Small projects, Shannon Richards admits, are “really effing hard.” After two decades in the building business, Richards was well aware of the challenges she’d face by choosing to focus her energy in this sector. “In 2018, I came up with … Continue reading →

Yuri Kobayashi needs to see the seasons. It’s part of why the artist lives in midcoast Maine. Here, she can witness the “up and down” of the temperatures as well as the rising and falling of a mountainous landscape. After … Continue reading →

Printmaker Katharine Watson lives on the outskirts of Portland in a brightly painted Victorian house surrounded by flowers. There’s bushy lavender, drowsy peonies, and fragrant roses climbing up and down a trellis. “I didn’t really think about it until someone … Continue reading →

A successful park or garden tells you how to use it, not through signs or maps (though those can help, too) but through its design. It offers paths for walking, benches for admiring vistas and viewsheds, and clearings for picnics … Continue reading →

Jim Nutting lets me hold his tarantula. I’m not here to hold an arachnid, though; I’m here to talk to him about his stained-glass artworks. I knew, before I drove up to Lisbon Falls to meet Nutting, that he has … Continue reading →

For the past decade, I’ve admired Lauren Fensterstock’s work from a museum- approved distance. I can remember the first time I saw her distinctively baroque, fantastically textured sculptures on view at the Portland Museum of Art. Inside the staid halls, … Continue reading →

The weaver has just returned from Europe. It was her first time, she explains somewhat giddily—a belated honeymoon. The couple packed five countries into three weeks, and now they’re about to move house too. But Lizz Berry still has time … Continue reading →

When Juliet Karelsen was a little girl, she got a dollhouse. This isn’t surprising—most children play with dolls—but Karelsen’s miniature world would play an outsized role in her life. Her mother, an actress, started the project when, during her downtime, … Continue reading →

Terrarium isn’t like other bars, and Rob Sinnott isn’t like other bartenders. While many high-end cocktail establishments use foraged ingredients in their libations, and while many of Portland’s restaurants draw inspiration from our natural surroundings, Rob’s Tupperware of wild greenery … Continue reading →

There’s an old cemetery near my home in Buxton that I like to visit in the fall, when the big maple turns a lively red and the thick-trunked oak sheds its last acorns. I like to wander among the rows … Continue reading →