During this visit, we dropped by to see three among the many many artists in Eastport.
On Water Street, we wandered in through the open-doors of Studioworks one morning to find the current artist-in-residence, Richelle Gribble, an outgoing native Southern Californian in her mid-20s, newly arrived for her one-month residency.
Richelle had hit the ground running and on this morning was busy adding pieces to a three-foot-diameter round puzzle, inspired by her eye on the ecosystems of Eastport. Each of the 91 wood pieces is a tiny drawing in graphite, ink, or colored pencil of something she has seen—bald eagles, whales, grasslands, oceans, forests, and local folks around town. All these images connect to form the spirit of Eastport, she describes.
In the back room, Richelle showed us the fruits of her findings from explorations around the water’s edge and hikes overland. She had laid out and categorized her treasures like an archaeologist, with netting, shells, bits of driftwood, plastic, and glass. As she emailed me, she paints these artifacts into “a series of 13 small round paintings of ecosystems. Each round painting will be linked together with string, creating a large network formation.”
Written by Deborah Fallows