Healing Arts Exhibits

Deborah Jellison is exhibiting at St. Joseph Internal Medicine, The Gallery at 900 Broadway until January 3, 2025.

Deborah Jellison is a mixed media artist raised in northern Maine and currently residing
in the Mid Coast region of the state. Her work is influenced by the wooded landscape
and rocky coastline of her home. Whether it is a collage, painting, or assemblage
Deborah’s work most often references the natural environment patterns created by
barren trees against the sky, textures of plants, flowers, and animals, or shadows cast
along the forest floors.

She earned a BFA in Art Education from the University of Maine and an MFA in Visual
Arts from Vermont College of Art. As a life-long learner, Deborah is inspired by each
new technique and material that she discovers. Many are incorporated into her art
practice, creating a diverse range of styles and subject matter. By overlaying gold,
texture, and pattern over landscape or figure, her work tells lush visual stories from an
ever-evolving personal mythology.

Gallery exhibits have included A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY., Black Earth Gallery in
Cedar Rapids, IO., Atrium Gallery, Providence, RI., Yale University Medical Gallery,
New Haven, CT., Wood Art Gallery, Montpelier, VY., Harlow Gallery, Hallowell, ME.,
River Arts, Damariscotta, ME., Waterfall Arts, Belfast, ME., Robert E. White Gallery,
Bangor, ME., Sohn’s Gallery, Bangor, ME., Archipelago Gallery, Rockland, ME.
Currently she is a member of River Arts Gallery in Hallowell, ME., the Union of Maine
Visual Artists and Archipelao Gallery in Rockland, ME.. In 2021, Deborah was awarded
“Special Recognition” and “Special Merit” from Light, Space and Time Online Art
Gallery.

Inuit Stone Sculptures is exhibiting at St. Joseph Healthcare, The Hospital Lobby at 360 Broadway until January 3, 2025.

Although shaping stone for utilitarian objects was practiced for millennia by the Inuit people of the Canadian North, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Inuit carvers began creating small stone and ivory sculptures of local fauna to trade with whalers and other travelers. By the early 1940s, a more contemporary approach to these sculptures had emerged, generating income for local artists with the support of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Canadian Handicrafts Guild, and the Canadian Department of Mines and Resources.

In the 1950s, a cooperative system was established in the Arctic, particularly in Cape Dorset (Kinngait), to provide materials, facilitate sales, and foster mentorship and collaboration. Over time, the early focus on nature evolved to reflect environmental changes, global awareness, and aesthetic influences from other parts of the world. Some artists featured in this exhibit relied on income from their stone sculptures to support their families.

The stone sculptures in this exhibit were collected by Marcelle Coffin, formerly of Bangor, and her daughter Cheryl Coffin, from the 1970s until 2005. These pieces were obtained from Canadian galleries in New Brunswick, Quebec, Toronto, and Vancouver. Marcelle was a lifelong Canadian citizen, while Cheryl has a longstanding interest in visual art, having used gifts from her Canadian grandmother to acquire Inuit art.

• 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.

• Location: Fifth floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Elevator Lobby

You will find beautiful images by local artist LeeAnne Mallonee on the fifth floor of the hospital right as you step off the elevator. These beautiful images, created in Bangor and Camden, showcase LeeAnne’s unique blend of analog and digital collage. Her work explores the concept of internal landscapes and the infinite ways they can be expressed.

Mallonee believes at its heart, a photograph is light and shadow, and the spaces between. It is mercurial and moody, and it illuminates the world in ways that words cannot. It is a disclosure, a deception, captured in time. Photographer Duane Michals calls it “the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing.” Photography injects the past into the present, and explains us to ourselves.

The development of digital cameras offered Mallonee an explosion of possibilities for the kind of spontaneous, abstract art-making she loves.

• Location: First floor, St. Joseph Hospital, 360 Broadway, Main Lobby

Katia Mason, a Boston native with cherished memories of summers in Corea, Maine, has donated her evocative piece “Beneath the Surface 49.6.” Additionally, we have acquired two more of her works, “Beneath the Surface – BNS 52.11” and “Beneath the Surface 52.10,” with funds from the Healing Arts Fund. 

Mason’s artwork, influenced profoundly by her experiences along the coast, embodies themes of comfort, healing, and inspiration. “Living on the coast, I can sit in awe of what is revealed, hidden, and carried away by the ebb and flow of the tidal cycle,” says Mason. “Beneath the Surface 49.6 is a narrative of hope and inspiration, a visual expression of MOMENTUM and what is possible when we align desire and action.” 

The Littlefield Gallery of Winter Harbor, represented by Jane and Kelly Littlefield, played a crucial role in bringing Mason’s work to St. Joseph Healthcare. Their passion for fine art, education, and community commitment facilitated this meaningful collaboration. The Littlefield‘s’ dedication extends beyond their gallery walls, embodying values that align perfectly with our mission. 

“Human Beings are the perfect design of mind, body, and spirit,” Mason adds. “When we are wounded, the healing process requires multiple approaches and forms of assistance to support the total system in recovering. My choice to donate ‘Beneath the Surface 49.6’ to St. Joseph Hospital was motivated by their Healing Arts Program and their commitment to support the whole person.”