Arlene has a long-time friend named Marie, another former Newton art teacher, who lives on Deer Isle in Maine most of the time. She was working in Tucson last winter, and maybe she’s there often in the winter. At any rate, it’s pretty close to Bar Harbor — the next big island south of Mount Desert Island — and we had arranged to visit on our way home.
Deer Isle is reached by a long, narrow, high suspension bridge. There’s a sign on it, “Trucks and busses maintain 500 foot vehicle spacing.” If you have a phobia about bridges, consider visiting it by boat.
Here are Arlene and Marie:
Years ago Marie had a house in Maynard MA (on the outskirts of the Boston suburbs), a condo in Portland ME, and a summer house near a lake around Orono ME. She let us use the condo a couple of times, notably for a week right after school let out in June. That’s when we learned our way around Portland, and has a lot to do with our loving Maine.
Marie is a potter. There’s a big kiln in the white shed on the right of the picture below and pots for sale with a typical Maine “put your money in the box” honor system in the hot dog stand building with the “open” flag. I guess the hot dog stand was really built as a hot dog stand. Marie said she saw it in the front yard of the builder’s house, decided it would work fine for pottery, asked him if he would deliver it, and bought it. It was about $2000, no more than a building the same size from Home Depot, but with much more personality.
Marie’s house is tiny and packed with stuff. Here’s the kitchen. The ceiling behind the basket and blue pot is the floor of a loft area with the bed, reached by a steep ladder.
Marie has more imagination than most two other people you’ve met. After all, it takes a fair bit of imagination to see the attraction of having a hot dog stand in your front yard for selling pottery. Here are a couple of cabinets she’s built from scrap orange crates and lath:
Marie took us to lunch in downtown Stonington, the Edgartown of Deer Isle, except that it’s more like a quarter the size of Vineyard Haven. But it’s the commercial center, anyway. Maybe the Stonington Opera House is the cultural center of the island, but more likely it’s Haystack.
From lunch Marie drove us to Haystack. It’s a beautiful place, but they’d rather have you visit it on the web than in person unless you’re enrolled in a workshop there. There’s a sign with words to the effect of “You’re welcome to walk down the main stairs to our flag deck and enjoy the view, but please don’t disturb the artists. Even looking into a studio can be distracting.” And there is indeed a magnificent view from the flag deck. Since Marie has worked at Haystack and knows half the people who live on the island, she felt free to take us into the dining hall and have a long talk with the cook, and to follow one of the artists into the fabric design studio. They were working with dye release printing and were very interested to talk about nature printing and dye release fish printing.