DEER ISLE – Lynn Duryea’s first summer at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts didn’t exactly go as expected.

Duryea was interested in pottery classes. All of those classes, however, were filled. So she took a photography class instead.

“I’m forever grateful because I learned a lot and I enjoyed the class,” said Duryea, now a sculptor who works in clay and steel. “I learned a lot about the camera, which has been very beneficial.”

The next summers, those clay classes were open to Duryea. She immersed herself in the school, eventually moved to Deer Isle permanently and launched her career. Although Duryea now teaches in North Carolina, she keeps a studio in the northern part of the island.

The work of 24 artists who, like Duryea, were affected by their experiences at Haystack either as students or teachers, is currently on view in a new exhibit, “Haystack: Creative Process.” The show, which went up earlier this month, closes Sept. 8.

The exhibit also marks the first summer show for the school’s Center for Community Programs facility, which opened last year in Deer Isle village.

The artists in the exhibit range widely in age and experience and use a variety of media. All have been Haystack students or teachers at some time. A few have both taken and taught classes at Haystack, which is an international, nonprofit studio program offering summer workshops to craftmakers and visual artists at all levels.

“We really just wanted to get a range of people with experiences, not necessarily all-stars, but those who had been affected in some way and whose work showed a response,” said Haystack director Stuart Kestenbaum. “It’s people who [for them], their time here was seminal in their development.”

About one-third of the participating artists have some ties to Maine whether they were born here, live and work in the state full time, or spend summers here.

Some of those include Belfast resident and calligraphic artist Jan Owen, glass artist Sean Albert, who went to Morse High School in Bath; Bangor photographer Michael Alpert, Blue Hill potter Mark Bell, quilter Elizabeth Busch of Glenburn, Stonington photographer and book artist Anne-Claude Cotty, Deer Isle resident and blacksmith artist Doug Wilson, installation artist Warren Seelig of Rockland and North Haven painter Eric Hopkins.

Most of the pieces on display come with an artist’s explanation of how Haystack changed the course of their career or helped them to gain confidence in the path they had chosen. Those narratives are, in a way, as powerful as the work itself.

Duryea’s first summer at Haystack was 1972. She returned the next summer and moved to Deer Isle full time in 1974. Eventually she split her time between Portland and Deer Isle, an arrangement which held for 25 years until she decided to go to graduate school in Florida. Duryea now teaches at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and returns to Deer Isle in the summers.

For Duryea, those early years at Haystack changed her life.

“It was the first time I was in a creative community,” said Duryea, who grew up on the Atlantic Ocean in Montauk, N.Y. “It was exciting, eye-opening, intriguing. I saw what that life was like, what was possible.”

Duryea’s contribution to the Haystack exhibit is “Wrap,” a nearly 8-foot tall sculpture made in 2002 of steel, plywood and terra-cotta tile. It would be a stretch, she said, to make any direct correlation between the sculpture and her time at Haystack, but there are references to her interests in the ocean, the effects of time and mechanical elements. The rusty, weathered look of the vertical sculpture, which has visible rivets in places, seems to recall a piling that might have sat in the waters of a harbor in Maine or New York.

“I do think that having grown up on the water and being around Montauk and Deer Isle, I like places where people work, where things have a purpose,” she said.

Overwhelmingly, Kestenbaum said, the former Haystack teachers and students said the chance to experiment with new media, new teachers or new surroundings was what drove them to the center.

“It’s a place where they can think of new ideas,” he said. “That would be a unifying theme, whether they’re teaching or they’re students. They had a chance to try something new or meet someone new.”

The Center for Community Programs will be open Thursday-Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. for the duration of the exhibit.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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