A California native, Jennifer has taught at the University of Maine-Orono since 2000 where she has served as Director of Creative Writing, co-advisor to The Open Field, and Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies.  She is an award-winning poet and author of seven books of poetry, a book of essays, and a memoir. Her work has been included in two Norton Anthologies and in The Best American Poetry 2002. In 2005 she was granted the Lynda Hull Poetry Award from Denver Quarterly, and in 2015 her book The Open Secret was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams award and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. For this PNA, she will be discussing her book For the Good of All, Do Not Destroy the Birds, a blend of literary criticism and memoir that recounts a life spent in the company of birds and poems, intimately attuned to the mysteries of singing.

This will be an in-person event with special host Carl Little, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Marc's art depicts mostly maritime or mountain themes, as this is where he spends most of his time enjoying the outdoors. An artist for most of his life, he holds bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art. Marc spends much of the year traveling, sometimes doing weekend art festivals, and exhibiting through select galleries. Traveling overseas enhances his artist's perspectives of the world. Marc also produces The Bar Harbor Fine Arts Festivals.

This will be an in-person event, but can also be attended online. We will send a Zoom link to those who choose the online option when reserving space. There will be an artist reception at 6pm.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Rebekah Raye is surrounded by nature in her Maine home, and it inspires the artwork she does every day. "It doesn’t seem to matter where I am," she says, "the sight of an animal, near or far calls my attention. They are consistently in my dreams and daily thoughts. It is a celebration of their lives with us that I wish to interpret and share. I am compelled to paint them, sculpt them and love them." 

We are excited and honored to have her with us as the first People-Nature-Art speaker of 2023. Join us in person or online for a wide-ranging conversation with Rebekah Raye, a painter and sculptor who also writes and illustrates children's books including "The Very Best Bed" and "The Secret Pool."

        This monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. All 12 programs in this year’s series are proudly sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. 

    “At Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, we take great pride in partnering with area nonprofits doing important work to keep the community engaged. Wendell Gilley Museum is a wonderful example of this. We are excited to support this special artist series and look forward to the positive impact throughout the region,” says Lisa Parsons, Senior Vice President Regional Marketing .

Australian artist Kate Gorringe-Smith works in contemporary and traditional print media in 2D and 3D form and installation. Her art investigates our relationship with the environment: the threats we create vs our connectedness with it. Kate’s work often references migratory shorebirds to illustrate the environmental connections that link us individually and globally. For her "Overwintering Project" she has asked artists to find, visit, and forge a connection with their local migratory shorebird habitat, then create art prints in response to those visits. Join us for a fascinating talk from Down Under.

This monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. All 12 programs in this year’s series are proudly sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. 

“At Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, we take great pride in partnering with area nonprofits doing important work to keep the community engaged. Wendell Gilley Museum is a wonderful example of this. We are excited to support this special artist series and look forward to the positive impact throughout the region,” says Lisa Parsons, Senior Vice President Regional Marketing Manager.

Bob Duchesne will bring his unique perspective as a birder, birding guide, and journalist to the Gilley for this in-person People-Nature-Art event. He writes widely about birding in Maine, including a weekly birding column for the Bangor Daily News. He served six terms in the Maine House of Representatives, chairing the Environment and Natural Resources Committee and the Inland Fisheries & Wildlife Committee. Currently he serves on Maine Board of Environmental Protection.

This event includes an in-person reception at 5:30pm at the Gilley followed by an in-person presentation, which will also be livecast via Zoom. There is no charge, but reservations are required. When you sign up, please indicate whether you will attend remotely or in person.

This monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. All 12 programs in this year’s series are proudly sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. 

“At Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, we take great pride in partnering with area nonprofits doing important work to keep the community engaged. Wendell Gilley Museum is a wonderful example of this. We are excited to support this special artist series and look forward to the positive impact throughout the region,” says Lisa Parsons, Senior Vice President Regional Marketing Manager.

A California native who continually studied and refined her art skills while making a career of teaching English around the world, Leslie Moore is a full-time poet and printmaker who takes her inspiration from the natural world. Her book, What Rough Beasts, features both art forms. At the Gilley she’ll explore the alchemy that helps her poetry and prints spring from her connection to nature. This event will be livecast via Zoom. Please note: recordings are available only to museum members. We will begin at 5:30 with a reception and book signing, followed by the program at 7pm. Please indicate which you will be attending when you sign up. There is no charge to attend.

This monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. All 12 programs in this year’s series are proudly sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. 

“At Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, we take great pride in partnering with area nonprofits doing important work to keep the community engaged. Wendell Gilley Museum is a wonderful example of this. We are excited to support this special artist series and look forward to the positive impact throughout the region,” says Lisa Parsons, Senior Vice President Regional Marketing Manager.

Painter Mary Brooking celebrates what she sees in nature and aims to create spaces that interact with human senses on a primitive level and test the balance between reality and abstraction. She employs reduction rather than embellishment, distilling elemental truths about the places she paints through interactive color, texture and form.

Brooking will be online with the Wendell Gilley Museum on Tuesday, May 16, as the museum’s People-Nature-Art presenter in an online-only program that begins at 7 p.m. There is no fee to attend, but registration is required.  

Most, but not all, of her work is inspired by Maine landscapes and she works exclusively in acrylics. “I use many layers of paint," she says, "often obliterating elements as the painting progresses, challenging myself always to distill and reduce the image to its exact essence and nothing more.”

She will discuss her process, inspiration, evolution as an artist, and connection to the Maine landscape in a conversation with museum director Sean Charette. A mid-career artist who lives and works in Westbrook, her paintings are in ollections in the United States, Canada, France and New Zealand. She has exhibited widely in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Ohio and New Mexico, and exhibits regularly at Casco Bay Artisans in Portland, Maine and Art 3 Gallery in Manchester, New Hampshire. 

This monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

A modern master of bird carving, Mark McNair, shares his art at the Gilley as part of the our free monthly series, People-Nature-Art. On June 20, he and his two carver sons will share stories, visuals and their inspirations in a presentation that begins at 7p.m. at the Gilley. This will be followed by a public reception with the artists. There is no charge to attend either event, but registration is required. The presentation will also be livestreamed; please indicate whether you will attend in person or virtually when you sign up.

The following day, June 21 from 1 to 3 p.m., they will give an in-person carving demonstration at the Gilley. No fee and no registraton required for this.

Mark McNair specializes in waterfowl and shorebird decoys, weathervanes, and related folk art. His work is held in numerous prominent decoy collections both public and private, including the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, the deWitt Cottage in Virginia Beach, and The Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art in Salisbury, Maryland.

Sons Ian and Colin are also active carvers: Ian in Exmore, Virginia, where he is a partner in High ‘N Dry, a company specializing in industrial grade chest waders;  and Colin in Boston where he also works for Copley Fine Art Auctions

These special events, like all the museum's People-Nature-Art offerings in 2023, are sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

A modern master of bird carving, Mark McNair, and his son Ian McNair who is also a professional carver, will share insights and observations at the Gilley during a live demonstration of their art on Wednesday, June 21, from 1 to 3 p.m. This is a rare opportunity in Maine to connect with top U.S. carvers. No fee and no registration required.

Mark McNair specializes in waterfowl and shorebird decoys, weathervanes, and related folk art. His work is held in numerous prominent decoy collections both public and private, including the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, the deWitt Cottage in Virginia Beach, and The Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art in Salisbury, Maryland.

He has been carving and making decoys for more than half a century. After leaving his alma mater, Rhode Island School of Design, in the 1970s, he worked with antiques and carved wooden signs in his native Connecticut. During this time he was introduced to antique decoys by the Voorhees family and quickly took to the craft. He and his wife, Martha, now live and carve on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, between the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean.

Of their three children, sons Ian and Colin are also active carvers. Ian carves in Exmore, Virginia and is a partner in High ‘N Dry, a company specializing in industrial grade chest waders. Colin also works for Copley Fine Art Auctions, in Boston.

This special event is part of the McNairs' visit to the Gilley as part of the free monthly People-Nature-Art series in 2023 sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank and Trust.

Author and naturalist Susan Hand Shetterly will delve into what she calls “the landscape of home” on Tuesday, July 11 at at 7pm at the Gilley as the museum’s People-Nature-Art presenter for July. There will be a book signing immediately afterward. The presentation happens live at the museum and will be simultaneously livestreamed. As always, People-Nature-Art presentations are free and open to all, but registration is required.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

In her newest book, “Notes on the Landscape of Home,” Shetterly explores in a series essays what it is to live in a Down East coastal town and to pay attention, over time, to what it offers of land, water, wildlife, and neighbors, taking her cue from Henry David Thoreau and Wendell Berry, who advocate for the virtues of staying in one place, believing that as we delve deeper into the landscape of home, we learn to read the world. 

A resident of Surry, Shetterly has lived on the coast of Maine for most of her life. She writes about wildlife and wild lands, has worked as a wild bird rehabilitator. She is an award-winning writer of books and articles for magazines and newspapers. Among the many things she has written about are the reestablishment of the bald eagle population in Maine, the reintroduction of the American turkey, the turkey vulture’s northward trend, shorebird migrations, the bluefin tuna and the humpback and right whales in the Gulf of Maine, counting alewives along a stream in her town in the spring, seaweed cultivation in a bay and the rebirth of a forest.

Award-winning science writer and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ackerman visits the Wendell Gilley Museum on Tuesday, August 8, as the museum’s People-Nature-Art presenter for August at 7pm. There will be a book signing and reception beforehand at the museum beginning at 5:30pm. The presentation happens live and will be simultaneously livestreamed. As always, People-Nature-Art presentations are free and open to all, but registration is required.

Ackerman’s new book, “What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds,” was released June 13. She is also the author of “The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think,” “The Genius of Birds,” “Birds by the Shore,” and “Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity.”

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

Printmaker and biologist Kathleen Walsh Buchanan will be at the Gilley on Tuesday, Sept. 19, to share her collagraphic printmaking and its inspiration in the natural world. There will be a public reception at 5:30pm, followed by Buchanan's presentation at 7pm.  Both events are free, but registration is required.

“At first glance, biology and printmaking seem to have little common ground, but much of my training as a scientist has served me extremely well as an artist,” she says. “Both disciplines require skill at observing the environment, at not only looking but seeing what is going on around you. I look at biology and art as two dialects in the same language, different ways to communicate what you have learned about the nature of things, about the truth of your experience.”

A collagraph is a hand-made print generated off a printing plate that is a collage of various material. For her pieces, Buchanan starts with a sturdy backing board of plain masonite panel, then glues down shapes of Bristol paper on this board that delineate the major elements of her design. Then she paints over that paper with acrylic gel mediums to add texture and detail to the design, and to prevent the Bristol paper from being saturated with ink when it’s time to print.

Before becoming a full-time printmaker in 1999, she was educated and employed as a biologist. As an undergraduate at Tufts University, she majored in biology while nurturing her creative skills with as many studio art courses as she could fit into her schedule. After getting a master’s degree in wildlife biology at the University of Alaska she renewed her efforts at studio art with a focus on printmaking and now lives – and makes art – in Rockland, Maine.

“My connection to the natural world, my role as a mother, and my own sense of self all find expression in my images,” she says. “I enjoy looking at landscapes and their inhabitants not only as appealing composition subjects, but also as metaphors for our human experience.  Collagraph printing, with all its intricacy and subtlety, is a fascinating medium to use in the communication of these ideas.”

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

Enjoy a birding expedition through William Shakespeare’s plays and poetry with artist Missy Dunaway whose independent art project “The Birds of Shakespeare”  will catalog every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poems. Dunaway will be at the Gilley on Tuesday, Oct. 10 for a 5:30pm reception and a 7pm presentation as the museum’s October People-Nature-Art presenter.

Each month, Dunaway releases a painting of one bird with an accompanying essay that analyzes how the species features in Shakespeare’s world.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

John K. Putnam, a full-time nature and landscape photographer based on Mount Desert Island, will be the November People-Nature-Art presenter at the Wendell Gilley Museum on Tuesday, Nov. 14. There will be a 5:30pm reception followed by a presentation at 7pm that will be offered in-person as well as livecast online. All events are free but registration is required.

From 2006 to 2014, Putnam worked as a photographer in New York City producing work for publishing companies and magazines as well as photographing high-end events, all while spending every vacation traveling and photographing across five continents, 20 states, and more than 30 national parks. He moved to Mount Desert Island in 2015.

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

Printmaker and mixed media artist Sara Tabbert – a past Acadia National Park artist in residence – joins us from her home studio in Fairbanks, Alaska as December’s People-Nature-Art presenter at the Wendell Gilley Museum on Tuesday, Dec. 12 in an online-only presentation at 7pm. Free but registration is required.

Tabbert’s large-scale public art commissions can be found throughout Alaska and her work is housed in public collections through the state and far beyond. In early 2020, the Alaska State Museum presented a solo exhibit of her recent work.

 She has been awarded grants from the Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. In addition to residencies in the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Italy, Tabbert has been an artist-in-residence through the National Park Service in Denali, Zion, Isle Royale, the Chilkoot Trail, and Acadia National Park. She has been selected as a 2024 resident fellow in the Windgate ITE program at the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia.

​People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature. Each session for 2023 is sponsored by our friends at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.

RESCHEDULED to Wed., Jan. 24 -- 6pm in-person reception & 7pm in-person and online presentation

The first People-Nature-Art of 2024 features Project Puffin's "Seabird Sue” Schubel, who paints decoys at Audubon’s Seabird Institute based in Bremen, Maine, but not decoys intended for hunting; her creations help attract birds to breeding colonies.

The arc of the year now sees her in the field during the spring and summer, working with researchers on the seven Maine seabird islands managed by Audubon. Fall and winter is time to send social attraction tools (sound systems and decoys) to other projects around the world. Over many years, Sue has been with Audubon as a seasonal island supervisor and researcher, a volunteer coordinator and instructor at the Hog Island Audubon Camp, and an outreach educator reaching thousands of kids in the mid-coast. Prior to settling down in a hand-built house in Maine, she lived the life of a travelling biologist/paleontologist/artist/carpenter and explored islands from Polynesia to Iceland. 

This free in-person event will be simultaneously livecast. There will be a 6pm reception for Sue before her presentation which begins at 7pm. This is rescheduled from its original date of Jan. 16 due to a storm.

Artist-Conservationist Rose Tanner joins the Gilley online for February’s People-Nature-Art presentation. Rose is an award-winning artist based in Vancouver, B.C., who loves the outdoors and studying birds. She is dedicated to portraying her subjects using traditional oil painting techniques.

As a professional artist, Rose Tanner has dedicated years to the arts and is constantly seeking new and innovative ways to develop new skills. She believes it’s her attention to their inner being that gives them their lifelike quality in her paintings. She says, "If my paintings can remind you of how extraordinary, how diverse and how truly beautiful nature is then I have done my work."

Rose travels widely to find her subjects, and she is active in supporting endangered birds and their habitat. She is a signature member of The Federation of Canadian Artists.

This is an online-only event, with Rose Zooming in from her home studio in Canada.

People-Nature-Art is monthly series brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.

Maine Master Naturalist Karen O. Zimmermann is the People-Nature-Art presenter at the Gilley for March. As a naturalist and artist, Karen creates not just for her own pleasure, but to share stories. By presenting small details in watercolor she invites viewers to look at all nature has to offer more deeply, taking home new insights that they may not otherwise have noticed, and to perhaps look differently at what is right under their feet and in their own backyard.

Inspired by naturalists including Maine botanist and illustrator Kate Furbush, Karen spends most days hiking, observing, learning about plants, and painting. She combines natural history notes with sketches from field observations, capturing the spirit of a living entity and its sense of place. For her, merging visual and verbal is a way to gain an understanding of the plant or animal in front of her, and its place in the world around us.

On March 26 at the Gilley, she will share how drawing is a way to deepen one’s understanding of nature, and to see details often overlooked. In addition to being a Maine Master Naturalist, Karen is a Registered Maine Guide, watercolorist, and nature journal instructor.