fleeting vacation, or: the Maine event (because who can resist a pun on Maine? Even the locals do it.)

Well, I’m back from Maine — lobstered, crab-caked, cabined, oceaned and fished out. And, although I truly enjoyed the trip, I have to also say I am relieved to be in a largely bug-free environment again. For a few days, the ceilings of our cabin were swarming with flying ants, whose prevalence made it a little hard for me to sleep with ease of mind (and also caused my flip-flops to be christened as battle-axes-without-peer-and-baptized-in-the-flames-of-combat in the war against things-with-two-many-legs).

Although I object in principle to the thought of swimming where things live — i.e. the ocean, the lake, or the river: any place which is not heavily chlorinated — I did go to the ocean and meet with my friend Liz and her boyfriend Jordan and we swam in the ocean and hung out at the beach. Even though I could not see my feet and there were super creepy amounts of seaweed and I saw a crab and some kids caught a lobster which definitely means that things were living under my very feet as we swam and possibly swimming around and contemplating taking a tiny nibble out of my calves — I swam. So. One fear faced on one day, who knows how many days and fears to go? I can do it. Also, I ate a lobster roll, which is highly delicious.

Lobsters “in the rough” (as artist Kim Villard dubbed them) require a complicated coordination to eat. But are also as delicious as their simple lobster-roll brethren. It takes a lobster 7 years to reach eating size, and the entirety of Boothbay Harbor, ME, is carpeted with colorful markers to lobster pots. Also, did you know that the largest lobster ever caught weighed 44 pounds and stretched to 41 inches long? That’s nearly 4 feet! Somewhere out there, in the ocean, there may be lobsters as tall as a 10-year-old, and weighing as much as my golden retriever.

If this monster lobster, about half the size of the largest ever caught, is estimated to be 50 years old, then that huge lobster, the nearly-four-feet-long one? It must’ve been nearly a hundred. Those Canadians, way back in ‘77, did they eat the largest, most ancient lobster? Can you stuff and mount a lobster? ’cause that would make one AWESOMELY WEIRD wall decoration.

Meeting artist Kim Villard and seeing her Maine studio (she and her husband, Phillipe, partner to create artwork, spend the summers in Maine, and the rest of the year in the south of France where he’s from) comprised another highlight of Maine. I learned about white-line woodblock printing, which uses watercolors instead of oil-based inks, many many colors, and creates prints that are one-of-a-kind. Because of the way ink is applied, the process is much more painterly, and there are variations to every piece they create. Pretty sweet. I can’t wait to try it!

Although I have to admit, after those few weeks of “go to my full time job come home eat dinner go to the studio and work until 11 p.m. go to bed get up and do it again” to finish our joint show for Cafe Beracah in Lebanon, I’m tired. I’m ready for a summer of playing around with ideas, looking into new processes or materials, sketching, and taking silly digital photographs. And less time spent on intense production.

Can it be that the summer is nearly half over? Dear goodness. Where did it go?

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