Katahdin region, land preservation at center of Museum of Art exhibitions

Homeward Bound, Katahdin Lake, undated oil on canvas by Michael Vermette.

Two exhibitions opening in January 2008 at the Bates College Museum of Art are centered on Katahdin, Katahdin Lake and the Baxter State Park region, a majestic wilderness that has shaped the culture, history and soul of Maine.

A 6 p.m. panel discussion and 7 p.m. reception on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008, open the exhibitions Taking Different Trails: The Artists' Journey to Katahdin Lake and Wildness Within, Wildness Without: Exploring Maine's Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail at the museum, located in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Open to the public free of charge, the exhibitions and associated programming are part of a year-long series at the museum exploring environmental issues such as sustainability, conservation, wilderness and landscape. For more information, please call 207-786-6158 or visit the museum Web site.

The Jan. 17 panel in Olin's Room 104 will examine the history, philosophy, planning and implementation of land conservation in Maine. Scheduled participants are Carl Straub, professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at Bates; Pat McGowan, commissioner of the Maine Department of Conservation; State Rep. Ted Koffman (D-Dist. 35); and Jym St. Pierre, director of the environmental organization Restore: The North Woods.

In Taking Different Trails, 20 contemporary artists show scenes of and from Katahdin Lake, a pristine body of water known for its views of Maine's tallest mountain. Artists such as David Little, Chris Huntington and Abbott Meader took part in a historic 2006 fundraising effort to preserve nearly 7,000 acres of land including the lake and old-growth forests around it. The exhibit will run through May 24.

Oren Hiking Knife Edge of Katahdin, 2005 digital photograph by Bridget Besaw.

Wildness Within, Wildness Without is an exhibition of photographs by Bridget Besaw depicting locations along the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail, an initiative of the organization Maine Woods Forever. Looping through and around the Baxter park region, the trail traces Henry David Thoreau's three Maine visits, which followed ancient Native American canoe routes through the wilderness.

The exhibition was timed to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Thoreau’s final journey through Maine. It appears at Bates through March 4.

Taking Different Trails was a result of an initiative begun in 2003 to permanently preserve the Katahdin Lake area as public land. The Maine Department of Conservation and The Trust for Public Land worked with landowners and others to arrange land purchases and swaps that led to a $14 million fundraising effort and ultimately to the state's accession of the land in 2006.

Some 4,100 acres of land in the arrangement, including the 649-acre lake, were transferred by deed to Baxter State Park, thus fulfilling Maine Gov. Percival P. Baxter's original vision for the park.

The artists in Taking Different Trails helped raise $27,000 by donating artwork for a fundraising auction. "The artist as conservationist is just such a 

Inlet, Katahdin Lake, 2007 watercolor by Marsha Donahue.

natural mix," Evelyn Dunphy, a West Bath artist who has painted at Katahdin Lake for years, told The Trust for Public Land (read the story of theKatahdin Lake campaign).

The area's rich history encompasses logging, trail making, sporting camps and visits by such notables as the young Teddy Roosevelt. Accompanying the artwork in the Bates exhibition will be a display describing the Katahdin Lake Campaign and works by two renowned artists associated with the lake, Marsden Hartley and James Fitzgerald.

The Bates exhibition was organized by Bates Museum of Art curator Bill Low, artist David Little and Marsha Donahue, artist and owner of the North Light Gallery in Millinocket.

Wildness Within, Wildness Without was an outcome of the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail project, the first initiative of Maine Woods Forever, an organization founded by Roxanne Quimby and others to protect the integrity and accessibility of the Maine Woods. The project reflects the historic, cultural and spiritual importance of Thoreau's Maine journeys, guided and influenced by the Penobscot Indians (read more about the project).

"Wabanaki" translates as "people of the dawn land" and refers collectively to the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, Maliseet and Abenaki tribes. For thousands of years, the Wabanaki canoed throughout what is now north-central Maine, using portages to connect among the numerous waterways in this vast wilderness. Their canoe routes would later be used by explorers, lumbermen and recreational canoeists.

Thoreau visited this region in 1846, 1853 and 1857. He climbed "Ktaadn" in 1846, and with Penobscot guides visited Chesuncook Lake in 1853 and distant Eagle Lake in the Allagash in 1857. In his book The Maine Woods he wrote of Katahdin, "I looked with awe at the ground I trod on . . . This was the Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night."

In 2005, Maine Woods Forever commissioned photographer Besaw to create a series of images depicting the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail and organize an 

Garrett and Alexandra on Their Winterwalk, Sandbar Point, Moosehead Lake, 2005 digital photograph by Bridget Besaw.

exhibition. Her photographs conjure up a romantic, almost surrealistic landscape of magnificent light effects, saturated colors and adventurers caught in an ideal moment.

"Like Thoreau the photographer envisions not a wilderness free of people but a wilderness populated with people who would be ever mindful of its fragility," writes curator Henry Barendse in the exhibition catalog. "These photographs suggest how that might be done."

A newspaper and magazine photographer, Besaw has traveled on assignment for U.S. News and World Report, National Geographic, Newsweek and other publications. She has won numerous national awards. Her current focus is on creating imagery to advocate for environmental protection.

Her Thoreau-Wabanaki images are collected in the book Wildness Within, Wildness Without, with a forward by noted environmentalist Bill McKibben.

The Bates College Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and is closed on major holidays.

	Degrees to honor leaders in philanthropy, biology, climate, literature Mount David Summit highlights student work across disciplines Watson Fellowship to support Bates graduate's graffiti research Lecture explores CO2 storage as means of mitigating climate change Harward Center awards Publicly Engaged Academic Project grants Barbara Brown Taylor discusses Sabbath in Zerby lecture