When Zu Bakery in Portland’s West End opens at 9 a.m., it’s the pastries, warm from the oven, that are laid out first. By 11, says baker and owner Barak Olins, the pastries should be sold out, and in their place will be warm breads, which are replaced by pizza in the afternoon. As each new item comes out, the goods on the counter shift down toward the register. By the end of a day, 5 p.m., all that’s left are the wines that compose the wine station and the empty Softset Ceramics serving trays, made by Barak’s wife, Mimi.

The bakery, like the home that the Olinses built, is open, airy, and bathed in natural light. It’s “sparse, not minimalist,” says Mimi. The floors are all that remain of the previous tenant; everything else is new. New but also old. Salvaged wood-framed windows divide the bakery counter from the workstations; wooden dough troughs let off a stringent, heady funk of yeast; and a shiny metal grain mill sits in a closet-sized room. A reclaimed marble and soapstone counter, sourced by Alice Dunn at Portland Architectural Salvage, abuts the sideboard. Two transoms let light pass through interior walls, and old wooden peels—used to slide bread into and out of an oven—are mounted over the wall of windows. At the back of the bakery’s central room are the oven and oven loader. It’s a space built to serve the movement of the people using it, and an aesthetic that reflects a respect for site-specific use of space. In this case, the use is making and selling traditional French-style pastries and breads, as well as Irish scones and Italian biscotti, to the community. The fine instruments and the product are decoration enough.

You can see the same concept at work in Mimi’s ceramics: plates, bowls, cups, and trays that look a little like heavy canvas. Also like fabric, most pieces are joined by a seam. Some are softly stippled to give the surface a polka-dot relief. All bear the mark of the hands that made them. The work projects a distinct voice, though it’s a voice that also yields to function. Alone, the Softset serving tray is elegant; staged with tangerines, it’s a white frame for the fruit’s form.

Function informed the design of the house that the Olinses built, too. The three-story just a few streets away from the bakery has a modern exterior. It’s square and tall, with a sloping roof. The inside is spacious, with high ceilings and wide windows. They wanted “clean, cleanable, and uncluttered,” says Mimi. The ground floor is an open blend of kitchen, mudroom, and sitting room that, in the warmer months, extends into the backyard through a wall of triple-pane sliders connected at the corner by one nearly floor-to-ceiling window. The wall of glass was a splurge. Otherwise, their choices were economical, energy efficient, and adherent to the requirements of LEED certification (without going for the actual certification, which is expensive and would matter more to them if they were hoping to sell).

On the second floor is the “catch-all” room: it’s Barak’s office, but it’s also where the grandparents and guests stay; there is exercise equipment in the corner, and two walnut bookshelves made by Barak are weighted by an array of books (Living Bread, The Village Baker, Six Thousand Years of Bread, etc.). Across the hall are the kids’ rooms—they have two teenagers: a daughter, Talia, 15, and son, Emile, who’s 13.

On the third floor is Mimi’s studio, where light pours in through a picture window and a sliding glass door leads to a deck. After a sabbatical from Waynflete in 2019, where she taught art with an emphasis on pottery, Mimi began building a body of work that would become Softset. In 2020 she chose not to return to teaching and to remain in the studio in order to focus on ceramics full-time. Recently she was commissioned by the owners of one of Portland’s newest and most talked-about restaurants, Twelve, to create a line of dish ware—over 400 pieces. The shelves of her third-floor studio are stacked with ceramics. A kiln rests in the corner. Three tables fill the center of the room, where Mimi works slabs into vases, bowls, cups, and trays.

Their bedroom, just off the studio, features 14-foot-tall ceilings that seem to expand the footprint of the relatively modest space, and a long slender window pulls in more light. From the exterior, the window aligns with the front door. That was Chris, the architect, says Mimi, who used the windows as a way of “developing a form.” Christopher Briley, a founding partner of Briburn architecture firm and a passive house consultant, worked from a design initially conceived by Mimi and Barak (the latter studied architecture as an undergrad). Briley also guided the couple through the choices necessary to build a house that uses electricity only. Beyond what’s pulled in by the city grid, the house doesn’t use fossil fuels. It’s heated by mini-splits and a wood pellet stove. The double-framed walls are filled with blown-in cellulose—old newspaper treated and compacted so no “critters” can get in, says Barak. The extra-thick walls increase the R-value: in the summer, the interior stays cooler, and in winter, it’s warmer.

This isn’t the first house the couple built together. When Zu Bakery was based in South Freeport, which is where it was for the 22 years preceding the opening of the Clark Street location early last November, Barak lived in a cabin built on his brother’s land. Barak and Mimi met through mutual friends. She invited him to a potluck because that’s what you do when you have a potluck, she says: you invite everyone, even people you just met. (She was just really nice, clarifies Barak.) He was in graduate school at MECA at the time. She was living in the East End, teaching art at a school in southern Maine. Together they built a house onto Barak’s cabin, which became the guest quarters. The experience taught them a lot about house building, and what they would and wouldn’t do again. Two decades later, it was time to move back to town. “Let’s pivot our center,” Mimi said, who was by then working at Waynflete. They started looking for places in Portland and had seen only one when a friend and developer told them he’d purchased a lot in the West End. They bought it from him that same day. The house took three years to build. In 2012 they moved in.

“We didn’t bring a designer in to fill it with fashionable furniture,” says Mimi. They wanted to see what the space needed. Ten years later, the tone they’ve set is comfortable and livable, clean but engaged—there’s evidence that a family lives here. The dogs, Clover and Kipper, sleep in woven baskets near the ground-floor sliders. Sheepskin rugs hang from chair backs and rest on the couches (“I have a sheepie problem,” says Mimi). Over the couch, two prints show the accoutrements of Le Cafe and Le Pain, respectively. Mimi’s ceramics from various eras line the kitchen counter. Recently, the couple purchased a large, dark-wood bookcase for the living room. It’s an evolving space, and the house, like the bakery and even the short walk between the two, reflects the couple’s consideration of how lives are more about movement and process than they are about the containers necessary for the things we collect while living them.

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The post Designed to Flow appeared first on The Maine Mag.

The post Maple Madness appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Keeping houseplants alive in the spring and summer is relatively easy if they get ample light and water. The winter, however, is an entirely different story—especially here in the Pine Tree State, where it gets dark at 3 p.m. and the seasonal chill sticks around longer than anyone would like. To learn how to best take care of our plant friends throughout the winter, we sat down with florist and designer John Sundling, founder and owner of Plant Office, a houseplant and dried goods store in Portland’s bustling East End.

After answering a florist’s help wanted ad in 2011, Sundling decided to combine his passion for floristry and design with his love of houseplants and his keen retail instincts. Today, he’s an active member of Portland’s thriving food and hospitality industry, designing floral arrangements for weddings, shops, and restaurants, in addition to overseeing Plant Office’s operations. Here are his top tips for caring for your houseplants during Maine’s long-lasting winter season.

Extra light is key

As a Mainer, you’ve experienced firsthand how early in the day the winter darkness descends. That’s why Sundling recommends extra light to keep your houseplants thriving, even if you’re just using simple fluorescent bulbs. Make your life easier by purchasing an automatic timer that controls the light, “so you don’t have to remember to turn the lights on and off every day.”

Humidity is your friend

Ever notice how dry your skin gets in winter? The same goes for houseplants. “Most indoor plants are from the tropics and need humidity year-round to thrive,” says Sundling, but “our homes in Maine dry out this time of year.” To ramp up humidity, try grouping your plants together in one area, spritz them with water once a day using a spray bottle, or place a small humidifier near plants that need extra moisture.

Stay vigilant for pests

“Pests can be more of a problem in the winter because plants have fewer resources to fend off attacks,” Sundling notes. Keeping an eye on your plants and sticking with a regular cleaning and pruning routine will help keep pests at bay. If you discover a common pest like spider mites, mealybugs, or aphids, be sure to “take care of it as soon as possible so it doesn’t get worse.” Begin by isolating the plant so the infestation doesn’t spread, then blast it with water to dislodge any insects. Spray it down with insecticidal soap to kill any pests that are left or dip a Q-tip in rubbing alcohol and remove stragglers one by one.

Avoid cold windows and doors

“Drafts are the enemy this time of year,” and can lead to root rot, “especially if a plant has recently been watered,” says Sundling. For that reason, consider moving your plants away from cold windows and doors that are frequently opened. The good news? In the winter, the sun remains lower in the sky, so light reaches further into your home. “That means your plants don’t have to be right in the window to get good light,” Sundling adds.

Beat the heat

Keep in mind that radiators and heating vents aren’t great for plants, either. “No plant wants to be baked to death,” jokes Sundling. Since radiators are often located near windows, it’s easy to avoid both the hot and the cold by placing your plants further into the room during the winter—just be sure to avoid smaller space heaters, too.

Don’t sweat vacation

Odds are you might be traveling at some point during the winter. Sundling suggests giving your plants a thorough watering before you leave but insists they should be fine while you’re gone. Plan to travel for more than seven to ten days? “You might want a friend to stop by and check on your plant buddies,” he says.

Lastly, we asked Sundling which houseplants tend to thrive in Maine—and you’ll never believe his response. “Plants like cacti and citrus do surprisingly well in Maine if you have enough light,” he said. “They don’t mind the cold, and unlike more tropical plants, they can live long with good care. I especially love when my lemon tree blossoms in my house in the winter,” he added.

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The post How to Keep Your Houseplants Alive This Winter appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Winterstick
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Oterra Designs
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$36 // oterradesigns.com

L.L.Bean
Goretex Pro Patroller Jacket
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Bridger Helmets
Highline Helmet
$199 // bridgerhelmets.com

Hyperlite Mountain Gear
Headwall 55
$449 // hyperlitemountaingear.com

Amalgam Skis
The Artifact
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The post The Best Ski Gear From Maine appeared first on The Maine Mag.

“Everything happened in this house,” says Jennifer Thayer. “The day we moved in, Greg proposed.” The house, a West End brownstone, is where the couple waited out the pandemic (they moved into the Pine Street property in late 2019). It’s also where they started their family (their daughter, Annie, is only weeks old). It seemed, at first, like an impossibility. A historic brownstone couldn’t possibly be in their price range, they thought. “Our realtor said, ‘You should check it out anyway; it’s actually a multi-unit,’” Jen remembers. “And the moment we walked in, we were in love.”

According to Greg, the building was a bit of a “diamond in the rough.” But, he says, “we could see that, underneath it all, it had good bones.” The previous owner had been renting out the upstairs unit on Airbnb, and an endless parade of temporary lodgers had taken their toll. It had been listed as a single unit, but because their realtor analyzed the listing details and realized it was in fact two units, the couple swiftly determined if they bought it, moved in upstairs, and rented out the bottom to a long-term tenant, maybe they could make the mortgage work. “The house had high ceilings, great mouldings, and fully exposed brick walls throughout. You could just see that it could be something great,” says Jen. Plus, there was the rooftop deck to consider. “It’s so rare to get a space like that in the middle of the city,” adds Greg.

So, they signed the papers, moved into the house, and began the slow process of renovation. Despite those lofty ceilings and that garden-ready deck, it did need work. Firstly, although Greg had noticed the “neat” features of the main living space—he admired the wide-plank floorboards and the old-fashioned cabinetry—he saw right away it was “odd.” Jen explains: “The kitchen space was large (approximately 450 square feet) but totally underutilized with a hidden spiral stairwell set into the middle of the room’s floor. This stairwell became the first object of our creativity. We needed to use it but we didn’t want to see it.” Naturally, the couple started their renovations there.

Inspired by images of marble waterfall countertops, Jen got an idea for a butcher-block waterfall island that would slide over the entry to the spiral staircase. It’s not quite a trap door, but it has a similar effect. Not only did this funky fix expand the usable portion of the kitchen, but it also visually connected the fragmented space. It wasn’t an easy task to complete. Before carpenter Rick Smith first visited, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to take the job, Jen recalls. “He was going to give us someone else’s name,” she says. “But he walked through and said, ‘Someone else is going to mess this up. The floors are all crooked.’ Out of nowhere, he said he’d do it.” Greg and Jen didn’t want seams in the wood, so Smith, using a block and tackle, hoisted the five-by-six-foot slab through the first and second floor stairwell and into the kitchen. To make the area look more cohesive, the couple brought the warm tones of cherrywood and brass to the forefront against a backdrop of blue and white cabinetry and gray marble, black soapstone, and gray quartzite. They brought in dining stools from Chilton Furniture to lend a bit of vintage charm to the room. “We both grew up in old or classic-style houses,” says Greg. “That’s why I love visiting Europe: the architecture. We both really appreciate the craft that goes into older houses.”

To honor the age of their new place (it was built in the 1860s) and the couple’s shared tastes, they opted not to knock down walls or go the open-concept route. “We really like that each room feels like its own distinct space,” says Jen. In the dining room, Smith was tasked with replicating the existing mouldings and extending them. The couple commissioned a local furniture maker, Alex Donatelle, to create a cherrywood sideboard by wainscotting the walls with wood paneling, and selected brass lamps to cast a soft glow that mimics candlelight. “Before, it was a perfectly nice room, but it fell flat,” says Greg. “I had this idea of trying to evoke the warmth and feeling of congeniality you find in old European ski chateaus.” There was one in particular that he had in mind: Hospiz Alm in St. Cristoph, Austria. Jen was on board, but she did have one major suggestion. “I had saved this color green on Pinterest maybe ten years ago,” she says. “I loved that green. I showed it to Greg, and he did, too.” After purchasing eight or nine samples of paint, they found a match: Verdigris by Benjamin Moore. “With so much in homebuilding, you try to find a close-enough match,” Greg reflects. “But with this green, in this room, I think we nailed it.”

They’re also happy with how the living room turned out, with a fresh coat of white paint, a warm Oriental rug, and a smattering of inherited antiques, including a cabinet made by Jen’s grandfather and a drafting table that once belonged to her grandmother. “She was an artist, and that piece is really special to me,” she says. “I use it as my desk.” Like her parents and grandparents before her, Jen tends to cart around antiques that she likes from house to house, waiting for the right space to place them. One, an old window with original glass panes, got installed in an interior wall to pull light from the east-facing living room into the dark hallway. “It now gets that nice morning light,” she says.

The bathroom closest to the couple’s bedroom was expanded and modernized, transformed into the most contemporary room in the house (“maybe even my favorite room,” Jen says). When the tiles she wanted for that space turned out to be too pricey, she DIYed a mosaic from seven different shapes and sizes. “It reminded me of the mosaic floors in Rome,” she says. The bathroom near the kitchen became a “space for a touch of humor,” according to Greg, thanks to a statement-making wallpaper mural sourced from Etsy. The guest room got a Murphy bed, and the roof deck got some updated decor, as did the lofted sleeping space at the tippy top of the house. “There’s still a lot we want to do,” says Jen. “We’re going to replace the vinyl windows with something more historically accurate. We’re doing it floor by floor because it’s expensive to meet the Historic Preservation Board’s requirements.” However, they don’t mind playing the long game. “For me, the story behind a home is important. I didn’t want to do it all at once, to snap my fingers and have the whole house done,” she says. “Your style changes as you change, which means the end result will be more interesting.” Judging by what we’ve seen so far, that seems a safe bet.

Read More:

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  Designed to Flow
• 
  A Historic West End Brownstone Gets a Classic Renovation
• 
  Inside an Interior Designer’s Renovated Barn-Turned-Home in Freeport
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  A Curator’s Residence in Rockland is a Museum Unto Itself
• 
  A Tale of Two Realtors

The post A Historic West End Brownstone Gets a Classic Renovation appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Tucked into a corner on the second floor of the Fort Andross Mill in Brunswick, Catherine Fisher’s light-filled studio is an airy, contemplative oasis. With large excerpts of text hung on the walls, a dressing screen arranged behind a pleasant yellow couch, and racks of garments made from linen, hemp, and organic cotton carefully organized throughout, the converted industrial space (reminiscent of New York City artist lofts) is the sort of place where one might expect a poet-cum-clothing maker to set up shop. “I don’t think of myself so much as a fashion designer,” says Fisher, who launched her eponymous business and clothing line in October of 2021. “I don’t feel it has so much to do with fashion as it does with a creative project that wants to connect with others through text and textile.” Indeed, each piece of clothing Fisher creates starts out as a poem, which is then translated into a carefully constructed garment meant to be “completed” by whoever wears it.

Fisher guides me through the studio, where she keeps a purposely small inventory of her clothing line to prevent unnecessary waste. A rack of samples holds versions of the 12 garments currently in Fisher’s repertoire, and she tells me about the poem behind each one. The composition that kicked off her entire collection is called “Half-Light,” which draws on shadow imagery to comment on how humans impact each other’s lives in both obvious and subtle ways. The top inspired by the poem reflects this sentiment with a semi-hidden panel in the back that depicts two overlapping silhouettes hand-painted by Fisher. Near the start of her poetry career, Fisher attended an event in Brooklyn, New York, called Universe In Verse, a yearly evening of poetry with over 1,000 people. In planning out the logistics of the trip, inspiration struck. “I just had this vision of a blouse,” she says, “that would be split up the back with a sort of curtain, and down the spine would be this sexy poem printed there. And, in my self- romanticization, I imagined that somebody would ask me about it, and then we would have a conversation, and I would have an interesting connection in the city.” Much like her poems taking on physical form through garments, when she returned from the trip, the idea for Catherine Fisher Clothing began to materialize.

Fisher has had numerous careers, including innkeeper, acupressurist, and personal historian, and considers herself to be a serial reinventor. The common elements in all these occupations, she says, were storytelling and connection. Her passion for sharing stories and forming bonds with others brought Fisher into the creative community of Portland, where for many years she was an eager and engaged audience member. When she was in her 40s, she met her mentor, Maine artist Bessie Moulton, who started pulling her into different projects and art shows. Fisher has harbored a great love of poetry from the time she was young, but as a self-described “very shy person,” she didn’t have the confidence to pursue it. When she turned 50, however, Fisher took a leap of faith and enrolled in a low-residency MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier to pursue her master’s degree in poetry.

When it comes to translating her poems into physical items of clothing, the materials that Fisher chooses are of the utmost importance. In traditional clothing design, the fabric used in a garment is dictated by its function (a stiffer material will be used for an article of work clothing like overalls, while a soft batting might be used in a jacket intended for cold-weather use). For Fisher, this principle is enhanced; the chosen material also reflects the meaning of the poem that the garment derives from. If the poem is about flight or the feeling of weightlessness, for example, the garment will be made from a light, airy material. Fisher also frequently incorporates specific items into each piece to get to the essence of the poem, such as the hand-painted panel in the Junco top, which depicts tiny bird tracks; the cloth book that comes in the pocket of the In Libris tunic; and the custom-made paintbrush that accompanies the Brush duster jacket.

In addition to creating wearable pieces of art, Fisher’s top priorities for her business are to be as sustainable and ethical as possible while also focusing on giving back. The fabrics and materials that she chooses, such as linen from a 100-year-old Irish company called Baird McNutt and buttons made from corozo nuts, are sustainably sourced and produced. Fisher sends her mock-ups in to be professionally sewn and produced as close to home as possible, working with a family-run company in Scarborough called Golden Thread Designs. Plus, a portion of each purchase goes to supporting both international and local nonprofits that align with the nature of the item (for example, a portion of proceeds from the Junco top support the American Bird Conservancy and the Maine Audubon Society).

When asked why she chooses to work in a state not known for a robust fashion industry, Fisher assures me the community and the level of support in Maine are unparalleled. As for future collections, she has a few new pieces in the works but doesn’t intend to produce a new line every season. Instead, she wants to plan collaborations with other Maine artists and hold events like fashion shows in her studio that will bring people together. “Poetry is an effort towards connection,” says Fisher. “I could write poems and put them in a book. Or I could make garments. But the fact that each piece of clothing I create is imbued with an idea or a question that I hope might resonate with whoever wears the garment makes a connection where there might not typically be one.”

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The post This Sustainable Clothing Collection Translates Poems into Physical Garments appeared first on The Maine Mag.

This story begins with a rundown cottage on a Maine island in the 1980s. On January 1, 1984, interior designer and painter Heidi Gerquest moved to Maine in the midst of a snowstorm. Gerquest, who hails from a family of artists, was 22 at the time. She had graduated from Hamilton College with a degree in art and was working as a painter specializing in custom wall motifs with big, exaggerated designs. “They might actually be back in style today,” she says with a laugh. Although the wall-painting business was paying the bills, she was ready for a bigger challenge in her new state.

With the help of her parents, Gerquest bought a deserted cottage on Peaks Island to test her mettle. “I really wanted to do a whole house,” she says. “I bought the cottage and fixed it up with the idea that I wasn’t going to spend more than 50 bucks on any one piece of furniture.” Along with several friends, Gerquest transformed the abandoned structure into an enviable residence, which she then entered into Metropolitan Home’s “Home of the Year” competition. The house not only won one of the competition’s categories but went on to be featured in numerous design-focused publications, pushing Gerquest into the national spotlight. “I just had a career all of a sudden,” she says, “without ever really intending to be an interior designer.”

Nearly 40 years later, Gerquest, who now lives in Freeport, has worked on projects around the world for clients of all backgrounds. The buzz around that first project on Peaks helped her to land big clients in New York City while still living in Maine, where she was raising her family and continuing to paint, selling her work at Greenhut Galleries in Portland and Leighton Gallery in Blue Hill, among others. During that time, Gerquest’s parents followed her from Riverside, Connecticut, and settled in Freeport, where in 1999 they built a large barn to serve as both a garage and a workshop for Gerquest’s father, who liked to restore wooden boats. When her parents decided to sell the barn in 2018, Gerquest and her partner, chef Johnny Walker, who has worked at venerable Portland establishments Local 188, Sonny’s, and Salvage BBQ, took on the project. The couple sold their home in South Freeport Village and moved into the building, which was considerably smaller than they were used to. “The downstairs was this big, raw cement space that my dad had used as his workshop. No finishing, no heat,” says Gerquest. “Upstairs was a little studio apartment that they rented out.”

The couple immediately began renovating the building, putting in an addition with a guest bedroom, a bathroom, and a mudroom. The main room, which had been the workshop, became a joint living room, dining room, and kitchen. They covered the cement floors, installed a gas fireplace, and thanks to Walker’s passion for cooking, equipped the kitchen for professional meal preparation. The upstairs apartment became the main bedroom, which also houses Gerquest’s office and the couple’s exercise bike. When COVID hit in early 2020, Walker, who was ready for a new project, retired from the restaurant business and threw himself into transforming the property’s outdoor space. With the help of Gerquest’s daughter, who was living with the couple for the first few months of the pandemic, Walker turned the dirt lot into lawn and gardens, accessible from the home through two large French doors that open onto a composite cement patio.

During the renovation, Gerquest and Walker decided to leave the transom over the barn doors but replace all the other windows. They kept the original structure’s height, accentuated by a large pulley hanging from a steel beam in the ceiling that slides back and forth, which Gerquest’s father had used to lift heavy objects. “We keep meaning to hang a mobile from it, or something cool like a chair,” she says. “But then we decided that our kids, and friends who have kids that are pretty wild, might go right through the window on the chair if they have too much fun flying back and forth!”

The focal point of the space became the barn doors, which look the same from the outside but no longer function. Instead, they are covered in white shiplap and now serve as a gallery space in the large main room of the home. “When I design somebody’s house,” says Gerquest, “if the client doesn’t have a starting place in their own mind, I’ll ask them to find an object that they feel attached to or that they feel reflects them, and we build from there. In my case, the starting point of this home was my art collection as a whole.” The wall, which measures roughly 10 by 12 feet, is filled with artwork from Gerquest’s friends and family. Included in the mix are a sculpture by her grandmother, a painting by her aunt, and works by now-famous artists like Edith Varian Cockroft (who studied painting in France under Matisse) that her grandfather, a ceramicist and an engineer by trade, received while building kilns for members of an artists’ community in Sloatsberg, New York, in the 1930s. Pieces by friends are also nestled into the mix, including photography by Gerquest’s first husband, Tonee Harbert, and works by his partner, Shoshanna White, both of whom Gerquest considers to be dear friends.

For Gerquest, her latest home is a reflection of her community in Maine. In addition to the artwork that represents her friends and family, the majority of the work on the home itself was also done by friends, down to the electrical wiring. While Gerquest and Walker didn’t intend to wind up in Freeport, since the majority of their friends are up the coast or in Portland, the couple is happy to stay put for now. Looking to the future, Gerquest and Walker have started a joint design project on a home near Brittany, France. Spending three months on, three months off between Maine and Europe, the couple is slowly working on renovations of this passion project. The ultimate goal is to retire spending half the year in France and, of course, half the year in Maine.

Read More:

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  Maple Madness
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  How to Keep Your Houseplants Alive This Winter
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• 
  A Historic West End Brownstone Gets a Classic Renovation

The post Inside an Interior Designer’s Renovated Barn-Turned-Home in Freeport appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Sea Bags x Flowfold

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LooHoo Wool Dryer Balls

Pure and Simple Gift Box
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Sea Salt + Silver

Monet Necklace
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Tom’s of Maine

Fluoride Free Antiplaque + Whitening Toothpaste
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Grandy Organics

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Tide and Isle Co.

Reed Diffuser
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Skordo

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$7 // skordo.com

READ MORE:

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  Maple Madness
• 
  How to Keep Your Houseplants Alive This Winter
• 
  The Best Ski Gear From Maine
• 
  A Historic West End Brownstone Gets a Classic Renovation

The post Seven Eco-Conscious, Maine-Made Products appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Rogue Wear

Small Hybrid Backpack
Price available upon request / roguewear.com

Brant & Cochran

Allagash Cruiser
$299 / bnctools.com

L.L.Bean

Flannel Lined Camp Sleeping Bag, 20°
$139 / llbean.com

Flannel Camp Pillow
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Maine Fly Company

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Sterling Rope

Velocity 9.8mm XEROS Rope
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Good To-Go

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Read More:

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  Designed to Flow
• 
  Maple Madness
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  How to Keep Your Houseplants Alive This Winter
• 
  The Best Ski Gear From Maine
• 
  A Historic West End Brownstone Gets a Classic Renovation

The post Ready to Rough It appeared first on The Maine Mag.

Rockland’s North End, a few blocks up from the ocean, is a neighborhood of shady trees, meandering gardens, and beautiful, idiosyncratic older houses. Nestled among these are a few remarkable examples of contemporary architecture, including artist and curator Anna Queen’s home and studio, which was completed in late 2020. The site once contained a structurally unsound antique house that held promise as a platform for something remarkable. “I wanted a space that reflected my work,” Queen says. We are in her pristine kitchen, which at the moment is graced by her two large striped cats, Basil and Dorian, and her slender brindled dog, Ernest. “It was important to me that everything be very minimal, with clean lines, open, and with good light—and having material be at the forefront.”

Queen, the curator of Dowling Walsh Gallery in downtown Rockland, maintains an independent curatorial practice and is a sculptor with a background in ceramics. Her art involves the use of readymade objects—such as a box of confectioners’ sugar and a Lucite-framed packing slip for a Roald Dahl book— presented cleanly and precisely to the viewer for a sense of connection, immediacy, and humor. These qualities are also present in her home, which combines a studio with living areas on three levels. New York architect Dimitri Brand—a friend of Queen’s since they attended art school together at the Maryland Institute College of Art—worked on the design with Queen, and local builder Casey Hufnagel saw the building process through to completion.

As in Queen’s sculptural practice, material specificity is the dominant factor in her home. The exterior, which has no street-facing windows but lets in abundant light from all other directions, is clad in pale metal, emphasizing its Modernist geometry and mirroring the landscape-focused geometric aesthetic of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts campus in Deer Isle. Inside, a glass door leads to the bright kitchen, which in turn opens into the artist’s studio. Translucent glass doors can close the kitchen and studio off from one another when more division is needed, and a sliding garage door to the backyard converts the studio into a semi-outdoor space in warmer months. The studio is lit with rosy, nebulous light from LEDs hidden in the slats of the wooden ceiling; the walls feature a recessed space at floor level in the place of trim board, visually lifting the height and emphasizing the gallery-like nature of the space. Cement floors are heated with hot water, which is the home’s only heat source, utilizing a heat recovery system for air exchange. Up a set of stairs (featuring a grid railing that echoes the grid-like tile in the quasi-futurist bathroom) is a living area with a step up to a sleeping area, and, accessible via a small ladder, an additional nook that looks out from below the high, peaked ceiling. Bright white walls move light through the space, filtering it from large windows and a tunnel-like skylight, which contains LEDs that continue its illumination at night. The natural linear wood patterns of the plywood are visible, and large, lush houseplants break up the regularity of the lines. “I like to shift the material, repeat it, and repeat it again,” Queen says.

Architect Dimitri Brand echoes Queen’s perceptive relationship to materials. “The house was conceived as orbiting around art making, with three primary goals: to be adaptable, minimal, and livable,” he says. “The space allows the art and objects in it to be the foreground, while also utilizing nonprecious materials that allow the house to be lived in.” Another important consideration in the home’s construction was affordability and sustainability. “As an all-electric house, it takes advantage of the fact that 79 percent of Maine’s electric generation comes from renewable sources and will only continue to get greener as the overall grid does,” says Brand.

The house’s location in Rockland connects it to the growing vibrancy of the midcoast arts community, being situated within walking distance to the Center for Maine Contemporary Art; the Farnsworth Museum; the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation (which is in the planning stages of expanding into a new and improved space); Interloc Projects; the Caldbeck Gallery; and of course, Dowling Walsh Gallery. Fresh aspects of community continue to unfurl and grow in the neighborhood, with new venues like the distillery Luce Spirits and various pop-up events.

Queen’s own art collection is also on a trajectory of growth as she acclimates to her studio. By prioritizing a blank space where most of the color and energy are concentrated in the artwork the house contains, Queen’s personal curatorial vision is given the chance to inhabit the interior with radiant strength. On the high wall of the open stairwell, Reggie Burrows Hodges’s 2019 painting Foundation has a sensual palette of pale, luminous colors against a canvas gessoed in black, depicting a man in a formal suit with a mysterious woman moving into the frame. The painting sets a tone of narrative complexity and powerful formal choices that continues throughout the house’s collection of contemporary artwork. Point of View Inn, a 2019 painting by Tessa Greene O’Brien, continues the sense of lurking magic in a composition that revolves around the shadowy, glimmering patterns in a swimming pool. Other artworks, by Sam Finkelstein, Jamie Gray Williams, Justine Kablack, Robert Hamilton, and Baxter Koziol, among others, move across the walls and up through the house’s levels to imbue the minimalist interior with narrative and meaning.

Looking ahead to future projects, Queen envisions finding new ways to share the powerful simplicity epitomized in her house—an incredibly productive container for the creative mind—with her community. Dreaming of creating a future multiuse flux space in the midcoast that draws artists and other intellectually motivated people to the area, she also posits the question of how affordable housing, access, and equity can become part of this growing conversation. The clarity and generosity of Queen’s home, studio work, and curatorial practice lead the way toward a future in which a white cube can hold both dynamic color and narrative, and barriers are lowered for creative people from all backgrounds, in Rockland and beyond.

Read More:

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  Designed to Flow
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  A Historic West End Brownstone Gets a Classic Renovation
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  Inside an Interior Designer’s Renovated Barn-Turned-Home in Freeport
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  A Curator’s Residence in Rockland is a Museum Unto Itself
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  A Tale of Two Realtors

The post A Curator’s Residence in Rockland is a Museum Unto Itself appeared first on The Maine Mag.