L to R: Tim Shay, Celeste Roberge, Jesse Salisbury, and Kazumi Hoshino. Mark Herrington took the photo.
Originally from Lewiston, Maine, Mark Herrington maintains a home and studio next to a quarry in Franklin. He attended Stringfellow Guitars in North Adams, Mass., in 1979 and the University of Maine in Orono where he studied philosophy in 1979-1980. He began his artistic life making guitars and later was a woodworker. A self-taught stone artist, Herrington seeks to realize “a timeless ideal and an idealized moment” in his sculpture. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Maine as the first artist-in-residence in the Littlefield Gallery Artist-in-Residence program. He has had many group and solo shows, and his public sculptures are sited in diverse locations, including the Maine
Sculpture Trail. Click here to visit Mark’s Website.
Born in Biddeford, Maine, Celeste Roberge lives in South Portland. Roberge is Professor Emerita, University of Florida, where she was Professor of Sculpture in the School of Art + Art History. She received her MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, BFA from Maine College of Art, and BA from the University of Maine. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1979. In 2008, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Maine.
Roberge’s sculptures are featured in numerous collections, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Portland Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Emory University, and Harn Museum of Art. She has received commissions for temporary outdoor sculpture installations, including at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany, and at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.
Roberge’s current studio practice is focused on the use of North Atlantic seaweeds as imagery and material. These works have been featured in the following recent exhibitions: “Women of the Gulf of Maine” at Moss Galleries in Portland; “Shifting Sands: Beaches, Bathers, and Modern Maine Art” at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art; and “A Singularly Marine & Fabulous Produce: The Cultures of Seaweed” at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Roberge is a member of the Maine Seaweed Council. Click here to visit Celeste’s website.
Born on Indian Island, Tim Shay started making three-dimensional work with coaching from his father, Pat Shay, and his friend Stan Neptune during the late 1970s. In 1984 Shay enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts of Santa Fe and majored in 3-D arts. He graduated with an Associate of Fine Arts degree and remained in Santa Fe until 2004, working and living from his art. He received awards for his work while in college and later in professional shows in the Southwest.
In 2004 Shay returned to Maine to continue in the arts. He lives and works on Indian Island. He has shown in regional shows and galleries and has created public artworks in Maine, including commissions at the Portland Children’s Museum, Katahdin Woods and Waters Reception Center, and the Charles Norman Shay Native American Veterans Memorial Park, Omaha Beach Normandy, France. “As an artist, it is important for me to acknowledge the cultural lineage and the creativity that is innate to my people.” Click here to learn more about Tim.
Downeast Sculpture Projects
From 2007 to 2014, sculptor Jesse Salisbury and a remarkable team of volunteers, community members, friends and family organized five international sculpture symposiums: two at the Schoodic Institute in Winter Harbor, two at Fisher Field in Prospect Harbor, and one at the University of Maine in Orono. Every other year for a decade these dedicated and driven individuals solicited and reviewed applications from around the world, maneuvered great chunks of granite (and some basalt), engaged communities, raised funds, and carved and cut, polished and placed a stunning collection of sculptures in the Downeast countryside.
The result is the acclaimed Maine Sculpture Trail, 34 sited works stretching from Bucksport to Eastport, Calais, and Canada—and inland to Orono, Bangor, and Old Town. These sculptures, which are largely abstract in nature, have become part of the landscape, landmarks spied along roads, in parks, on village greens, in front of libraries.
Ten years after the last Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium (SISS) took place, five Maine-based sculptors are working on the Downeast Sculpture Project. This initiative will further the mission of SISS: to bring before the public exciting and compelling sculptural works.
Four of the five artists—Mark Herrington, Kazumi Hoshino, Jesse Salisbury, and Tim Shay—are veterans of SISS while Celeste Roberge is new. All five are well-known in the regional, national and international sculpture field with major commissions and work represented in museums and sited at schools and universities and in public spaces (see bios below).
Once again, Salisbury is leading the project, gathering the group together monthly by Zoom to discuss the work they will be creating. They discuss sources for stone; as was the case with the symposiums, much of it will come from Maine quarries. They run ideas by each other and consider how their sculptures will achieve their individual visions.
After coordinating five international symposiums, Salisbury welcomes this new Maine-based format. “There are still many moving parts and deadlines,” he notes, “but we have a longer timeline to develop the work.” He envisions a one-of-a-kind presentation that will provide a fresh and inspiring engagement with contemporary sculpture.
Welcome to Downeast Sculpture Projects 2024.
– Carl Little
Born in Nagoya, Japan, Kazumi Hoshino is a multi-disciplinary artist who has lived and worked in Maine since 2006. Hoshino holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Tohoku University of Art & Design in Japan. Her primary work is sculpture using stone. She cares about the balance and harmony of image with memory, concept, and perception of the actual physical experience. Her work is influenced by the relationship between humans and objects in the natural world.
Hoshino currently shows in galleries and museums and creates public and private commissions in Maine and Japan. In past years, she has been featured in an exhibition at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland and in shows at June LaCombe Sculpture in Pownal. She has created sculptures for the University of Maine at Orono. Click here to visit Hoshino’s website.
Jesse Salisbury grew up in Steuben on the rural and rockbound coast of Washington and Hancock counties and was influenced by the dynamic geology and natural beauty. He began his formal artistic training in Japan, apprenticing with traditional ceramic artists Ren and Mami Katayama. After graduating from Colby College, he studied with a variety of artists in the U.S. In the late 1990s he returned to Japan to work with contemporary sculptors Katsumi Ida and Atsuo Okamoto and others.
Salisbury worked as a professional assistant and translator at the Yonago International Sculpture Symposium in Tottori, Japan, in 1998. After that experience he built a studio on family land in Steuben and experimented with local stones. The next decade he dedicated to the creation of one-of-a-kind stone sculptures in a variety of scales. He also began to travel as an invited artist to international sculpture symposia.
In 2005 Salisbury founded the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium. After a decade of managing this major public art event, he changed his focus to developing his own sculpture projects on a larger scale and in the public realm, in projects that fuse landscape and art and require collaboration and efficiency. His current work is influenced by the natural world, including the way water wears away stone over time, the beauty and texture of a curved split stone, and the visual power of balanced weight on a large scale. Click here to visit Jesse’s website.
Newsletters and Instagram
We will be posting news and in-process photos as the project progresses in our monthly newsletters and on Instagram.