Demonstrations
There are over 100 fantastic artists in the Norway Maine Arts Festival with a wide breadth of knowledge, experience, and styles. Ranging from painting and drawing, to blacksmithing and woodcarving to cyanotypes and collagraphs, there is so much art to be explored. Check out the following artists who are demonstrating their practice, bringing materials for you to feel or observe how they make their art! Ask them questions and learn more about the artists in your area!
Perry Johnson
“I enjoy giving out the still warm keychains to wide-eyed children who have watched me take a solid bar of yellow hot steel and transform it into a leaf keychain to hang on their jacket or backpack zippers”.
Perry Johnson has been blacksmithing for the last ten years and began selling his craft through ForgehammerForgeworks. Making practical items such as fire pokers and bottle openers, to artistic sculptures of nature like flowers and mushrooms. You can see that process live in action at the Norway Maine Arts Festival as Perry is bringing a blazing hot forge and anvil to work at during the festival. Stop by to see the forging, and learn more about the process and history of iron working from Perry himself, tongs and hammer in hand.
Lily Phillips-Carter
With strong skills in graphic design and illustration, Lily Phillips-Carter’s step into stained glass seemed like a natural progression. With a clear visual language influenced by historical art, her stained glass explores different themes of headstone imagery and folk art. Stop by her booth to touch, move, mix, and match the glass pieces she has formed and see how stained glass artists prepare their art for permanent assembly. Kids of all ages can color in blank patterns Lily has designed to make their own coloring pages!
Amanda Pearson
Describing Amanda Pearson as ambitious would be an understatement. Originally trained as a stonecarver, Amanada decided that she wanted to get into weaving and fiber and thus she did. Partnering with the Maine Craft Association Craft Apprenticeship Program, she has been learning under Sarah Haskell about fibers and weaving- starting with unprocessed fibers to spinning and dying to weaving with the spun yarn. Stop by and learn about the fiber spinning and weaving process with Amanda, she is a wealth of knowledge and is excited to teach and share with the public everything she has learned.
Bare Bones Handsewn
Step right up to Bare Bones Handsewn and see fine Maine craftsmanship in action. With traditional techniques, Bare Bones Handsewn crafts moccasins and leather goods by using traditional crafts, tools and materials to bring fine craft to the forefront of shoes. Learn how the moccasins are made as Ray stitches together moccasins and what it means to be a 100% Made in Maine company. Come wear Bare Bones Handsewn, they’re BBH - Bringing Back Handsewn!
Susan Silvestri
Classical Banjo Farm
Founded in 2018 specializing in fiber animals, Classic Banjo Farm does it all. Raising sheep and alpaca to collect their wool, to either sending out or processing the wool themselves, this farm prioritizes excellent fibers to be made into handcrafted products. Inspired by Viking Age weaving practices, Classic Banjo Farm won best in show at the Maine Fiber Festival this year with their Varafeldur style collar. Learn more about spinning with Susan Silvestri and about running a fiber farm here in Maine!
Colin Penley
Let’s hope for sun! Colin Penly began exploring cyanotypes as standing for his photographic process he focused on in college. After teaching for 15 years, art was an outlet for him to help transition out of and decompress. Colin combines the photographic cyanotype image and hand stitching, mixing ideas of time and history. A photograph is a captured moment in time. However, sewing by hand is a slow process, mixing the instantaneous and the methodical reality of time. Come visit Colin at his booth to learn about how cyanotypes are made, along with watching artwork being stitched together.
Judy Schneider
Part of Peregrine Press in Portland, Judy Schneider is an accomplished artist here in Norway, Maine. Her practice combines both that of of printmaking, monoprints and drypoint etchings, along with painting and drawing alongside or on top of those works. She will be at the festival with a large printmaking press, ready to demonstrate how a professional press works, how to use it, and live printmaking demonstrations. Learn more about printmaking with Judy!
Heather Newton Brown
After almost 20 years of painting with encaustic, Heather Newton Brown has begun to experiment with encaustic collagraph printmaking, and will be demonstrating both encaustic painting and printmaking throughout the day. Encaustic is an ancient medium that combines beeswax with damar resin and pigment to create vibrant paintings. The medium is applied hot and each layer is fused with a heat source (such as a heat gun or torch). An incredibly versatile medium, encaustic can be used to create smooth surfaces, textured paintings, mixed media, sculpture and almost anything you can imagine!
Alex Edney
Edney Guitars
Fixing guitars interested Alex Edney at an early age, starting to work at a music instrument repair shop in high school and has continually dedicated himself to the craft of fretted instruments, fixing and building. The local luthier of Hiram, Maine, he is a resident artisan of Tearcap Workshops. Alex will be at the festival with guitars he has made himself, along with materials to talk about the intricate process of making guitars.
Lucy Stafford
Multimedia artist and gardener, Lucy Pearl Stafford primarily with works with ceramics and textile. Processing life experience, ones often vulnerable and human, through making objects of domesticity made of ceramics, odd forms, and fabric. Exploring their identity as a person, their experiences, Lucy creates comfort in their art for themselves, and people in their community. At the festival, Lucy will have a sewing machine and be sewing handmade patches onto clothes throughout the event. With a wide range of prints designs, as well as some blank clothes, Lucy encourages people to bring bags, jackets, pants, and shirts that you think need a little spiffing up. They will also offer instruction to people are interested in learning to pin and sew themselves.
Haid Tanous
Haid Tanous is an artist emerging from the western foothills of Maine. His debut project remains untitled as he continues to immerse himself deeper in the embrace of Home, seeking her face through the act of remembering, painting, and drawing. Haid will be doing a live painting throughout the day- come learn and watch oil painting from a truly fine artist local to the area.
James Sylvester
James Sylvester is an interdisciplinary artist working in the mediums of relief printmaking, monoprint, and collaborative art. His work is characterized by bold, expressive line work. He makes all of his work at Peregrine Press in Portland, Maine. Presenting his "Build Your Own Landscape" activity, use his handmade prints to build and create your own landscape complete with fish! Make your own Norway to take home with you!
Bryan Hansen
Bryan Hansen’s jewelry serves as good luck charms, as a source of mysterious importance. He makes work that can be a vessel for its owner to attach to it whatever feels most important for them. Luxurious yet not precious, Hansen’s jewelry can serve as an armour of sorts, becoming a source of positive thought, luck, or power for its wearers. At the Norway Maine Arts Festival, Hansen will have tools in progress for people to learn about wax casting and the process that jewelers go through to make the exquisite works we wear everyday.
