Haystack Mountain School of Crafts | |
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| Location | 89 Haystack School Dr Deer Isle, Maine |
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| Coordinates | 44°11′18″N68°35′03″W / 44.18820°N 68.58405°W |
| Built | 1961 |
| Architect | Edward Larrabee Barnes |
| Architectural style | Modernist |
| NRHP reference No. | 05001469 |
| Added to NRHP | December 23, 2005 |
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, commonly called "Haystack," is a craft school located at 89 Haystack School Drive on the coast of Deer Isle, Maine.
Haystack was founded in 1950 by a group of craft artists in the Belfast, Maine area, with support from Mary Beasom Bishop. [1] The first director of Haystack was Francis Sumner Merritt, whose wife Priscilla Merritt was also an administrator. [2] It took its name from its original location near Haystack Mountain, in Montville, Maine. [3] The school was located in Montville/Liberty, Maine through 1960, but when it became clear that it needed to move, Mary B. Bishop asked one of its trustees, artist William H. Muir to find a place to move to the Maine coast. Muir and his wife Emily found a property on Deer Isle, which Bishop purchased to facilitate building a permanent location. [4] [5] [6] In 1961 the school was moved to its current campus on Deer Isle. [7]
The campus and buildings were designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, and consists of 34 buildings clustered onto 8 acres (3.2 ha) of the more than 40-acre (16 ha) campus property, located on Stinson's Neck, an appendage extending southeast from the main part of the island of Deer Isle. The buildings were designed by Barnes to fit well within their environment, and to provide views of the surrounding land- and seascape. [8] In 1994, the school campus won the "Twenty-five Year Award" from the American Institute of Architects. [9] The award is given to a structure (or in this case, several structures) whose construction and original intent have withstood the test of time. The school was honored again in 2005 when the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places. [10]
Since 2004, the school has published a quarterly newspaper, Haystack Gateway. [11] In 2016, Craft in America included Haystack in its list of significant craft places in America. [12]
In 2019, curators Rachael Arauz and Diana Greenwold organized In the Vanguard: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts 1950-1969, a major exhibition and scholarly catalogue addressing the school's early history. [13] [14]
Haystack offers summer workshops of one to three weeks in blacksmithing, clay, fibers, glass, graphics, metals, and wood. The school has no permanent faculty; the workshops are taught by visiting professors and artists from around the United States. Since 2012, Haystack has operated an annual two-week artist residency (supported by funding from the Windgate Charitable Foundation) during which artists may move among studios and receive technical assistance. [15] Haystack does not award academic degrees, although credit for their workshops can be earned through Maine College of Art & Design and the University of Southern Maine. [16]
In addition to offering traditional tools and facilities for crafts, Haystack is a member of MIT's Fab Lab network. [7]
Portland is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area has a population of approximately 550,000 people. Historically tied to commercial shipping, the marine economy, and light industry, Portland's economy in the 21st century relies mostly on the service sector. The Port of Portland is the second-largest tonnage seaport in the New England area as of 2019.
Deer Isle is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,194 at the 2020 census. Notable landmarks in Deer Isle are the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Stonington Opera House, and the town's many art galleries.
John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style. He designed more than 1,000 buildings in the state of Maine.
Edward Larrabee Barnes was an American architect. His work was characterized by the "fusing [of] Modernism with vernacular architecture and understated design." Barnes was best known for his adherence to strict geometry, simple monolithic shapes and attention to material detail. Among his best-known projects are the Haystack School, Christian Theological Seminary, Dallas Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, 599 Lexington Avenue, the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, and the IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue.
Ferne Jacobs, who is also known as Ferne K. Jacobs and Ferne Kent Jacobs is an American fiber artist and basket maker.
Richard Harned is an American contemporary kinetic sculptor and glass artist. Harned trained under Dale Chihuly in the 1970s at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) with other artists of the American Glass Movement, including Bruce Chao and Tom Kreager. In 1974, he established the Abstract Glass studio in Providence, Rhode Island. After graduating from and teaching at RISD, he also taught glass art at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and the University of Tennessee. He joined the faculty of Ohio State University in 1982.
Arline Fisch is an American artist and educator. She is known for her work as a metalsmith and jeweler, pioneering the use of textile processes from crochet, knitting, plaiting, and weaving in her work in metal. She developed groundbreaking techniques for incorporating metal wire and other materials into her jewelry.
Ellen M. Wieske is an American artist, metalsmith, goldsmith, curator, educator, author, and an arts administrator. She is the deputy director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Wieske is known for her wirework pieces.
Albinas "Albin" Elskus (1926–2007) was a Lithuanian-American educator and artist, known for creating works of stained glass.
Charlotte Agell is a Swedish-born American author for young adults and children who currently lives in Maine. Her second novel, Shift, was featured on the front cover of the Brunswick Times Record in October 2008. In addition to working on novels and children's books, Charlotte Agell also teaches in Maine.
Lissa Hunter is an American artist known for her basketry, drawing and mixed media work. Her professional activities include teaching, writing, and a long association with Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine as teacher, student and trustee.
Cristina Córdova is an American-born, Puerto Rican sculptor who works and lives in Penland, North Carolina.
Katherine Gray is a Canadian glass artist and professor of art at California State University, San Bernardino. Her work includes vases, candelabras, and goblets, and some of her pieces are designed to fit inside each other.
Eleanor Moty, is an American metalsmith and jewelry artist. Her experimentation with industrial processes, such as photoetching and electroforming, was revolutionary in the field of American art jewelry in the 1960s and 1970s.
Tara Cooper is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo and a member of the Loop artist collective. Cooper received her BFA, BEd from Queen's University, in 1994 and her MFA with a specialization in print media from Cornell University in 2008. Accomplishments include residencies at Anderson Ranch Art Center, The Wassaic Project and Landfall Trust, as well as arts council grants from Ontario and Canada.
Emily Muir was an American painter, architect and philanthropist. After attending Vassar College and the Art Students League of New York, she and her husband moved to Maine in 1939. Mostly known as a portrait painter, Muir painted the official portrait of Senator Margaret Chase Smith for the Maine State House, but early in her career, she and her husband toured throughout Europe and South America painting dioramas for a steamship company. Her watercolor painting, Orchard Street, is part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and she has works in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Portland Museum of Art. Self-taught as an architect, Muir designed over 45 homes in or around Crockett Cove near Stonington, Maine. As a philanthropist, she was involved in finding a permanent home for the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle and donated the Crockett Cove Woods Preserve and Wreck Island to The Nature Conservancy.
James Frederick Woell, born in Evergreen Park, Illinois in 1934, was an American metalsmith who specialized in found object assemblages in his metal work. He received a degree in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1956, and would later serve in the United States Army for two years. Upon returning to Illinois after his time in the military, Woell went back to Urbana-Champaign to pursue a BFA in art education. It was during this time that Woell was encouraged by his ceramics professor, Don Frith, to take a metals class at the school with metalsmith Robert Von Newman who, at the time, was considered to be one of the best in his field. Woell decided to take the class, and proceeded to enjoy it so much that he would attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, something Neumann had recommended to him, and received his MFA in metalsmithing in 1962.
Ronald Hayes Pearson was an American designer, jeweler, and metalsmith. He lived for many years in Rochester, New York and later, Deer Isle, Maine.
Francis "Fran" Sumner Merritt (1913–2000) was an American painter, teacher, and arts administrator. He was a co-founder and first director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Mary Nyburg was an American potter known for creating functional pottery and her involvement in the American Craft scene.
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