NORWAY — When the pandemic shut down nearly all businesses and social activities, many people turned to natural spaces to heal and find peace amid a world seemingly turned upside down.

For Norway artist, Mary DeLano, this meant more frequent visits to one of her favorite and close-to-home natural spaces, Western Foothills Land Trust’s Shepard’s Farm Preserve.

Working as a fiber artist, DeLano uses the plants she collects for both dye and patterns using eco-print techniques in her artworks. Throughout the pandemic, she began collecting and experimenting with plants she discovered while connecting with nature at the preserve, providing raw materials and her artistic adventures. Ultimately this led to her creation of a new and transformative body of work to be displayed at the same location her materials derived from, Shepard’s Farm.

DeLano is the first of four local artists to exhibit as a part of The Clothesline Project at Shepard’s Farm. This year marks the second installment of the trust’s artwork series, paying homage to the history of the Penley Clothespin Company, formerly of West Paris. Through this project, WFLT hopes to reinforce the community’s memory of a once huge local industry (wooden clothespins) that will reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has inspired connection to natural landscape and art in our everyday lives.

In 2018, WFLT built a half-mile universally accessible trail at Shepard’s Farm with funding from The Davis Family Foundation, The Stephens Healthcare Foundation, Norway Savings Bank, and the Maine Arts Commission. The trail provides a pleasurable wander through a former agricultural landscape and provides access to six Bernard Langlais sculptures. Eventually the trust would like to add to the permanent outdoor collection at the preserve.

This project, more temporary in scale, will provide an introduction to new artists, new materials, and new concepts of visual art at the preserve.

DeLano’s work will be hung on the 42-foot clothesline this month, to be displayed July 16-26.  The project is being administered by Diana Arcadipone of The Folk Arts Studio at Fiber & Vine in Norway.

The 2021 Clothesline Project is made possible through the generous support of The David Nichols Charitable Trust.

Shepard’s Farm  Preserve is located at 121 Crockett Ridge Road and is part of a larger 272-acre conservation area that wraps around Witt Swamp.  For a listing of upcoming summer programs and events visit: www.wfltmaine.org/programs-1. To learn more about WFLT or to become a volunteer, email: info@wfltmaine.org

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