PORTAL (good life) by Heather Lyon

Heather Lyon is an artist with a deep connection to the place we now call the Blue Hill peninsula. She was born on a farm in Blue Hill, Maine to parents involved in the back-to-the-land movement that was inspired by the work of Helen and Scott Nearing. In 2009 she returned to the land that her parents farmed, and built a small off-the-grid solar timber frame using natural building techniques. As a teenager she worked for the homesteader Stanely Joseph, neighbor of the Nearings, who lived in the Nearing's first homestead in Harborside. Stanely taught her to make dried flower wreaths with flowers from his garden. 

Heather has spent time on this piece of land over the years, and is thrilled to create a participatory living sculpture in collaboration with this place. Her work PORTAL (good life) will be installed in the garden made from plants from the site. She and her partner Ken Hoffmann will weave willow planted by Stanley and goldenrod from the Nearing's land into a large circular form under the canopy of an apple tree. Visitors are invited to pass through the portal with curiosity and intention. This sculpture is the most recent piece in a series of portals that Heather has made across Maine including at the University of Southern Maine's Crewe Center for the Arts, The Parsonage Gallery, and Bates College.