Sara Weeks Peabody: A Life in Line and Color” opens at the Northeast Harbor Library on Monday, August 2nd and runs through the month. A reception is planned for Tuesday, August 3rd, 5-7 pm. All are welcome.
The exhibition features oils, watercolors (some painted on silk), monotypes, and drawings, as well as two gilded and painted folding screens. Many landscapes of Mount Desert Island and Corea are on view, along with images of Boston, Turkey, and Antartica. “Peabody drew on all her artistic wherewithal to explore her sense of place, from Little Long Pond to the land of the icebergs,” says art writer Carl Little, who helped organize the exhibition.
Peabody was born in Boston in 1926. Her father, Edward Weeks, was editor of the Atlantic Monthly. She took her first life-drawing class at age 11 with sculptor George Demetrios and later studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (in 1946, its first year) and the Cranbrook School of Art.
Curious about the tradition of folding Japanese screens, Peabody learned the techniques of construction and gold and silver leaf application from Yasuhiro Iguchi in the conservation department at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Peabody majored in painting at Sarah Lawrence. She went on to become an art teacher, assistant book editor at Houghton Mifflin, editor of the magazine Current Designs, and research assistant at the Addison Gallery of American Art. She published a children’s book, Tales of a Common Pigeon, in 1960.
Peabody had solo shows in at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, the Boston Atheneum, Pine Manor College, and the Peabody Essex Museum. She exhibited in Maine at Sam Shaw, Wingspread, Judith Leighton, and Wini Smart galleries as well as at the Northeast Harbor, Seal Harbor, and Ellsworth libraries and the Ethel Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic. Her large-scale painting of Mount Desert Island (pictured above) has greeted Northeast Library visitors for many years.
The annual photography exhibit of the Garden Club of Mound Desert is upstairs in our Garden Room from August 19th – September 2nd.
The display features photos taken by GCMD members and submitted to the 2021 GCMD photography show. Each year, a panel of esteemed judges selects the most exemplary photos in each category.
The club’s mission is: to advance gardening among amateurs, to stimulate and increase knowledge of horticulture, to aid in the protection of native flora and fauna and to encourage civic planting. The club also holds a bi-annual Open Garden Day which raises funds for many non-profits on the MDI and beyond. For a list please go to www.gardenclubofmountdesert.org.
