Paper, Print and Book Arts Retreat @ Monson Arts

June 6 – 9, 2024

Maine Crafts Association is pleased to collaborate with Monson Arts for a third year to present an immersive four-day retreat for ten experienced and emerging artists in the fields of Paper, Printmaking, and Book Arts. Located on the Monson Arts campus in beautiful Monson, Maine, this retreat offers a unique opportunity to delve into the creative process and forge connections with like-minded makers and professional peers.

From June 6 – 9, 2024, artists will engage in a full four day itinerary guided by a lead presenter. The agenda will include individual presentations and moderated discussions with guest speakers, as well as dedicated studio time in Monson Art’s expansive workspaces. The retreat aims to create a supportive environment where artists can exchange ideas, collaborate on projects, and receive constructive feedback, ultimately empowering them to push the boundaries of their artistic practice and embark on new creative journeys. Whether honing existing skills or venturing into uncharted territory, participants will emerge from the retreat with fresh perspectives, inspiration for future work, and lasting community connections. Thanks to the generous support of Monson Arts and The Betterment Fund, participants receive free housing, meals, and a $200 travel stipend.

Presenters

“Elusive (Aletris farinosa and lycaeides melissa samuelis)”by Rebecca Goodale, edition of five, 2015

Rebecca Goodale

Lead Artist & Presenter

Rebecca Goodale has been creating innovative and sublimely made artist’s books for many years and frequently does collaborative work with other artists as well as public art installations. In addition to being artistically active, she was the founding program coordinator for the Kate Cheney Chappell ‘83 Center for Book Arts at the University of Southern Maine, where she inspired artists at all levels. She continues to teach design and book arts for various institutions and exhibits her work both locally and internationally.

Rebecca’s books can be found in many institutional collections, including the Bowdoin College Library; the Maine Women Writers Collection at UNE; Herron Art Library; Library of Congress; Portland Museum of Art, ME; State Art Museum of Hawai’i; the Boston Athenaeum; the Children’s Museum in Seoul, Korea; and the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art,WA.

In 2015 she received the Maine Craft Artist Award from the Maine Crafts Association. Other awards she has received include a New Forms Regional Initiative Grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts and a Mellon Grant for the Humanities at Bates College. In 1995 she was a Resident Scholar for the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.

Rebecca has been creating a series of artist’s books about Maine’s rare plants and animals for the past twenty years and occasionally she is distracted by more common species like the spiders and birds in her own backyard. Her intention is not to become a scientific illustrator; instead, she wants to inspire sensitivity for these rare flora and fauna by using her background in book arts and textile design to interpret color, pattern, rhythm, and transition.

www.rebeccagoodale.com

Paper, Print and Book Arts Retreat Participants: Invitational Process

Nominations are currently being accepted for the 2024 session:

The Maine Crafts Association implements a process to identify and invite Maine-based paper, print and book artists through nominations and self-nominations. A final group of participants will represent various career points, gender, sexual orientation, race, age, type of work, and other identifiers.

Please submit your nominations by March 27, 2024 at 11:59pm. Selected applicants will be notified in early April 2024.

Questions? Please contact info@mainecrafts.org or call (207)205-0791

Panelists

Panelist 1

Panelist 2

Retreat Participants

Veronica A Perez

Veronica perez creates intensely personal sculptures through community interaction using braided and woven. hair and textiles – while ruminating on identity, interdependency, and representation.

As a visual artist that is also a social and cultural worker, Perez uses these frames of reference to situate their work deep within intimate stories and experiences – and share them with a wider audience through sculpture and story.

www.veronicaaperez.com

Judith Daniels

Judith M. Daniels has been an artist for many years, always cycling between fine art and craft. For the past ten years she has concentrated on fiber or textile art which happily for her is breaking the boundaries between those two ways of categorizing creative expression. She finds working in textiles and paper a nourishing experience and finds much pleasure in the tactile qualities and surface textures of the materials that she uses. Primarily a felt maker, she is also an embroiderer, hand dyer and silk painter and has become captivated by the Korean paper technique called “Joomchi”.

www.judithmdaniels.com

Judith Daniels

Lisa Ferreira Jones

Lisa grew up in Maine and received a BFA in Metalsmithing and Jewelry Making from Maine College of Art in 2002. Since being introduced to papermaking at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 2000, Lisa has skillfully combined metal, wood, and her own handmade papers to form one of a kind creations. Lisa’s work can now be found in commercial installations, retail galleries as well as at her studio in Falmouth, Maine.

www.embergrove.com

Katherine Ferrier

Katherine Ferrier is a queer poet, dancer, textile artist, teacher, and community organizer based in Rockland, Maine. Her research grows out of a deep practice of paying poetic attention to the world, and lives in the intersecting communities of movers, makers, writers and activists.

www.katherineferrier.net

Since 2018, Katherine has directed the Medomak Fiberarts Retreat in Washington, ME, a nationally recognized gathering of fiber artists from around the world, where she teaches improvisational patchwork, slow stitching, wet felting, and writing for makers. Her work has been featured in Uppercase Magazine, The Knot, Contact Quarterly, and several poetry anthologies, including A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis, and a self-published collection of photographs and poems about making, called Thread Says Stay. She is currently studying with weaver Sarah Haskell, as part of Maine Craft Association’s Craft Apprenticeship Program, and has recently shown her textile work at Speedwell Projects in Portland, The Ice House Gallery on North Haven, and The Buoy Gallery in Kittery. Katherine regularly teaches and performs throughout the US and abroad, and believes in patchwork as the radical practice of being patient, saying yes, and making space for everyone at the table.

Sarah Haskell

Sarah Haskell weaves and embroiders with naturally dyed and often handspun thread, illustrating stories of love, loss and longing. Exploring a personal yet universal narrative, she examines the heartache of the ephemeral, the tender beauty of the natural world and the astonishing gift of being human.

www.sarahhaskell.com

Sarah Haskell
The Great Unwinding, Sarah Haskell
Well Used, Well Loved (Detail), Sarah Haskell

Sara Hotchkiss

Sara Hotchkiss was 10 when she first set eyes on a loom, and she knew right away that she wanted to be a weaver. She received her first formal instruction in weaving in college and has been steadily creating fabrics in the 50 years since. Sara now makes rugs, wall hangings, and pillows in a range of patterns and palettes inspired by the gardens of her Waldoboro home. Her works have been shown in galleries and museums throughout New England and in New York’s American Craft Museum.

www.sarahotchkiss.com

Emi Ito

Emi Ito works in a freestyle Japanese weaving technique known as Saori. The Saori aesthetic encourages weavers to improvise designs and materials, rather than weave a decided pattern. Emi uses both colorful yarns and earthy hand-dyed fibers in her work and considers the process of weaving to be as much a part of the art as the finished textile.

www.emiito.com

Bukola Koiki

Bukola Koiki is a Nigeria-American conceptual fiber artist who makes
work in response to the liminal space of the immigrant experience, colonialism and Yoruba cultural ontology with a focus on research, materials as metaphor and fearless experimentation. Koiki received her MFA in Applied Craft + Design from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and in 2023, she was awarded a United States Artists Fellowship. She currently lives and works in Maine.

www.bukolakoiki.com

Berri Kramer

Berri Kramer grew up in Lincoln, Massachusetts and spent as many hours as she could in the studios at DeCordova Museum. She earned a BFA in Design and Crafts from Kent State University and a Masters in Fiber from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.

www.berrikramer.com

As a textile artist she explored color, pattern, rhythm and construction. She worked for 25 years designing for Better Homes and Gardens. Bringing that background with her to paint, encaustic and textiles, she utilizes her experience to voice a new layer of thought. Berri was the founder and President of Heartwood College of Art.

“ My work reflects the blocks of color and patterns that surround all of us everyday. I am fascinated by the tools and tracks that are unintentionally left behind. …a fiber remnant, a letter or a feather. The exercise in choosing from endless imagery and palettes, and editing it to distill the message, has become my practice in every medium. Often the scale of these snippets is exaggerated or reduced to take the viewer away from the “assumed.” The simplest forms can often tell the greatest story.”

“If you chase two rabbits at the same time, you will lose them both.”
-Russian Proverb

Ashley Page

Ashley Page is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Portland, ME. Her practice is a vessel to present diverse representation and visibility to the African American image, intellect, and spirit. Her objects are a hybridization of traditional craft processes and spatial practice to reinterpret the human body and explore various modes of portraiture.

www.ashleypagestudio.com

Halley Phillips

Halley was born and raised in Maine, and spending a lot of time outside as a child, was always inspired by the colors, textures, and landscapes that nature has to offer. Halley creates hand-made wall weavings, using mainly natural and recycled materials including: wool, silks, recycled cotton and silk, angora, etc. Halley also spins and dyes many of the fibers and yarns included in her pieces.

www.weavingsbyhalley.com

Program Details

In keeping with its mission to nurture and celebrate Maine’s vibrant arts community, Maine Crafts Association is proud to partner with Monson Arts to offer this enriching retreat experience. By investing in the creative development of Maine artists and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation, we aim to cultivate a dynamic and resilient arts ecosystem that enriches the lives of artists and forges meaningful connections.

Monson Arts’ mission is to provide time and space for creative work. An initiative of Maine’s Libra Foundation, Monson Arts was created to spur economic development in Piscataquis County and began programming in 2018. Home to renowned painters, furniture manufacturing and slate quarrying, the town of Monson has a longstanding historical connection to the innovative craftsmanship of Maine. Monson Arts will foster this spirit of ingenuity by working with Maine Crafts Association to bring experienced and emerging craft artists to Monson, both to provide an opportunity for these makers to experiment and work together and also connect with Monson Arts to discuss ways we can help support their work in the region and the state.

Program Goals

  • To provide a retreat where makers can develop new ideas.
  • To foster cooperation and communication between generations of makers.
  • To help Monson Arts in developing initiatives that promote studio-based craft work in the region.

Ten artists ranging from emerging to experienced who work in the fields of paper, print, and book arts will be selected to come for an intensive four-day retreat session at Monson Arts. Housing, meals, and studio space will be provided for free.

Specific activities will include:

  • Public presentations by all of the makers.
  • Uninterrupted studio time.
  • Guided discussions with Maine Crafts Association and Monson Arts staff to talk about challenges and opportunities in the field.
  • Presentations by other experts, industry leaders, makers and historians.

Our intent is to engage a diverse group of makers in activities that will promote creative growth. This will be done through uninterrupted time to use Monson Arts facilities to develop ideas for new work. We connect artists with Monson Arts and Maine Crafts Association to both promote the region and to help our organization understand the needs of print, paper and book artists in Maine.

MCA has proudly collaborated with Monson Arts for three years. Past retreats:

Weekend Itinerary

June 6 – 9, 2024

Arrival: Monson Arts Tenney House
47 Tenney Hill Rd, Monson Maine 04464

Thursday June 6th
12:00 – 3pm Arrival & Check in at Tenney House
Lunch – This is the only meal not provided by Monson, please pack a lunch or visit the Monson general store for a great meal!
4:00 Studio tour, intros
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Welcome to Monson, Evening Presentations 5 minutes each

Friday June 7th
7:00 Morning Walk (meet @ Tenney House)
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Rebecca Goodale Presentation @ Tenney House
10:00 Studio time with Rebecca Goodale
12:00 Lunch
2:30 Studio time with Rebecca Goodale
5:30 Dinner
6:30 Evening Program /// Discussion with Panelists @ Tenney House

Saturday June 8th
7:00 Morning Walk (meet @ Tenney House)
8:00 Breakfast
9:00  Studio time with Rebecca Goodale
12:00 Lunch
1:00  Studio time with Rebecca Goodale
5:30 Dinner
6:30 Evening Program /// Moderated Discussion with Chantal Harris, Monson Arts Director (meet @ Tenney House)

Sunday June 9th
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Studio, finish-up, clean-up
11:00 Lunch with last words
12:00 Departure

Monson Arts

Monson Arts is a residency and workshop program in Monson, Maine. An initiative of Maine’s Libra Foundation, Monson Arts began programming in 2018. It was started as a way to spur economic development in Piscataquis County. Monson, the last town before the 100 Mile Wilderness on the Appalachian Trail, was the home of photographer Berenice Abbott, painter Carl Sprinchorn, and was a center for slate quarrying and furniture making.

Monson Arts’ mission is to provide time and space for creative work. This is done through a combination of residencies, workshops, artist retreats, educational initiatives, community programs, and exhibitions.