Healing Arts Exhibits

Matt Barter is exhibiting at St. Joseph Healthcare, The Gallery at 900 Broadway until June 28, 2024

Matthew Barter is a self-taught artist specializing in painting, carving, and sculpting. His artwork celebrates the people and landscapes of Maine’s waterfronts and harbors. Despite lacking formal training, Barter’s paintings have a genuine folk-like quality while also demonstrating a sophisticated sense of composition, shape, and color. His work is characterized by boldness and fearless.

Barter’s focus lies on portraying the daily tasks of fishermen on shore, such as tending to equipment and repairing boats. His carved figures of fishermen, crafted from reclaimed wood and oil paint, have become a signature motif, capturing the strength and labor of these individuals.

Raised in Downeast Maine, Barter was influenced by his father, the acclaimed painter Philip Barter, from an early age. He began assisting his father in the studio as a child and sold his first painting at age ten. By his teens, he was learning the art of oil painting and creating wood reliefs. Father and son have collaborated on various projects over the years.

Barter also gained firsthand experience in Maine’s fishing industry, working alongside his father on commercial fishing boats. These experiences instilled in him a deep appreciation for the hardworking people and waterfronts of Maine.

Today, Barter maintains a studio in Brunswick, Maine, where he continues to create his artwork.

Blue Hill Peninsula Potters: Mark Bell, Lila Balch, Marcia Kola, and David McBeth are exhibiting at St. Joseph Healthcare, hospital Lobby at 360 Broadway, until June 28, 2024 

The Blue Hill Peninsula Potters is a guild of nationally recognized and emerging artists who have settled in the Penobscot Bay area and established working studios. We are currently featuring four spectacular potters:

Mark Bell has been making pots for over 45 years. He has an M.F.A. in ceramics from Arizona State University (1986). His pottery has been featured at the Smithsonian Craft Show, Portland Museum of Art and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Currier Museum of Art in Concord, NH and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. Mark has taught ceramic workshops throughout the country including California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Arizona, Wisconsin and Maine. Mark has a home and studio in Blue Hill ME where he lives with his wife Martha.

Lila Balch, a native of El Salvador, grew up surrounded by village women who made pottery. This childhood influence bloomed into a second career as she moved to the artistic community of Brooklin, Maine, and the Haystack School of Crafts which provided early learning followed by direct teaching and generous influence from surrounding potters. After seven years of working in two pottery studios in Brooklin, Lila is enjoying her studio which gives her the time to be at home. Here her pottery is influenced by the surrounding beauty of the forest and the sea. Hearing that St. Joseph Hospital began a collaboration with artists to bring art into the healing of their patients drew me immediately to participate in this endeavor I am joyful and excited to see that St. Joseph not only recognizes the importance of art in healing but to put it into action. I am very honored to be one of the artists participating in the next three months.

Marcia Kola was born and raised in the northern Adirondacks, where she crossed paths with the remarkable Finnish artist, Vanio Kola. Following their schooling, they tied the knot and embarked on raising two children while Vanio pursued teaching positions at two different women’s colleges. After a tenure of 35 years in the teaching profession, and with their children grown and independent, they made the bold decision to leave their teaching careers behind and relocate to Maine to fully immerse themselves in their artistic pursuits.

During her academic years, Marcia initially delved into the realm of music before expanding her creative horizons to include fiber and weaving. However, it was her introduction to clay that truly resonated with her. The medium provided her with profound joy and satisfaction, becoming the cornerstone of her artistic expression.

David McBeth, a retired art professor, taught for 35 years, spending the last 30 at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He led 3D studios and was involved in various art organizations. His work has been exhibited nationwide and is in collections worldwide. In 2015, he opened Walker Pond Pottery in Brooksville. During the pandemic, he opened a roadside gallery for community access to his pottery. McBeth focuses on making practical pottery for daily use, emphasizing the value of handmade items over mass-produced ones. He believes handmade objects create a special connection between the maker and the user.

• Location: First floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Neuroscience wing

You will find the paintings of Diana Young on the first floor of the hospital. Young remembers being an artist since she was a child, in fact, she has been “making pictures” by painting landscapes in Maine and from her travels throughout the world for nearly 50 years.

Her work leans toward line, direction, force and motion, rather than form and naturalism. For her, an outdoor place is a point of departure rather than a study in nature. She is always looking for “the kernel of a place.”

“What makes an artist? Doing art with enthusiasm for many years is the proof. What starts our looking strange may become accepted as beautiful over time and I’m hoping that happens to me. Being an artist could well be one part talent and nine parts desire.”

Young is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited in regional galleries and across artist cooperatives throughout Maine. She continues to create art in her studio located in Bangor, Maine.

Her art can be seen at the Eastport Gallery in person during the summer months (June through September) and online year round. You can see a beautiful collection of her work online and available for purchase by visiting Flood Fine Art.

• Location: Third floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, General Surgery and Urology Extension Wing

You will find colorful paintings by local artist Jill Hoy on the third floor of the hospital. Hoy’s work focuses on the qualities of Maine light in her plein air oil paintings. Strong composition, rhythm, gesture, pattern, energy, power of place, and soul are primary focal points.

“I’ve spent my summers in Deer Isle, Maine since I was ten years old. Deer Isle has raised me to be a painter,” said Hoy. Reflecting on the exhibit, she shares: “All of my oil paintings are done outside on location. My work captures both an intimate relationship with nature, along with the movements of wide-open spaces that allow our heart to expand.”

Hoy has exhibited her work extensively in Maine and in locations across the United States. You may have seen her work on the cover of an L.L. Bean catalog or a Down East Magazine publication. Hoy’s work is on display in more than 600 private and corporate collections throughout the United States and Europe, including The Jill Hoy Gallery, which is open for the season in Stonington, Maine.

• Location: Second floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Respiratory, Cardiology, and General Surgery wing

You will find contemporary landscape paintings by local artist Nina Jerome on the first floor of the hospital. As a long-time resident in Maine, Jerome finds inspiration for her work in both natural and constructed environments, drawing and painting in series that examine visual variations of place. For her, the painting process conveys her personal direction through the land as she witnesses its light, movement, and changes.

Jerome spends the warmer months in coastal Maine, a rich visual resource with its undeveloped shoreline and wide-ranging tidal fluctuations. She has also explored sense-of-place in other Maine areas. Jerome has completed residencies on two of her favorite Maine islands – Great Spruce Head Island and Great Cranberry Island – and has created paintings for fourteen public art projects in Maine including a series for the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor.

This exhibit includes paintings dating from 1980 to the present. Notable series presented here are “Quiet Tension” (1995), a record of Jerome’s walks along the rocky shore in Addison, ME, “Altered Landscape” (1986), construction views of the Veterans Remembrance Bridge across the Penobscot River, “Winter Power” (2005), a series depicting the steam plume marking the location of an electricity generating plant along the Penobscot River, “From the Kayak” (2006), images of floating between sea and sky in Addison, ME, and “Homage to the Ocean” (2013), a series that wove words written about climate change into the images of the sea.