Lupine Crossing New festival blossoms in Deer Isle, Stonington

The lupines were beginning to blossom around Deer Isle and Stonington last week, ensuring that there will be plenty of flowers for viewing this weekend, June 14-16, during the island’s first Lupine Festival.

The festival offers “more than something for everybody,” according to organizers Kyra Alex and Nancy Knowlton, and features events, shows, music and food at different times and locations in the two island towns. The idea for the festival came from an offbeat comment during a quilting class.

“Nancy said, ‘What if we had a lupine festival?”‘ according to Alex. “And it just grew from there.”

Why a lupine festival?

“Well, we had to have something,” Knowlton said.

The island is dotted with areas where lupines grow in profusion, offering a colorful, scenic backdrop for photographs or for contemplation, and that helped to form the idea for the festival. The organizers have created a looking-for-lupines “Lupine Loop” tour, with a map directing visitors to the major lupine areas in Deer Isle and Stonington.

Initially, the plan was to create an island festival for local residents.

“The idea was to give the island people a chance to get out and see each other and have a good time together before they get busy during the summer,” Knowlton said.

Interest in the event has spread throughout the county, however, and the festival will feature musicians, crafters and artists from all over Hancock County and beyond, and participants and visitors from well off the island. They’ve even had a call from a New Yorker who is planning to come up for the festival.

“We’ll have bands from here to Mount Desert Island playing at the street fair,” Alex said. “We’ve got a couple of bluegrass bands, a high school jazz group, and two folk bands. I picked one band up at a yard sale. I had to give them a free cookbook to get them to come.”

The festival has been put together on a shoestring budget, and, according to Alex and Knowlton, has not cost much to organize. All of the work has been done by volunteers. They found people to be in charge of specific event categories who then planned each event.

“All we had to do was to oversee things,” Alex said.

They’ve sold ads for the festival program that not only covered the cost of printing but will help pay for the festival T-shirts. The sale of the shirts will cover the rest of the cost. Even the design for the shirts came without cost. Earlier this year they held a contest to design the festival logo and resident Amiee Eaton came up with the winning design.

“A lot of people doubted that we could do it with no money,” Alex said. “But we have. People have just stepped in and done things. It’s a real community event.”

Because they’ve kept the costs to a minimum, most of the events at the festival are free. There’s no charge for the tables at the island, for the street fair or for the chowder cook-off. There will be a small charge, however, to sample some of the entries in the contest. There also will be food and merchandise booths around Deer Isle village during the street fair, where items will be for sale.

The chowder cook-off, by the way, could become a serious competition, according to Alex, who has been trying to coax local fishermen to enter the contest.

“There could be some good rivalry there,” she said. “They’re getting very serious about this.”

Music is the key to any festival and this one is no exception. The festival will kick off on Friday night with a 7:30 p.m. performance by vocalist Liz Childs and the local combo A-Train at the Reach Performing Arts Center at the new elementary school. There will be a charge for admission for this concert. Tickets will run $14.

During the street fair on Saturday, a variety of county musicians will play 45-minute sets throughout the afternoon. Performers will include Wade Dow, Dave Taylor, Frank Gotwals and Cindy Coombs, Sarah Ulrich, Oceana Castanada, Lori Jablon and more.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, Fire and Nice, a local big band, will perform at the Performing Arts Center, and also will record the concert. The swing band also will feature vocalist April Hansbury.

Other events on Saturday will include an Island Art and Photo Show, quilt exhibit, craft bazaar, a kids’ carnival, children’s performances and open house at the Opera House in Stonington, and an all-island yard sale.

On Sunday, the day will begin with an all-island church service overlooking a field of lupines near the Sunshine Causeway in Deer Isle. There will be an antique auto show at the high school and the art and photo show will continue.

A late addition to the events will be a benefit concert by local singer Jenn Turner. Turner, who is studying voice at the New England Conservatory in Boston, is raising funds to study this summer in Nice, France. The concert begins at 4 p.m. at the performing arts center.

For more information, access www.deerislelupinefestival.com.