PARIS – By carving images of old county maps into granite stones now serving as benches outside the Western Maine University and Community College Center, artist Evan Haynes has recreated the Yankee ethos that very little should be thrown away.
The stones were salvaged from the foundation of the building when it was renovated in 2004. Haynes carved several of the stones, which are now set up outside the college entrance.
“He recycled stones from early history,” Andrea Burns, who sat on the committee that commissioned the art, said. The Main Street building that houses the college was once an exposition hall on the Oxford County Fairgrounds. “…They will echo the pragmatic New England approach to use and reuse materials, with a twist,” she said.
“The site needed some place for people to sit and congregate,” Haynes of North Yarmouth said at the dedication ceremony for the Sitting Walls on Thursday evening. “There was nothing, and I wanted to make something not just beautiful, but functional.”
Haynes researched maps drawn in the 1880s at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, and then used computer-aided drafting to make stencils of the maps, which he then carved into the granite.
The Percent for Art law was passed in 1979 to set aside funds for art in public buildings. One percent of construction budgets is used to buy original art for new or renovated public buildings.
Marge Medd, who is on the advisory board for the center, said the building cost $2.2 million. A photograph by Mark Silber of Sumner was also purchased.
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