A blue jay painted on a tea bag. Bethel Citizen photo by Alison Aloisio

Jane Hathaway with a variety of her creations.

WEST PARIS — Jane Hathaway of West Paris is an artist.

“I had no choice,” she joked, noting that her father, mother and sister have all been artists of one kind or another.

Jane works in a wide range of media, from watercolor and acrylic paints, to wood and gourd carvings, to pulped egg crates to used tea bags.

Her late father, Ellsworth, was a wood carver and furniture maker and her mother, Joyce, painted in watercolors and acrylics.

The Locke Mills native remembers that at an early age, “as soon as I could hold pencil in hand I spent hours at the coffee table coloring and drawing.”

When she attended Telstar High School she took art classes.  As a young adult and mother living in Massachusetts, “I learned watercolors on my own,” she said.

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She finessed what she had taught herself by taking lessons. Her teacher, she said, “got me into oils.”  When she uses pastels, her favorite subject is landscapes, Jane said.

She also ventured into wood carving. Her first creation was a chickadee.

From Massachusetts Jane returned to Maine for a few years and then moved to New Mexico for eight years, which exposed her to new media, including dried gourds. She still uses them, obtaining them already dried from New Mexico. Some of her wood carvings also utilize woods from the Southwest. She crafted a dragon from Rio Grande cottonwood.

Her sister, who lives in New Hampshire, is also an artist and is currently showing her paintings.  Her brother also has artistic talent, though he has not seriously pursued it, Jane said.

Having other artists in the family helped all of them, she said, because if they got stuck in trying to proceed with a creative idea they could “talk it out” with another.

“We feed off each other,” said Jane.

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Another influence of the Southwest can be found in baskets she makes from old nylon lassos. She heats them to bind the coiled rope together.

And more recently, Jane started making bowls from egg crates that she turns back into pulp with water using a blender. She then molds them into bowls and paints them.

One of her most unusual and successful media is used tea bags.

She first got the idea from her sister, who painted new, empty bags with watercolors and pen and ink gave them as gifts.

Jane got her permission to try the bags and use the same media. She likes used ones for the “antiquing” effect they produce.

“People are saving them for me,” said Jane.

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She’s sold more than 3,000 of the tiny creations. Jane said they are popular because they are small and affordable original works of art.

“A lot of people buy them for Christmas and birthday gifts,” she said.  She has also taken orders for them, finding that the Artists’ Covered Bridge in Newry is a popular subject, as well as people’s pet dogs.

Jane sells her work in many places. She’s regularly at the Greenwood Farmers’ Market. She also displays at the Bethel Art Fair, the Wares Fair, the Woodstock Elementary School Craft Fair, Cooper’s Farms in West Paris and many shows across the region.

To learn more about Jane and her work, look for her on Facebook.


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