Nell Parker lives with her family in a rambling 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Maine. She loves to engage with the surrounding landscape through growing her own food, celebrating the wheel of the year, and closely observing the surrounding world in the process of art-making. Her work has been shown in galleries throughout Maine and Oregon.

This will be an in-person event, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Printmaker and biologist Kathleen Walsh Buchanan will be at the Gilley on Tuesday, Sept. 19, to share her collagraphic printmaking and its inspiration in the natural world. There will be a public reception at 5:30pm, followed by Buchanan's presentation at 7pm.  Both events are free, but registration is required.

“At first glance, biology and printmaking seem to have little common ground, but much of my training as a scientist has served me extremely well as an artist,” she says. “Both disciplines require skill at observing the environment, at not only looking but seeing what is going on around you. I look at biology and art as two dialects in the same language, different ways to communicate what you have learned about the nature of things, about the truth of your experience.”

A collagraph is a hand-made print generated off a printing plate that is a collage of various material. For her pieces, Buchanan starts with a sturdy backing board of plain masonite panel, then glues down shapes of Bristol paper on this board that delineate the major elements of her design. Then she paints over that paper with acrylic gel mediums to add texture and detail to the design, and to prevent the Bristol paper from being saturated with ink when it’s time to print.

Before becoming a full-time printmaker in 1999, she was educated and employed as a biologist. As an undergraduate at Tufts University, she majored in biology while nurturing her creative skills with as many studio art courses as she could fit into her schedule. After getting a master’s degree in wildlife biology at the University of Alaska she renewed her efforts at studio art with a focus on printmaking and now lives – and makes art – in Rockland, Maine.

“My connection to the natural world, my role as a mother, and my own sense of self all find expression in my images,” she says. “I enjoy looking at landscapes and their inhabitants not only as appealing composition subjects, but also as metaphors for our human experience.  Collagraph printing, with all its intricacy and subtlety, is a fascinating medium to use in the communication of these ideas.”

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

Enjoy a birding expedition through William Shakespeare’s plays and poetry with artist Missy Dunaway whose independent art project “The Birds of Shakespeare”  will catalog every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poems. Dunaway will be at the Gilley on Tuesday, Oct. 10 for a 5:30pm reception and a 7pm presentation as the museum’s October People-Nature-Art presenter.

Each month, Dunaway releases a painting of one bird with an accompanying essay that analyzes how the species features in Shakespeare’s world.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

John K. Putnam, a full-time nature and landscape photographer based on Mount Desert Island, will be the November People-Nature-Art presenter at the Wendell Gilley Museum on Tuesday, Nov. 14. There will be a 5:30pm reception followed by a presentation at 7pm that will be offered in-person as well as livecast online. All events are free but registration is required.

From 2006 to 2014, Putnam worked as a photographer in New York City producing work for publishing companies and magazines as well as photographing high-end events, all while spending every vacation traveling and photographing across five continents, 20 states, and more than 30 national parks. He moved to Mount Desert Island in 2015.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

Printmaker and mixed media artist Sara Tabbert – a past Acadia National Park artist in residence – joins us from her home studio in Fairbanks, Alaska as December’s People-Nature-Art presenter at the Wendell Gilley Museum on Tuesday, Dec. 12 in an online-only presentation at 7pm. Free but registration is required.

Tabbert’s large-scale public art commissions can be found throughout Alaska and her work is housed in public collections through the state and far beyond. In early 2020, the Alaska State Museum presented a solo exhibit of her recent work.

 She has been awarded grants from the Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. In addition to residencies in the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Italy, Tabbert has been an artist-in-residence through the National Park Service in Denali, Zion, Isle Royale, the Chilkoot Trail, and Acadia National Park. She has been selected as a 2024 resident fellow in the Windgate ITE program at the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia.

​People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

RESCHEDULED to Wed., Jan. 24 -- 6pm in-person reception & 7pm in-person and online presentation

The first People-Nature-Art of 2024 features Project Puffin's "Seabird Sue” Schubel, who paints decoys at Audubon’s Seabird Institute based in Bremen, Maine, but not decoys intended for hunting; her creations help attract birds to breeding colonies.

The arc of the year now sees her in the field during the spring and summer, working with researchers on the seven Maine seabird islands managed by Audubon. Fall and winter is time to send social attraction tools (sound systems and decoys) to other projects around the world. Over many years, Sue has been with Audubon as a seasonal island supervisor and researcher, a volunteer coordinator and instructor at the Hog Island Audubon Camp, and an outreach educator reaching thousands of kids in the mid-coast. Prior to settling down in a hand-built house in Maine, she lived the life of a travelling biologist/paleontologist/artist/carpenter and explored islands from Polynesia to Iceland. 

This free in-person event will be simultaneously livecast. There will be a 6pm reception for Sue before her presentation which begins at 7pm. This is rescheduled from its original date of Jan. 16 due to a storm.

Artist-Conservationist Rose Tanner joins the Gilley online for February’s People-Nature-Art presentation. Rose is an award-winning artist based in Vancouver, B.C., who loves the outdoors and studying birds. She is dedicated to portraying her subjects using traditional oil painting techniques.

As a professional artist, Rose Tanner has dedicated years to the arts and is constantly seeking new and innovative ways to develop new skills. She believes it’s her attention to their inner being that gives them their lifelike quality in her paintings. She says, "If my paintings can remind you of how extraordinary, how diverse and how truly beautiful nature is then I have done my work."

Rose travels widely to find her subjects, and she is active in supporting endangered birds and their habitat. She is a signature member of The Federation of Canadian Artists.

This is an online-only event, with Rose Zooming in from her home studio in Canada.

People-Nature-Art is monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Maine Master Naturalist Karen O. Zimmermann is the People-Nature-Art presenter at the Gilley for March. As a naturalist and artist, Karen creates not just for her own pleasure, but to share stories. By presenting small details in watercolor she invites viewers to look at all nature has to offer more deeply, taking home new insights that they may not otherwise have noticed, and to perhaps look differently at what is right under their feet and in their own backyard.

Inspired by naturalists including Maine botanist and illustrator Kate Furbush, Karen spends most days hiking, observing, learning about plants, and painting. She combines natural history notes with sketches from field observations, capturing the spirit of a living entity and its sense of place. For her, merging visual and verbal is a way to gain an understanding of the plant or animal in front of her, and its place in the world around us.

On March 26 at the Gilley, she will share how drawing is a way to deepen one’s understanding of nature, and to see details often overlooked. In addition to being a Maine Master Naturalist, Karen is a Registered Maine Guide, watercolorist, and nature journal instructor.

A California native, Jennifer has taught at the University of Maine-Orono since 2000 where she has served as Director of Creative Writing, co-advisor to The Open Field, and Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies.  She is an award-winning poet and author of seven books of poetry, a book of essays, and a memoir. Her work has been included in two Norton Anthologies and in The Best American Poetry 2002. In 2005 she was granted the Lynda Hull Poetry Award from Denver Quarterly, and in 2015 her book The Open Secret was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams award and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. For this PNA, she will be discussing her book For the Good of All, Do Not Destroy the Birds, a blend of literary criticism and memoir that recounts a life spent in the company of birds and poems, intimately attuned to the mysteries of singing.

This will be an in-person event with special host Carl Little, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

A multiple-time winner of the Maine Duck Stamp contest, Rick was born and raised on Little Cranberry Island, where he lives today lobstering, fishing and scalloping when he’s not painting. The majority of his work is of seabirds and wildlife. In his realistic style, Rick captures the mood of the sea in a way only a man who has grown up on the water can do. His pictures depict the Maine coast with astounding accuracy. His paintings have been selected for the Wildlife Art Show, Governor’s Gallery, at the Maine State House in Augusta.

This will be an in-person event, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Maine painter Gina Sawin strives to translate birds in flight to a canvas, transforming a three-dimensional image into a two-dimensional one. “If I ever really succeed,” she says, “that’s when I’ll quit painting.” Though her many fans and collectors of her work would disagree about the relative success of her painting, so far she has not quite captured the illusive feeling of flight to her satisfaction. So she paints on.

Painting large bird groups allows her to explore both formal aspects of representation in the modernist tradition, she says, and express her concerns for ecological continuity. She aims to capture the abstract patterns created by birds in a moment of flight, while keeping them in a real and distant space.

Ms. Sawin will be at the Wendell Gilley Museum as the People-Nature-Art presenter for July on Tuesday, July 23. There will be a artist’s reception at 6 p.m. open to the public, followed by her presentation at 7 p.m. which will happen in person and simultaneously livecast. Registration is required; when signing up, please indicate whether you will attend in person or online. A Zoom link will be sent to those who choose the online option when reserving space. 

This event, like all of the 2024 People-Nature-Art events, is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

In-person event is at capacity.  But there is still room in the livecast.  Sign up for the online program and you will be sent a Zoom link before the program begins.

Matt is one of the world’s leading wildlife filmmakers and an Emmy-nominated and award-winning wildlife cinematographer. He has spent his professional life working in our planet’s most remote and wild places. His current project is Birds of America, a feature film with an ambitious conservation agenda that seeks to fundamentally change the way we look at and engage with the natural world in the face of climate change and habitat loss.

Josh carves highly sought-after bird carvings by hand with traditional tools, using oil paint to finish his pieces which are primarily made from Atlantic white cedar. His work is in collections throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan. He was commissioned by Salisbury University to create original carvings for Nobel Peace Prize Laureates including Polish President Lech Walesa and South African President F.W. de Klerk.                              

This will be an in-person event, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Bonnie Chase’s passion is combining nature, science, and local plant and found materials to create forms of art, inspired by the life that grows around her. Her creativity comes from her connection with the natural world. To create her art, Chase harvests the plants she grows in her garden and ones that grow in the wild around her home. She makes everything she uses, from dye to woven baskets, all from locally grown plant matter. She has always encouraged her students to explore the natural world through a creative lens, throughout her careers in teaching, as executive director of the Cora Hartshorn Arboretum and Nature Center, as Master Naturalist, and leading natural history tours in Central and South America.

This will be an in-person event, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

The title for Lucy Kalian's current body of work, ‘Witnesses’ (on exhibit at the Gallery at Somes Sound in Somesville) refers not only to the thoughtful observer, but also to woodlands, trees, and their remains that have a deeper history than most of us walking the land today. They’ve witnessed humans’ yearning and urgency regarding the turmoil currently present throughout the world. The woods bear witness to a changing ecosystem and changing ‘human system’. She always was compelled to draw, sketch and paint but did not become a professional artist until midlife.

This will be an in-person event, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.