The Western Foothills Land Trust announces “The Clothesline Project”

The Western Foothills Land Trust (WFLT) announces The Clothesline Project, a series of outdoor art exhibitions and poetry readings, to be hung at Shepard’s Farm Preserve in Norway, Maine. The Preserve is located at 121 Crockett Ridge Road and is part of a larger 272- acre conservation area that wraps around Witt Swamp. The Clothesline Project is funded in part through a grant from the Onion Foundation to honor the history of the Penley Clothespin Company formerly of West Paris. Through this project, the Trust hopes to reinforce our community’s memory of a once huge local industry (wooden clothespins) while inspiring resource conservation and art in our everyday lives.

Last fall the Trust built a half-mile universally accessible trail at Shepard’s Farm with funding from The Davis Family Foundation, The Stephens Healthcare Foundation, Norway Savings Bank, and the Maine Art’s Commission. The trail provides a pleasurable wander through a former agricultural landscape and provides access to six Bernard Langlais sculptures. Eventually the Trust would like to add to the permanent outdoor collection at the preserve. This project, more temporary in scale, will provide an introduction to new artists, new materials, and new concepts of visual art at the preserve.

The project is being administered by Diana Arcadipone of the The Arts Studio @Fiber&Vine. Four artists will be selected for a one-person exhibition to be installed outdoors for 3 weeks between September 2019 and December 2019. Selected artists will be paid an honorarium and will participate in a preview opening on August 15 (showing a taste of what’s to come), and will install or hang their work on the 15’ clothesline. Special attention will be paid to innovative albeit temporal works that will sustain the weather during their three-week exhibition. All mediums and concepts will be considered. Artists must live in Western Maine permanently or seasonally. Deadline to Apply is June 25. For information on applying: www.wfltmaine.org.