Exhibitions, Symposia & Other Initiatives

Haystack has taken a leadership role in examining the role of craft in our society. Haystack began the invitational symposia in 2002. The goal is to address issues related to the hand and craft making within a broader context of other disciplines. Past symposia have included Digital Dialogues: Technology and the Hand (2002), in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, Craft and Design: Hand, Mind, and the Creative Process (2004), in collaboration with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Craft and Community: Sustaining Place (2006) and Creating in Maine: Makers, Manufacturers, and Materials (2006 - 2009). The symposium is an intimate scale—there are sixty-five participants including presenters.

Fall 2011

Three invitational gatherings took place at Haystack this September.

Symposium participants working with a tree branch in the wood studio. Photo credit: Chehalis Hegner

Haystack's Creativity & Ingenuity Symposium, held September 8-11, convened an audience of sixty leaders from a range of creative fields. The focus of the symposium was to examine how creativity and ingenuity inform a variety of media. As we have done with past symposia, ideas were addressed through lectures, working in Haystack’s studios, and informal discussions. Speakers for Haystack's Creativity & Ingenuity Symposium included: Liza Donnelly, a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, essayist and public speaker; Professor of Art Education at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Senior Research Affiliate at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Lois Hetland; Theodore Zoli, a structural engineer who is leading the design of elegant and enduring bridges around the world; Oakland-based writer and artist, founder of the MFA concentration in Social Practice at California College of the Arts in 2005, and currently the Chair of their MFA Fine Arts Program, Ted Purves; Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, who operate Four Season Farm in Maine on nearby Cape Rosier, and are both authors of books on farming and gardening; and Wayne Higby, the Robert C. Turner Chair of Ceramic Art at Alfred University, Vice President of the International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva, Switzerland, and a Life Trustee of Haystack.

Studio activities and leaders for this symposium included:

Digital with Joel Murphy, a self-taught engineer and instructor of electronics and programming at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Drawing with Michael Moore, who has been making drawings and teaching about drawing for many years - he teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Textiles with Carole Frances Lung aka Frau Fiber, an artist, activist, and itinerant textile worker, who is currently developing honorable garment production in Haiti, and is an Assistant Professor, Department of Art at California State University, Los Angeles.

Wood with Rick and Laura Brown of Handshouse Studio, a not-for-profit innovative educational organization that initiates adventurous hands-on projects as a way to explore history, understand science, and perpetuate the arts.

Philip Isaacson was the first presenter for Vision & Legacy: Haystack Campus at 50, with his talk, Haystack: Modernism In A Forest. READ Haystack: Modernism In A Forest IN FULL.

Haystack's second symposium of the season, Vision and Legacy: The Haystack Campus at 50, held September 19-20. was organized in collaboration with the Maine chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Presenters included Philip Isaacson, practicing attorney and architectural fanatic, Art Critic of the Maine Sunday Telegram since 1966, and the recipient of the Maine Prize for Architecture 2010; Jack Lenor Larsen, world renowned textile artist and designer - his home, LongHouse in East Hampton, New York, was built as a case study exemplifying a creative approach to contemporary lifestyle. He was one of the first teachers at Haystack and serves on the board as its honorary chair; Tod Mitchell and Billie Tsien presented Still Here. Founders of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, they are known for residential and institutional projects which pay careful attention to context, detail and the subtleties of materials.

Jamie Johnston, a furniture designer and Maine College of Art faculty member, facilitated the symposium's Creative Studio-Based Design Activity—completed design projects were displayed outside of the studios for viewing in advance of the closing discussion, which was facilitated by Matthew Elliott of Elliott and Elliott Architecture, Blue Hill, Maine and Haystack's Director, Stuart Kestenbaum.

Presentations and discussions took place in Gateway Auditorium.

Vision & Legacy participants worked in groups on creative studio-based design activities.

A connected drawing exercise was led by Haystack Community Programs Coordinator, Susan Webster.

Haystack Art Schools Collaborative is a new Haystack initiated program, which brought together eighty students and teachers from ten art schools in the Northeast, to participate in discussions, presentations, and studio activities with a focus on creative process. The program was held September 22-25.

Students at work in the wood studio.

Speakers/presenters for the collaborative included Kim Stafford, author and founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College; and Pauline Oliveros, a composer, improviser, and founder of the Deep Listening Institute, Ltd., based in Kingston, New York.

A 'dinosaur' head (with spine), made during studio activities, rocks in the breeze.

 

 

Participating schools included:

• Maine College of Art
• Maryland Institute College of Art
• Massachusetts College of Art and Design
• Penn State
• Rhode Island School of Design
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• Skidmore College
• Syracuse University
• Teacher’s College, Columbia University
• University of the Arts

Fall 2010

Participants at the 2010 Cultural Summit performed theatre exercises in Haystack's Gateway Auditorium with Judith Jerome, Artistic Director of Opera House Arts, Stonington, Maine.

We enjoyed a successful first Cultural Summit, which was an invitational gathering of Maine arts leaders - an interdisciplinary group who convened to discuss issues in the arts, such as challenges and successes of their individual work, or that of their organizations. The format for the two-day event (September 27-28) was patterned on our Creating in Maine symposium. Richard Barringer, former head of Maine’s State Planning Office, and research professor at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine was the keynote speaker for Cultural Summit 2010: A Gathering of Maine’s Arts Leaders. His talk was titled, “The Creative Economy in Changing Times." Additional presenters for the program include Maine poet Wesley McNair; Mark Bessire, Director, Portland Museum of Art; Linda Nelson, Executive Director of Opera House Arts in Stonington; and Aimée Petrin, Executive Director of Portland Ovation. Each participant offered a brief presentation about their work or organization, and information about Haystack's history, architecture, and programs was also shared throughout the program.

Fall 2009

This fall Haystack hosted two invitational symposiums - the fourth annual Creating in Maine: Makers, Manufacturers, and Materials, our 2-day conference in which manufacturers, designers, and artists from around the state are invited to come to Haystack and contribute to an ongoing discussion of what it means to be a part of Maine's creative economy, and O Brave New World:  Looking at Time, Making, and Creativity. Participants at this symposium investigated how makers use time and experience time, from philosophical, scientific, spiritual, and art-making perspectives. 

Angus King was the keynote speaker for Haystack's 2009 Creating in Maine Symposium.

Creating in Maine: Makers, Manufacturers, and Materials was held September 21-22. Former Maine Governor Angus King was the keynote speaker for the event. Other presenters included Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of Eepybird, which explores creativity, and in particular, the ways in which everyday objects can do extraordinary things; Deb Soule, founder and owner of Avena Botanicals; and Doug Green of Green Design Furniture. There will also be studio based design activities led by Jamie Johnston, faculty member in the woodworking and furniture design program at Maine College of Art and designer Scott Nash.

O Brave New World:  Looking at Time, Making, and Creativity took place September 24-27. Through a combination of lectures, studio-based design experiences, and informal discussions, the following ideas and questions were addressed: Technology is increasingly making connections that seem instantaneous. What does this do to the ‘slow time’ of making? How does art-making/creating help us to pay attention? We live in a world of labor-saving devices, but what can we learn from our labor, from our making? How do we measure creative time and how do we experience it? How are we making use of and adapting new technologies?

Video produced by Deb Todd Wheeler during the symposium.

Presenters and participants represent a wide range of fields including craft making, design, literature, music, science, and slow food. They included Wesley McNair, is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Lovers of the Lost New and Selected Poems (Godine, 2009), and published books of essays and three anthologies of Maine writing.; Melissa Franklin, the Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics and Director of Graduate Studies, Harvard University; Dennie Palmer Wolf, a Senior Scholar at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and works in communities to think though using their resources to develop the creative capital of children, youth and families; D.Y. Begay, is Dine' from the Navajo Nation, is a weaver and a textile consultant to museums and private collectors and maintains the family tradition of raising sheep, dyeing wool, and weaving both traditional and contemporary designs; Edward Behr writes about food and wine - he is the publisher of the magazine The Art of Eating; Christina Bertoni teaches at The Rhode Island School of Design where she has served in many different roles as teacher and administrator, and where she occasionally teaches her course "A Survey of Time-keeping Systems”; and Robert Krulwich, Robert Krulwich is an NPR Science Correspondent, Robert Krulwich, and co-host of WNYC’s Radio Lab. He has been called "the most inventive network reporter in television" by TV Guide.

Many symposium participants collaborated on an elaborate textile project, led by Piper Shepard.

Studio activities and leaders for this symposium included: Blacksmithing, led by David Secrest, artist, designer, and blacksmith, who since 1978 in Somers, Montana has forged sculpture and architectural ironwork; Ceramics, led by James Makins, who is a potter and professor in the Crafts Department, University of the Arts, Philadelphia; Site Specific led by Diane Willow, who is a multi-modal artist who teaches at the University of Minnesota; and Textiles led by Piper Shepherd, who teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art and maintains her studio practice in Baltimore.