If you’re thinking island life is this bucolic ho-hum of tidal backwash: au contraire.
Summer in Maine means more people. It is, after all, Vacationland. Which makes it distracting as hell to keep up with your own
work. Everybody and their brother is riding idly by on tandem bikes, sporting the latest trend in sneakers. Meanwhile, life goes on here. Between ferry trips on the Island Romance, I was breathing pastel dust making scenes of island skies for the annual Color of Peaks show down at the “club”…the Trefethen Evergreen Improvement Association. Yeah, the summer sailing and tennis establishment of which we have never been members, but since it’s right down the hill I can feel a certain proprietary attachment to it.
While I was in the studio, in the shade, my daughter was going to Colonial Camp at the Peaks Island Fiber Arts Camp down by the library. It happens in a neighbor’s side yard, like a mini Sturbridge village. They made bread in a mud oven, churned butter, made strawberry jam, handsewed a colonial shirt, made a three-legged stool with a leather seat…oh, and everyday they made lunch like clover tea, leek soup, and buttermilk biscuits. Here she finishes up her basket on the last day.
We think we know busy, but the Colonialists were BUSY. I mused aloud whether my daughter would want to live back in that time. She replied, “for two weeks, not three.”
In other news, I attended my first department meeting with new department chair Alex Rheault and adjunct Mary Anne Lloyd.
It was a blast to hang with two brilliant educator/artists and concoct a stimulating brew of curriculum for the fall semester.
We worked in Alex’s kitchen on one of the steamiest days, but it was cool as cucumber there. As soon as I finish my syllabus, I can go back to my illustration assignments!
But first, another bonfire….another s’more. Never too busy for a pastel moonrise.
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