Shop Maine Craft presents:
Maine, a Love Story
A solo exhibition of original reduction woodblock prints by Blue Butterfield at the Center for Maine Craft, on view September 2nd-October 31,2023.
Blue grew up on Mount Desert Island and spent her high school weekends hiking and sketching her way through the park. She won an Artist’s Residency abroad from the Educational Foundation and spent her junior year in high school studying and painting Germany’s wine valleys and castles. While studying at Bowdoin College, she had the good fortune of crossing paths with a visiting history professor and nationally acclaimed woodblock artist, Tom Killion. He taught her the basics of woodblock carving and printmaking which she has continued to this day. She also worked with Don Gorvett in 2007 on mastering woodblock reduction printmaking and with Jim Lee at MassArt in 2017 on two plate reduction techniques.
Blue has works in permanent collections around New England including Maine Medical Center, Maine General, and the New England Cancer Center. She also illustrated Robert Tristam Coffin’s Christmas in Maine, published by Islandport Press. She issues a yearly calendar of woodcuts, A Year in Maine, currently in its 17th year of publication.
She now lives in Portland, Maine, and is currently illustrating a book of essays about life in Maine. When she’s not carving or writing, you can find her mountain biking with her husband and dog Hopper and sending care packages to her sons in college.
Every one of these reduction prints holds many pangs of regret when I realize there was something else I should have done earlier in the printing, but have missed my opportunity. It is not called the Russian Roulette of printmaking without reason. Despite the frustrations, or perhaps even because of them, I remain enamored with the process.
VISIT THE CENTER FOR MAINE CRAFT
288 Lewiston Rd West Gardiner, ME 04345
Open Daily: 9am – 6pm
(207)588-0021
center@shopmainecraft.com