From Art Colonies to Creative Communities

Newcastle, Maine

Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle

Their website opens with a definition: “Watershed: A time when an important change happens.” For Claire Brassil, a painter who grew up in Newcastle, her Watershed moment came in the winter of 2012. After having spent time in New York, painting and teaching, she had returned to Maine and was working in her studio when she received a call from George Mason, a founder of the Watershed Center, whom she had known since childhood. George asked Claire if she’d be interested in doing some work with Watershed.

“There are so many different art worlds,” Claire recalled. “I was trying to figure out my place in the world. But at the same time I was really missing Maine.”

One thing led to another and Claire came home to work for Watershed as the coordinator of the artist residency program. But joining Watershed isn’t as much about going to work as it is becoming part of its mission as a community for artists who create with clay.

The artists come from all over the country and the world, fifteen at a time, to work and explore their art. The summer and fall residency sessions are two weeks in length, giving Watershed the opportunity to host more than 100 artists each year. “Some artists really focus on a project they have in mind when they arrive,” Claire commented. “Other artists spend a lot of time walking around the grounds and taking it all in.”

There’s a lot of “taking in” to do. Watershed is located in MidCoast Maine on 32 beautiful rolling acres with nature trails, ponds and streams. During the summer months and into the fall, the resident artists live in rustic but comfortable cabins and do their hands-on creative work in a 16,000 square foot studio – a chicken barn in a previous life. Adjacent to the studio are two wood kilns as well as gas kilns and an array of electric kilns.

But it all starts, of course, with the clay. “It’s a unique earthenware clay that comes from the glacial marine flats of Maine,” Claire informed us. “We process it here and the artists enjoy the idea of using the Maine land itself in creating their work.” For a state that prides itself on its authenticity and uniqueness, you’d expect nothing less from its clay.

Also unique and authentic is a special event hosted by Watershed on the second Saturday of July each year. Its “Salad Days,” a celebration of local food and handcrafted ceramics, featuring 500 uniquely designed plates commissioned from a resident artist. The event is open to the public and draws enthusiastic crowds hungry for a taste of the local farm-to-table movement and a piece of artwork to take home.

The influence of Watershed on the ceramic arts community in the MidCoast and throughout Maine is profound. There are more than 35 ceramics studios with connections to Watershed – many of them run by homegrown artists and others by those who came from farther afield and were inspired to stay.

“The MidCoast area is filled with artists. There’s a large number of galleries and studios. We’re connected with artists who work in ceramics, but also painters, sculptors, photographers. It’s really a wonderful community.”

Calvin Tomkins Author, Art Critic

Watershed offers visitors the opportunity to experience the grounds, facilities and artists at work each Tuesday in July and August – as well as workshops and youth education programs. And, of course, you’re invited to all of it. But keep in mind that inspiration is waiting everywhere. Who knows? You might be walking on one of the Watershed paths and staring out into a field of wildflowers when you have a sudden idea that will change everything.

Portland, Maine

Running With Scissors

Imagine 50 artists all working under one roof, in forms and mediums as diverse as the personalities of the creators. Now imagine all these creative temperaments not only getting along but collaborating, bonding, encouraging, pushing, daring one another to do great art – with an occasional clink of champagne glasses.

Kate Anker not only imagined it, she made it happen. Cheers to Kate. And welcome to Running With Scissors (RWS), an artist studio collective in the industrial and creatively eclectic East Bayside neighborhood of Portland. As Director of RWS, Kate Anker has the responsibility of managing a business and mentoring and advocating for the dozens of artists who come to create in the 16,000 square foot co-op every day.

An artist herself, Kate can’t imagine a more rewarding way to spend her days, and nights. “It’s very powerful and it’s very intimate and it really is an honor to get to work among creative people.”

But it’s not exactly one big group hug. This is serious work, from a wide range of serious artists. The physical space bears that out. There’s a wood shop, a print shop, a classroom area, light tables, an exhibition hall. RWS is also home to the Bayside Clay Center and its kilns, worktables and wheels for up to a dozen ceramic artists. And then, there are the fifty individual artist studio spaces. If the words “hive of activity” come to mind, Kate Anker has already gone there.

“Cross pollination is something we talk about a lot here,” she explained. “We have leather workers collaborating with jewelers and ceramic artists. We have a diverse group of people in interests and ages who are able to network and help each other out – and come up with ideas and solutions to problems they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.”

Sounds like a model that could also work pretty well outside the walls of Running With Scissors. It can, and it does. In fact, many folks see the studio as a microcosm of what’s going on not only in the immediate area, but also in Greater Portland and for that matter, Maine.

Originally from the Midwest, Kate has both an outsider and insider perspective on the state. “Mainers have a kind of quality that they’re always willing to try something a little bit daring. That opens doors for unique things to happen. We see it in the small businesses that are having a resurgence here, in the artist colonies that are growing and developing. And in the really strong and independent way Maine is growing and creating its own identity.”

Speaking of artist colonies – the modern day incarnation – Running With Scissors, has plenty of company. There are numerous co-ops and group studios throughout Maine, each with its own identity and personality, but all inspired by the rising tide of the contemporary art movement in Maine. Many offer programs, classes and unique experiences for working artists and visitors.

That’s the big picture. But there’s also an endless series of smaller ones that happen every day in places like Running With Scissors. Kate Anker shared one in particular. It was the day one of her sculptors came into the studio, held up one of her sculptures and, with tears in her eyes, told Kate, “I made this because of you.”

Now it's time for that big group hug.

As a subscriber to Maine’s open door policy, Running With Scissors opens its own doors to visitors for a number of special events during the year.