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6/28/01 THU 16:06 FAX 212 750 0352 COWTAN & TOUT   002

LASER PAPERS

JACK LENOR LARSEN

Haystack: Pivotal Transformations

I may be the only one around who was at those first Maine Coast Artist openings from 1952. In Camden and Rockport, with jerry rigged lighting and a great deal of enthusiasm, somewhere between avant guard and down home.

Fran Merritt was the one who talked it up, brought in some of the Haystack faculty, and certainly helped with the installation and making it all happen. I remember young Nevelson showed his sculpture at Rockport, and this is how I met his famous mother, Louise who, curiously enough, came into sculpture to see what your son was trying to do. Poor man!

These shows then were so very important because there were no galleries or small museums or art centers to show such work. The storefronts and halls we borrowed for the occasion became the art scene, such as it was 50 years ago. Maine, then, was like another country- totally unscathed, tradition bound, remote, very far Down East, and desperately poor. It was the only state still losing population. The Merritt's rallied to this frugality, this sense of beginning with a pioneering attitude. The problems became challenges cheerfully met.

Adopted into all of this, I rallied too. I was young enough then to enjoy being an essential part of something special. I pulled friends and acquaintances, some of them famous, into the act as board members and, particularly as faculty. From 1952 these summer sessions at Maine gave me time to work on new projects in the open air. I designed heme our famous Jason and Olympia fabrics for Saarinen's Irwin Miller House at Liberty, Maine, and perhaps my