Artist shows Christmas card works in Orono

ORONO – Arline K. Thomson has inspired others through her art for more than 70 years. In honor of her remarkable life and talent, Dirigo Pines Retirement Community is hosting “Seventy-One Years of Christmas Cards, 1935-2005,” an art exhibit.

A native of Methuen, Mass,, Thomson started her artistic career at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She worked in New York City for many years in the advertising field and also in fabric design and book illustration.

Coming to Old Town when her husband, Robert B. Thomson, joined the University of Maine facility as a professor of political science and the first director of the UM Honors Center, Arline found a new career with the university as the graphic designer for the Department of Public Information and Central Services, now called the Department of Public Affairs.

Arline K. Thomson has a long-held love of the landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic. During her more than 30-years career at the University of Maine, Thomson captured the character of the campus and the state.

Beginning in 1974, she took trips to London to sketch the historic cityscape. For nearly a decade, Thomson designed and illustrated 10 children’s books.

She officially retired from UM in 1985, but continued working part time for the university until 1992. Through the years, her fine art was exhibited at the University of Maine Museum of Art and throughout the state.

Her 1994 book, “Discovering Elizabethan London: Diary and Sketches,” is based on the 16th-century survey of that city by John Stow. Thomson, a long-time resident of Old Town, now lives in Orono.

After graduating from art school in 1934, she and a group of her classmates made their own Christmas cards. They sent them to each other, and as Thomson shared, each hoped theirs would be the best.

Only one of her classmates from that group, along with Thomson, is still living today. She continued making Christmas cards every year since and is still making and sending them to friends and family who collect them.

“Seventy-One Years of Christmas Cards, 1935-2005” by Arline K. Thomson will be on exhibit in the second floor hallway of the Dirigo Pines Retirement Community Inn in Orono. Contact Dirigo Pines at 866-3400 for information.