Interview with the Artist

A. Most elements of my art come from my island environment or my own collections of various where with all. Other items come to me from folks who know that I will find a use for bits and pieces of this and that. I purchase glue, polyurethane and some display fixtures.

Q. Which comes first... an idea for your artwork, or the materials to create it?
A. Most concepts come from studying and handling the materials. My studio is very visual and tactile. The colors, textures, and shapes that surround me, motivate the theme of the next piece. Addressing a plan and then identifying the materials doesn’t evoke the same creative energy.

Q. What is your art training for this media?
A. I attended Richmond Professional Institute, but changed to Theatre Production at (USM) and Educational Media for my degree. You might see elements of scenery and costuming techniques in my work. As an Educational Media Specialist I encouraged students to dramatize their information with role playing, scenarios, & dioramas, both for understanding and presentation.

Q. How did you become interested in using natural or recycled materials?
A. My first turn at teaching was on the beach. I taught children how to engineer sandcastle villages using whatever the tide washed in.

We also studied the “gifts of the sea” and made projects of them, too.

Saving scrap items were at first, an affordable addition to my supplies as school, camp and community art programs, had limited funds for materials. This challenge became a passion, and appreciating what might be a piece .. in another place is certainly an attribute of my artistic vision.

Q: So, what is your art?
I learned about art through an awareness of my surrounding habitats: the sea shore and the woods. My cues and my inspirations are a continuous acknowledgement of this, including my appreciation for changes in light and movement. I know that all colors can be combined. Just look at animals, fish, birds, flowers even bugs. If they move, bloom or fly, they are innately balanced and are insights to engineering perfection. Form, design, and color are nature’s pallet of artistic excellence. Emulating this is humbling. Sometimes I even add music.. or at least sound.

Now, I not only gather my thoughts and resources from nature, I also turn my beach finds, and my “garden grows” into new materials that I use in my next creations, which are always an exclamation of gratitude.

It’s a never ending process, an amazing joy. It is my life’s art.

“Living at the sea’s edge, where life renews itself in guided tides,
I become and bequeath before each dawn and dawn again.
Humbly, I receive and reassemble that which I reaffirm,
Wonder Celebration and Promise.”

Thank~you for asking.
Be Always Artful, Maggie