Strengthening Community: Forging Connections Through Art, an Interactive Forum

Create. Connect. Reflect. 

To share and express our feelings about the current political environment, seven Maine artists will lead interactive workshops at Hidden Barn Books on Sunday, January 11, from 4-5:30 p.m.

Professional artists will share their own experience using the creative process to communicate and inspire activism. They will then lead participants in hands-on workshops to foster personal artistic expression through writing, painting, photography and even through song!

Featured artists will include:

Kenn Chandler, a landscape, portraiture and wildlife photographer for six decades, who also enjoys impressionist and abstract photographic forms.

Linda Rowell Kelley, a versatile visual artist and sculptor who works in oil, pastels and watercolors.

Stuart Kestenbaum, an author of six collections of poems, as well as a book of brief essays on craft and community.

Bennett Konesni, a musician who studied and practiced work songs such as sea shanties, farmer’s hollers and lumber camp ballads since he was a teenager working aboard schooners on the coast of Maine.

David Manski, a wildlife biologist who worked for 35 years with the National Park Service, is an active documentary and street photographer.

Carol Shutt, a painter, mixed-media artist and writer living and sharing a studio in Hulls Cove with her husband, potter Rocky Mann.

Susan Webster, a visual artist who works with a variety of materials and processes and has taught at a variety of creative centers both domestically and internationally.

This event is free and open to all. Hidden Barn Books is located at 31 Kennebec Place, behind Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor. Organized by House District 14, State Representative Gary Friedmann