Young at Art Schoolteacher helps women recapture childhood freedom of expression

In a crowded workroom off Route 3 in Bar Harbor, about a dozen women circle around a long strip of white sailcloth. Paintbrush in hand, black paint thick on the tips of the brush, each woman paints a line, a spiral, a jag, concentrating intently, then moves on. The cloth, about 10 feet long, and contoured at the end like the head of a fish, begins to fill with the black patterns. Still, the women continue their slow walking and painting until there’s only room for narrow lines and small dots on what is to become a welcoming banner. The women have made their marks.

Only one woman doesn’t move. The captain of this painting vessel, Carol Shutt stands at the head of the table, watching. “Keep going,” she encourages. “You can do it, you’re grown-ups.” “What if we don’t want to be grown-ups?” protests a tall, stately, brush-wielding woman.

Being a grown-up – or a kid – is very much on the minds of the women who attend Shutt’s open studio evenings. By day, for nearly 15 years, this unassuming woman sporting a gray sweater speckled with tiny white buttons has been the art teacher at the Mount Desert Elementary School in Northeast Harbor, working with children from kindergarten to eighth grade. By night – or at least come Tuesday nights – she offers the freedom of childhood expression to grown-ups.

Assembled are women who have been attending for years, and those who are there for their second time. Men are welcome, and have come; they just don’t stay. Among the women, there are at least one professional artist and one graphic designer, a museum director, gallery director and more than a few women who have not held a brush since their own days in elementary school art classes.

No outsider could tell the difference. Shutt’s techniques are about spontaneity, exploration and surprise. A few of the results of her process can be seen in an exhibit at Shaw Jewelry on Main Street in Northeast Harbor from March 10 through 31.

The banner, which will hang outside the Shaw gallery, is part of the warm-up to surprise. Learning to make one’s own gestures, working without color, says Shutt, helps one to explore. Another week, Shutt might set out a palette of primary colors and encourage the women to discover the lavender, rose and teal hues they can create by mixing red, blue, yellow and white, enlivening the banner with color.

Sharing is essential. When Shutt decided to open her studio to adults for these evening sessions, it wasn’t as a teacher, but as a collaborative artist. Yes, there’s a fee, mostly to cover materials. And yes, there’s guidance from Shutt. But really, says this slight woman with grave eyes, “it’s about what we all get from each other. We’re learning by collaboration, sharing, being in the presence of each other.” Women bring in materials, especially Judith Bradshaw Brown, who lives a few paces away above a treasure trove of objects known as the Hulls Cove Tool Barn. Tonight, Brown has contributed a tin box filled with letter stamps.

Happenstance is the order of the day. Mistakes lead to surprises, innovations, excitement. In cutting a large sheet of painted paper to fold into a book, one woman cuts too far. “You’re just like a fifth-grade boy!” laughs Shutt as she shows Roberta Sharpe – old enough to be making this book for her twin granddaughters – how to glue a piece of tissue paper over the two cuts, so as to bridge the error. “This will be your favorite spot in the book,” Shutt assures Sharpe, who is only here for her second night, and looking doubtful. But when Sharpe finishes her cutting and proceeds to accordion fold her 30-by-24 inch page of bold color into a 12-page book of color and collage, she is justly proud. Eyes from infancy to near blindness will take pleasure in the energy expressed in Sharpe’s artist book.

Between happenstance and collaboration, it’s clear that these evenings are about letting go. Beautiful materials are torn; lyrical moments of color cut into. The protective ownership most artists experience as they work is not for this workroom, piled with papers, beads, fabrics and artwork. These nights are for play, finding the spontaneity with line and color and material that most lost sometime in grade school.

Like Sharpe, tonight most people are working on creating collages that later will be folded to become an artist’s book. Pages covered with gestural marks, color, tissue paper, Scrabble letters, strips of music and other odd papers, are works of art; it’s hard to imagine slicing into them. Artist Susan Drier agrees. With musical lines coming through like old memories, she found herself reluctant to cut. But she did. “It’s important to learn to let go,” she says. “It’s OK to love it and then move on. The intent is to be surprised, to see something in a new way. That informs the work we do later with more intention.”

Meanwhile, others are working on their own projects. Brown is making a jewelrylike ornament using beads and washers. Susan Lerner, director of College of the Atlantic’s Blum Gallery, is busily painting large swathes of material in continued pursuit of dressing a large-scale sculpture that first appeared in a play by Dreier. Artist Sydney Roberts, who had been a painter and sculptor and is now becoming a graphic designer while also running the Great Harbor Maritime Museum, is busily adding gold paint to ping-pong balls she has strung like a necklace and covered with charts and blue tissue paper for a necklace or strand reminiscent of the sea, enriching the already rich depths of her beads.

Nearby sits Sarah Murray, an art major who is now working at Great Harbor Maritime Museum. She has carved up an old book to create a little altarlike space inside, a testimonial to her recent wedding. “It’s hard to make yourself play,” she says, critically examining her work and threatening to throw out most of what she has put in. And that’s OK, too. Because even though these nights of risk-taking and surprise are about learning, the visuals made by happenstance at Shutt’s workplace, now on display at the Shaw Gallery, are something to behold.

Shutt can be reached at carolshutt@adelphia.net. Donna Gold helps families and communities record their stories. E-mail donna@personalhistory.org.