The half-mile trail at Shepards Farm Preserve winds its way past Bernard Langlais sculpture. (Submitted image)

NORWAY — The Western Foothills Land Trust (WFLT) has announced “The Clothesline Project,” a series of poetry readings and outdoor art exhibitions to be hung at Shepard’s Farm Preserve, 121 Crockett Ridge Rd., in Norway. The preserve is part of a larger 272-acre conservation area that wraps around Witt Swamp.

Four artists will be selected for a one-person exhibition to be installed outdoors for three weeks between September and December 2019. Selected artists will be paid an honorarium and will participate in a preview opening on Aug. 15 (showing a taste of what’s to come), and will install or hang their work on a 15-foot clothesline.

Diana Arcadipone, of the Folk Arts Studio at Fiber & Vine, is administering the project.

Special attention will be paid to innovative, albeit temporal, works that will sustain the weather during their three-week exhibition. All mediums and concepts will be considered. Artists must live in western Maine permanently or seasonally. For information about applying, visit www.wfltmaine.org. The deadline for submissions is June 25.

The art project is funded in part through a grant from the Onion Foundation to honor 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 – while inspiring resource
conservation and art in our everyday lives.

Last fall, 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 – a pleasurable wander through a former agricultural landscape – provides access to six Bernard Langlais sculptures.

Eventually, WFLT 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.