Grab ‘em while you can – April 2010

by Susan Grisanti Kelley

It’s not the first time I’m recalling an evening spent at the Artist Studio Building in Portland last year. So lasting was the impression that evening made, I refer to it again and again. Each of the artists cleaned and polished up their spaces and displayed their art for all to enjoy. This night was on the eve of a big storm, and the winds that preceded it were already swirling, howling around the building and in through open windows—rattling the walls and floors of three stories filled with artists and art lovers, music, beer, and lively conversation. The place was bursting at the seams with fresh talent.

Sage Lewis spoke briefly—welcoming us to the space in her dual role as hostess and as a curator at the Portland Museum of Art, as well as an artist herself with an open studio. Her message to the group: Buy art. Buy the art of local artists while they are making it. At the PMA she is surrounded by the work of revered Maine artists—those whose works are now beyond reach for most of our collections. But she noted that those artists were once working artists, too, who hoped to be noticed for their craft and to sell their work.

I’d like to follow this line of inspiration and encourage you to do the same. On the following 20 pages you will find a selection of Maine’s artists—a mix of older and younger, established and emerging, abstract and representational, pricey and inexpensive, in a variety of media. I hope that you will be inspired to add their work to your collection.