Artists
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Artists .
Katia Dermott
Katia Dermott grew up homeschooled on a farm in rural Maine. Raised by the land and the people who worked it, she learned to find beauty in the mundane and the macabre. Her work explores themes of loss, how people and land resist and reclaim themselves in the wake of sudden changes. Using photography, writing, audio, and video, she seeks what’s unseen in the environment, in family, and in her own physical and psychological state. Katia’s practice is a reverence for those who raised her, a worship of the land and the labors of existence.
Her recent work has taken an investigative, post-documentary turn, focusing on PFAS, a classification of carcinogenic chemicals that are poisoning people and places in every corner of the globe. Using text and images, Katia explores the presence of these substances in places and ways of living that many of us think are at a safe distance from the casualties of industry.
Outside of her personal practice, Katia teaches, studio assists, and dreams of going on a vacation. Katia is founder of the Print Swap Project and co-creator of Little Death.
Micah Sanders
Micah Sanders was born into an idyllic suburban family in Utah. He was raised to follow rigid expectations for a happy and successful life, but always found himself diverging from the path laid before him. For Micah, life has been a series of mis-adventures. He has tried Buddhism, college, dentistry, farming, running, marriage, meditation, skateboarding, minimalism, Mormonism, off-grid homesteading, sobriety, teaching, and vagrancy. The only thing that has stuck is making art.
Growing up, Micah drew pictures of his favorite sports players and superheroes, made his own comic books, and carried his sketchbook everywhere. Now he makes monoprints and paintings in addition to drawings. Micah’s art is inspired by his experiences living in a high demand religion and the crises of identity, existential depression, and occasional episodes of sleep paralysis that have plagued him since his departure. His work often includes elements of nature, isolation, and paranormal phenomena.
Micah sometimes enjoys going on walks, reading, watching movies, and does his best to avoid work of any kind. Micah is co-creator of Little Death.
Tabitha Barnard
Tabitha Barnard was raised in a close-knit family in rural Maine, the oldest of four sisters. She works in the photographic medium, exploring themes of femininity, fantasy, and ritual. Her childhood was steeped in fairy and folk tales. Her favorites were the ones about witches, vampires, and unseelie. In the woods and meadows around her childhood home, new stories and rituals created with her and her sisters took place. Landmarks like Fort Baldwin were transformed into Rapunzel’s tower, an abandoned fishing shack–a witch’s hut. For the past decade, she has continued to photograph her sisters and family. As women, they revisit these locations from childhood to experience the same sense of magic. Fairy tales often warned girls not to stray from the path. But in her tableaux, her sisters explore freedom and power. Each becomes a myriad of characters, never confined to just one role. Through theatrical image-making, she weaves a narrative of sisterhood, isolation, blood, and desire.
She received her BFA from Maine College of Art in 2016 and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2021. Tabitha is currently teaching at the Maine College of Art and the University of Southern Maine.
Carrie Gabella
Carrie Gabella is an Ohio-born artist living in Maine. She fell in love with photography as a child in her great uncle’s darkroom. During college she trained in silver-gelatin printing and she now works with cyanotype and other historic photographic processes to create her images. Through photography, printmaking, and interrupted imagery, Carrie explores themes of ancestry, disruption, and yearning for home. By drawing on her personal family history as a source for image-making, she uses color and texture to evoke a sense of shared memory and emotional resonance. Using analog and alternative processes, as well as archival materials, she creates images that reference personal and universal histories. She creates small scale objects in order to invite the audience into a space to reflect on the piece. She also experiments with bookmaking and has a love for clay. Her favorite thing to do is cuddle with her dog, Pippa while listening to music and drinking seltzer.
Wyatt NP
Wyatt NP is a metalsmith, jeweler and enamelist working and living out of Maine. Wyatt is currently the Fine Metals Studio Technician at Maine College of Art and Design, managing their studio operations. He grew up in a small rural town in New Jersey, working with horses from a young age while participating in FFA and 4H within his small agricultural community. These early experiences, coupled with later work as a blacksmith and farrier, led Wyatt to have a strong connection to the natural world.
Wyatt is a maker and craftsperson, whose practice is informed by his farming and agriculture background. Primarily, Wyatt makes belt buckles, with a passion for enameling, and a deep appreciation for motifs of the natural world. He is an avid outdoorsman who loves fishing, hiking, camping and is currently planning on taking some longer backpacking trips with his partner next summer. When he’s not in the studio working, you can usually find him in his fishing kayak on one of Maine’s many lakes, ponds or rivers.
Photo credit: Jess Valenza
Peter Wallis
Peter Wallis begins each work by recalling the walks he’s taken at dusk, through his past and present neighborhoods. He collects ideas from the surrounding environment, looking for scenes that might typically go unnoticed. Wallis sketches and collages together these images, both real and imagined. He brings places from different locations and periods of time into the same space, creating an entirely new landscape. These sketches later serve as references when Wallis creates the final paintings in gouache and charcoal.
Wallis intends for this work to be thought-provoking. Each piece is built from fragments of memories or dreams that evoke feelings of nostalgia of an unfamiliar place. Many of the buildings present in Wallis’ paintings no longer exist. Wallis’ paintings use a visual language of abandoned buildings, figurines, dancers, and skeletons to convey the feeling of being in a dream. The negative space left in many of his works provides room for the viewer to draw personal connections, allowing their own memories to contextualize the stories within each scene. Wallis approaches each painting as if it were a scene from a play with no end, seeking to create a unique landscape, in which the mundane is sacred.