DIY Gifts with Annie Bailey, Kim Bernard, Karen Francomano, Sherry Frazer, Cynthia Motian McGuirl, and others

A collective of local artists will facilitate simple holiday projects for the gift-giving season. Come for an hour or stay for all three. This program is a collaboration with The Steel House.

Annie Bailey is a multimedia visual artist born and raised in Tenants Harbor, Maine. Described as “hovering between abstraction and impressionistic realism,” her work celebrates the range of one’s creative potential, from control to chaos, through the lens of maritime culture. She earned her BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2010. 

Kim Bernard shows her sculpture, installations, and encaustic works nationally and has been invited to participate in many exhibits, some of which include the Portland Museum of Art, Currier Museum of Art, Fuller Craft Museum, Colby College Museum of Art, Art Complex Museum, and UNH Museum of Art. Bernard is the recipient of the Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant, a NEFA grant, several Maine Arts Commission Grants, and was an artist-in-residence in the Physics Department at Harvard University in 2015-16 and the artist-in-residence at the University of New England in 2016-17. She holds a BFA from Parsons and an MFA from Mass Art.

Karen Francomano is, in no particular order, an artist, writer, mother, editor, poet, teaching artist, and public programs/studio coordinator at the Farnsworth Art Museum. Her art and writing has been published in everything from The Boston Globe to a mimeographed zine, exhibited throughout the country, and collected by cultural institutions and her mom.

Until last year, Sherry Frazer taught math, biology labs, and ceramics. She’s very interested in what comes next.

Cynthia Motian McGuirl works with paper, metal, and fiber utilizing the techniques of printmaking, stitching, and bookbinding. She has developed a back-and-forth repertoire between creating narrative images and creating objects. McGuirl believes that there is a meditation that happens in the rhythmic ‘craft’ work that helps the ‘art’ work to evolve. Recent exhibits include Lies, Truths & Mysteries at the NoRo Gallery, People On the Move: A Human Crisis at the Jonathan Frost Gallery, and When Will We Ever Learn at the Yvette Torres Gallery, all in Rockland, Maine. McGuirl is a teaching artist who works with adults and in local schools. She was recently a Visiting Artist at the Print Studio of the University of Maine at Orono.

Cost: Free ($10 suggested donation)