The next artist of the Month at the Southport Memorial Library is Suzanne Stokes, a professor of art in New Paltz, New York. She has a home in the Boothbay Region with her husband, Boothbay Harbor native  Jim Fossett, when she is not in New Paltz.

 

Her show, "Changing Tides," integrates architecture and human-made structures, a variety of islands, and images of marine and human life to explore how spirituality, ecology, and stewardship shape our contemporary world.

 

Says Stokes, "I am fascinated by coastal confluences, where sea meets land—the ethereal, floating horizon line hovering slightly above land due to light refraction and the earth’s curvature. These liminal spaces embrace fluid thresholds between moments in time and states of being. 

"This series of monotypes investigates water as substance and metaphor, and addresses humankind's complicated relationship to this essential natural resource," she continued. "Through intertwined micro and macro perspectives and behaviors- currents, tides, evaporation and flow- I consider how these phenomena mirror human systems of migration, memory, and environmental change. Water is life itself, the pulse of our bodies, our economy, and our planet."

Stokes employs a variety of printmaking, papermaking, and embossing techniques combined with oil-based inks and the printing press to print monotypes made from a series of layered, hand cut, vellum stencils and natural materials. Her hand-cut stencils depict marine life and are also drawn from photographs of various islands and lighthouses around Boothbay Harbor, Southport, and surrounding areas.

She embosses the monotypes with plants from forests in the Mid-Hudson Valley and seaweed from Maine’s Midcoast Atlantic Ocean; a merging land and sea in a tactile meditation on connection and change. Monotypes, she explains on her website, are one-of-a-kind prints where an image made with ink is transferred onto a variety of papers.  The beauty of this technique lies in its spontaneity and its allowance for combinations of many processes that can be printed multiple times in a variety of ways.

Suzanne Stokes has exhibited at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. In 2024, at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta, there were two performances of "Liquid States" by Cave Dogs,   an innovative, shadow-based theatrical performance troupe dating back to 1992 in New York's Hudson Valley. Stokes also serves as a professor and Foundation Coordinator in the Art Department at SUNY New Paltz.

 

For more information on the artist: https://webapps.newpaltz.edu/directory/profile/suzannestokes  and https://cavedogs.org/

   

Southport Memorial Library, at 1032 Hendricks Hill Road, has begun its winter hours: open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with evening hours Thursday nights from 6 to 8.

 

For more information, call the Library at 207-633-2741, southportlibrary.me@gmail.com or visit https://www.southportlibrary.org/