70 Main — Thomaston

Within the town of Thomaston, several large green spaces provide a sense of freshness along Route 1. Between the closely spaced blocks of the town a visitor can catch glimpses of their surprising breadth. Situated in one of these green expanses is 70 Main, a lovely (deconsecrated) turn-of-the-century Catholic church reborn as a summer gallery focused on contemporary voices. 

On New Year’s Day in 2016 the church was bought from the local Catholic church leadership by the renowned Cushing-based painter Ann Craven. “It was always going to be my studio in my mind’s eye, and I became obsessed with making sure I kept the integrity of the old and didn’t change too much,” she says of the church and its grounds. “But it seemed grand and needed to be used for other things that were more generous, because it really was built for people to come to and hang out.” With this socially oriented goal in mind, Craven’s New York City gallery, Karma—an East Village gallery working with Peter Halley, Thaddeus Mosley, and other art-world visionaries—is now using 70 Main as a summer gallery. With a focus on dialogic two-person exhibitions, Karma is enacting Craven’s spirit of generous connectivity. The space offers a harbor of light and silence along the busy central corridor of midcoast Maine.  

70 Main’s first show, Moons and Angels, was mounted by Karma in the summer of 2021. It featured a suite of Craven’s moon paintings alongside paintings by fellow Karma artist Reggie Burrows Hodges—a prominent figurative painter and former Maine resident working in a powerful post-impressionist idiom that plumbs the narrative depths of human relationships—paintings that were populated by angelic figures. Moons and Angels exemplified how a high, light-filled, once-holy space can imbue its resident artwork with a sense of magical unfolding. “The location’s history as a former church creates an environment of respect and quietude for art exhibitions, while presenting an alternative to the traditional white cube gallery,” says Karma copywriter Isaac Brosilow. Focusing on two-person exhibitions, 70 Main’s aim is to cultivate a sense of conversation between artworks, in a space that is related at once to the devotional and the communal. With a cultural audience already primed to inhabit the world of active contemplation offered by 70 Main and Karma, the gallery’s influence as a destination is in motion, ready to welcome summer pilgrims to its island of green.

The Parsonage — Searsport

Turning down Elm Street in Searsport, a seaside town just north of Belfast, one encounters a view of Sears- port Harbor opening into Penobscot Bay. Overlooking this view, in a barn attached to a 200-year-old house (a former parsonage, originally inhabited by Congregationalist pastor Reverend Stephen Thurston and his family) is the Parsonage Gallery. This small space is a haven for the work of both established Maine artists and emerging voices from Maine and around the world. 

Gallery owner–director Aaron Rosen is a curator, art collector, professor, and theologian with a deep background in ancient faith patterns and contemporary art. A former junior research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies with a PhD from Cambridge University, Rosen is also a writer who has published extensively on the theme of art and religion as interwoven social forces, and his effervescent approach to the life of the mind informs his openhearted curatorial practice. The Parsonage opened in June of 2022 and quickly established itself as a space that is welcoming to the community, intriguing for collectors, and an exciting new opportunity for artists with experimental, conceptual, or process-based projects.

Divided into two floors, the gallery’s tone shifts as one moves through its space. The peaceful, airy first floor allows a diverse variety of artwork to exist in conversation; the work in the gallery flows seamlessly into the collection of artworks in Rosen’s connected house, which he shares with his wife, Rev. Dr. Carolyn Rosen, an Episcopal priest at Saint Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Ellsworth, and their young son. Focusing on group shows in the winter and summer seasons allows a conversation to build between “brilliant Maine artists and many of the artists that I’ve worked with around the world,” Rosen explains, pointing out works by Grace DeGennaro, Grant Akiyama, Sarah Faragher, and others. “I want to show commonalities, explore tensions, and create dialogue that way.” 

Climbing a small spiral staircase from the bright and open first floor, visitors emerge into an upper level under a pitched roof and encounter projects like Michael Takeo Magruder’s video installation Sea Watch, which deals with the experience of migrant people and national borders.  This is the gallery’s project space, where processes of creative inquiry are encouraged to unfold away from institutional constraints. “The number one thing I ask artists is, ‘What have you not done before that you’ve always wanted to do? Is there some way we can make this happen, and do something experimental? How can I help?’” This fluidity of vision and trust in the artist’s process situates the Parsonage as an exciting and unusual new voice in Maine exhibitions, and under Rosen’s experienced, generous care, major projects that may otherwise be sidelined will have the opportunity to grow with intention and grace.

Dunes — Portland

At the base of Munjoy Hill in Portland is Dunes, a clean and airy new space run by Bard College alum and Mount Desert Island native Boru O’Brien O’Connell. An artist who recently returned to Maine from New York, O’Connell is motivated to offer a venue that is both carefully orchestrated and open-ended. Dunes presents an austere container for joyfully free-spirited work, such as Jamie Chan’s recently exhibited paintings, which fuse elegant, effortless figuration with scratchy layers built of watercolor and oil on unprimed surfaces. The artwork O’Connell gravitates toward hovers between research-driven conceptual work and the process-based work exemplified by Chan’s paintings and drawings.  

Behind the exhibition space, a curated selection of artists’ books, ephemera, and artist-produced garments are arranged near the desk, where O’Connell organizes the gallery’s upcoming exhibitions and events. These offerings underscore O’Connell’s dedication to creatively synthesizing various modes of artistic practice. “Having worked with a lot of nonprofits, and as an artist, I wanted to try to have a gallery model with practices in line with a nonprofit space,” he says. “There is a lot about the white cube model that I like, so I’m still doing that as well.” 

Like a nonprofit director, O’Connell prioritizes the vision of the artists he shows over potential sales, providing honoraria and the opportunity to produce limited-edition clothing and other small projects—affordable, compelling artist editions that easily fold into daily life. Unlike a nonprofit, however, running the space on his own gives him the freedom to reimagine and experiment with the format as the desire emerges. O’Connell hopes to integrate a film screening series, a suite of lectures, and other events into his calendar in the coming year. 

In July the space will host a group show featuring contributors to This Long Century, an online archive of writings and other musings by over 500 people in various creative fields. Artists in the show will include Sam Falls, Wilder Alison, and Mary Manning. A show with Carmen Winant, a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and Guggenheim fellow who has shown at the Sculpture Center and MoMA among other venues, is in the works for August. As an energetic center enlivening the heart of Portland’s East End, Dunes presents an exciting new personality in both its more traditional offerings and its promise of art-based social metamorphosis.