Paulus Wanrooij peered out his workshop’s window, coated with a thin layer of sawdust, to see five cars jammed into the few parking spots in front of his house.
“I’ve never seen so many people in one day,” Wanrooij mused.
Wanrooij’s business, Paulus Fine Furniture, is located down a long, narrow dirt road on Harpswell Neck, just across from the Widgeon Cove Trail. Wanrooij has been working out of the location since 2008, crafting pieces such as the Oceana table tucked away in a back room or the handmade cabinet he proudly displayed.
Mary Robinson, an Orr’s Island resident, and Donna Chale, of Brunswick, marveled at the table made of walnut, maple and sycamore while stopping by the workshop on July 13 as a part of this summer’s Harpswell Open Studio Tour.
“There are a number of artists I didn’t even know existed in Harpswell, so I thought, what an opportunity to get a chance to learn about more interesting people,” Robinson said about the tour. “What a perfect thing to do on a nice weekend in Harpswell.”
Wanrooij’s studio was No. 4 of 24 locations on the tour, which included stops throughout Harpswell Neck, the islands, and Cundy’s Harbor. The July 13 and 14 event was the first of its kind in more than a decade, designed to help reconnect the town’s art community.
Harpswell has a long history of creatives, ranging from lobstermen carving duck decoys and building ship models during the long winters to the realist Maine landscapes of Stephen Etnier, who lived in South Harpswell, and the lyrical poetry Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote out on Ragged Island.
Neighbors Nancy Grice and Liz Stamey, of Great Island, decided to restart the dormant studio tour after holding an open house two years ago by themselves. Grice, an abstract painter who has lived in town for around 10 years, said “hardly anyone” visited.
“This should be all over town,” Grice recalled the two friends saying afterward. “It’ll be much more fun and have more reason for people to come.”
The pair planned tirelessly. One of their first steps was to gauge interest from other artists in town with an open call. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
“Both of us were kind of surprised at how many people got on board this year,” said Stamey, a potter and seven-year Harpswell resident. “I want to know who everybody is, and I want the community to know we’re here, too.”
The friends said they did not know the best way to organize the tour, so they just “jumped in.” They decided to keep the tour “purposely unstructured” to determine what would work and what could be improved for future events.
The studio tour was last held in the early 2010s under the auspices of the Harpswell Art & Craft Guild, a collection of studios and galleries that hosted tours for more than two decades.
“The Harpswell arts community is always here and changing,” said Susan Horowitz, who has run Ash Cove Pottery for 39 years and started the guild. “It’s just been a place where people have been attracted to the beauty and responded to it.”
Horowitz sat on a chair in her pottery studio beside a pile of labeled manila folders filled with guild brochures, logo designs and art tour maps. She first hosted a holiday open house in 1986. The next year, she invited fellow artists to show with her. That was the start of what was then called the Harpswell Craft Guild.
“It was always about promoting who was here and promoting what Harpswell had to offer,” Horowitz said, flipping through maps dated throughout the mid-’90s. “Harpswell is a hidden gem. People discover it, and we have hidden gems in our hidden gem, so it’s an opportunity for people to appreciate the gems of the artistic community here.”
Horowitz described the guild as an “off-the-cuff” type of organization that was used to promote both artists and the area. It kept evolving, changing its name to the Harpswell Art & Craft Guild in 1999 and expanding to the islands and beyond.
However, as the guild grew, Horowitz said it became more difficult to be a loose organization. She said that it got too big for itself and eventually “imploded.”
Since then, the Harpswell arts community has fragmented while continuing to evolve, with old studios closing and new ones opening. Throughout, the town has remained attractive to creative people because of two qualities: privacy and natural beauty.
Christine Chaffee, an acrylic painter who was showing her work in a pop-up gallery in front of the Itty Bitty Coffee Shop in Harpswell Center, said the tour was successful and personally her best event ever. She also said it was great to see the support of the Harpswell community.
“I feel like in the coming years, I would expect it to possibly even double, so we have a lot of work to do,” Chaffee said after the tour. “It’s almost like there was a pent-up need for an event like this in Harpswell.”
Chale, the visitor from Brunswick, said she enjoyed the tour and learning about the arts in Harpswell. “It’s hard to imagine there are this many things tucked away in the woods,” she said. “It’s really impressive.”
