LET ME PAINT A THANK-YOU ON MY PALM

CEE & SHE

cee and she is a collaboration between two artists creating one of a kind sculptural vessels and small batch wares: Ashley O’Brion and Christina Wnek built successful careers in creative fields, as a graphic designer and commercial photographer respectively.

Exhilarated by their work, but longing for a purer creative expression, they followed their shared intuition together—first to pottery classes, then to their own studio. Clay shaped their curiosity through its innate sense of play and earthly beauty. cee and she was born out of the joy of connection—a space to explore newfound depths within themselves and with the world.

GABRIELLA D’ITALIA

Gabriella D’Italia is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who believes that our true stories lie at the horizon between spirit and body, vision and the material world.

As an internationally-exhibited, award-winning fine artist, Gabriella’s work investigates material structures under the assumption that they function as cognitive and moral evidence. She is best known for her highly inquisitive, pro-craft, feminist fiber works and multimedia collage. Visually, Gabriella combines imagery in unexpected ways and with elaborate specificity. In doing so, she strives to unify complex identities based on the truth of material experience rather than inherited narratives, emotions, expectations, and cultural norms. A marriage of eclectic and warm minimalism, Gabriella’s works emphasize harmonious energy, meaningful patterns, and a new-feminist conception of storytelling based largely on intimacy with everyday things and materials. Gabriella’s relationship with the materials of everyday living is explored throughout her book, Getting Dressed In The Dark, an artist’s memoir that traces her journey home after personal crisis. Her work has been exhibited at biennials, salons, embassies, and galleries across the world.

Gabriella grew up in Morristown, NJ. After receiving her BA in Philosophy and the History of Science and Mathematics through the Great Books program at St. John’s College, she moved to Boston and then Maine, where for two decades she immersed herself in costume design, quilting, leadership roles in nationally recognized fine craft organizations, and teaching courses on creativity. She holds an MFA in Intermedia from the University of Maine, Orono.

Gabriella lives and works between Mt. Tabor, New Jersey and New York City with artist C. W. Crawford, son Luciano Dove, and their four dogs.

BETHANY ENGSTROM

Bethany Engstrom is an artist, curator, and educator living and working in Belfast, Maine. She received a BA in Art History 2002, her MFA in Intermedia in 2011 and Interdisciplinary PhD in Intermedial Collaborative Practices in 2014, each from the University of Maine.

Engstrom’s recent work utilizes objects, installation, audio, and video, focusing on how these materials can express ideas of time, environment, labor/work, and motherhood. She has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation and Mildred’s Lane. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island, Cove Street Arts in Portland, Maine, Asymmetrick Arts and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine, Waterfall Arts in Belfast, Maine and the University of Maine. She is an adjunct Assistant Professor in Intermedia at UMaine, a part time Lecturer in Visual Arts at the University of Maine Augusta. Formerly Associate Curator at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Engstrom has an active independent curatorial practice, working collectively with artists to create engaging shared environments.

JESSICA GANDOLF

Jessica Gandolf was born in New York City. She has lived in Portland, Maine for 30 years. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from Brooklyn

College. She has received a National Endowment of the Arts Regional Fellowship in Painting. She has been awarded two residencies at MacDowell, and one each at Hewnoaks and the Ellis Beauregard Foundation. Jessica has been a Lecturer in Art at Bates College and Bowdoin College. She has exhibited across the country and at several venues internationally.

ROSAMOND GROSS

Rosamond Gross is a visual artist living, creating, teaching, and parenting in South Portland, Maine. She ventures to balance her different, but connected daily roles as artist, educator, and mother.  As a photographer, she embraces the momentum of busy days, reflexively documenting excerpts from her family life. As a mother behind the lens, she watches with wonder moments from a childhood unfolding. As a visual art educator, Rosamond guides her students in the art of seeing, introducing them to both the craft and care of creating. In art and in life, she believes that the way something is formed matters.

SARAH HASKELL

Born and raised in New England, Sarah has a BFA in Textile Design from RISD and a Masters of Art and Healing from Wisdom University. As a seeker, maker and creative pathfinder her medium is most often thread, investigating the mystery of encoded fabrics and the hidden language of cloth.

Sarah has exhibited in regional and national shows at The September 11th Memorial and Museum, NYC, NY; The New Bedford Museum of Art, New Bedford, MSA; The Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA; Museum Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX ; Artists’ Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland ME; The Providence Art Club, Providence, RI; The Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH and The Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, KA. Sarah is a 4 time finalist for the Greater Piscataqua Charitable Foundation. She is a 2021 Fellow for the Maine Arts Commission, currently has a solo exhibit at the Maine State Capitol (2022). Artist residencies include Monson Arts, Monson, ME (2023); Monhegan Island, ME(2018); Hewnoaks, Lovell, ME(2018); Vermont Studio Center (2017); Peters Valley Crafts Center, Layton, NJ (2004); Acadia National Park, ME (2008, Hambidge Center, Rabun, GA (2013).

In 2002 she completed “Each One: The Button Project, a 9/11 Memorial” her first community art project, owned by the City of Portsmouth, NH. Her global peace project “Woven Voices, Messages from the Heart” concluded in 2012 after 4 years of successfully weaving community, peace and creative expression. Her latest community art project, “Well Used, Well Loved” (2015- 17) explored age, beauty, attachment and impermanence using a handwoven dishtowel and reflective writing.

SIRI KAUR

Siri Kaur is an artist and photographer who examines identities that occupy dualities, diversity, and contradiction, with a rigorous eye for the photographic quality of magic. Originally from Maine, she received her MFA from The California Institute of the Arts, and an MA and a BA from Smith College. Kaur’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Blythe Projects, Cohen Gallery, and Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles; at 99¢ Plus, New York; at the Vermont Center for Photography, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Group shows include those at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Riverside Art Museum, the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Aperture Foundation, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Camera Club of New York, among others. Kaur’s work has been reviewed in ARTFORUM, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She was a Professor of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design from 2007-2018 and currently teaches at UCLA. In 2014 Leroy Press published Kaur’s first monograph, This Kind of Face, which documented the world of celebrity impersonators.

KERI KIMURA

Keri Kimura explores color through layered paintings that shift between landscape and abstraction to explore memory and the subconscious. She studied painting at Smith College, the Glasgow School of Art, and the New York Studio School. Her work has recently been exhibited at Katzman Contemporary Projects in Dover, NH (2022), Nahcotta Gallery, Portsmouth, NH (2021), The Golden Foundation for the Arts, New Berlin, NY (2020); and The Painting Center, New York, NY (2019). Kimura lives and works in Southwest Harbor, Maine.

MAYA KUVAJA

Born in Boston in 1975 and raised in coastal Maine, I earned my degree from Maine College of Art in Portland and moved to rural western Maine where I currently paint in my studio in the woods. My mixed media paintings and collages are inquiries into the relationship between nature, science and spirituality, exploring the tenuous qualities of memory and perception. Discarded printed materials from textbooks, literature and maps are layered together with figures, animals and birds to create new narratives. The collage elements are intertwined with my own painted images drawn from personal histories and the natural world around me.

MARTHA MILLER

Martha Miller has been creating portraits and self-portraits for over thirty years, working in a variety of media. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from Maine College of Art and Design and has work in numerous collections including the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Martha recently retired from teaching at Maine College of Art and Design and maintains a studio in Woolwich where she lives with her husband Garry and their two cats.