ilya Askinazi’s artistic odyssey

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

by Rebecca Falzano
Photography Irvin Serrano

Artist Robert Shetterly paints the truth