Musicians, Instant Portraits, and Community Presentations Fill Village Sidewalks
Two new colorful businesses in Wiscasset Village have opened their doors this month and will be greeting visitors during Wiscasset Art Walk on Thursday, July 27, 5-8pm. Both shops carry on the tradition of unique and owner-managed shops in Wiscasset’s historic district.
Angelo Santo is located at 100 Main St., the former Hasenfus Gallery. Owner Maria Vettese said she hadn’t been looking for a new shop location in Midcoast Maine after owning a shop in Yarmouth and Portland for eight years, but she had been imagining what her next shop might be. “The space presented itself and I thought my idea would be perfect in this space,” she said, crediting her friend, Erika Soule, owner of Rock Paper Scissors and the Angelo Santo building, of making the connection.
Maria said she’d been contemplating a shop that presented an artful experience to the visitors who walk through the door. As curator of this “open art studio,” Maria’s intention is that Angelo Santo is an out-of-the-ordinary space that feels like an artist’s presentation of someone else’s collection.
If people enter with “curiosity and a wandering eye,” she hopes they will be affected by the visual presentation and the contents, whether the flowers, the beautiful and thought-provoking books, or the hand-made items, all personal choices by the curator.
Maria has created an environment in which the overall visual presentation emphasizes the human experience of making art while encouraging visitors to be part of that experience by seeing and enjoying.
Just around the corner, at 6 Railroad Ave., visitors will find High Tide Printing Company and owner/printer Kate Bell. This is Kate’s first brick and mortar shop although she’s been screen printing for more than 10 years. For eight of those years, she was screen printing in the basement of her Wiscasset home and also working a second job.
Although Kate began her screen-printing career quite by chance, once she started, she found it so creative and enjoyable that she returned to school to study graphic design to increase her visual proficiency.
When people ask Kate how she screen prints a T-shirt, she invites them to watch, or, even better, she’ll print a customer’s shirt while they wait.
She’s screen printing full-time now and has given up her 2nd job. Her shop on Railroad Ave. is “a dream come true in my dream location,” Kate says. She has two little boys who she’s teaching to follow their dreams, so she had to follow hers – and she did!
Wiscasset Art Walk on July 27 will also be hosting Forest Weston playing didgeridoo and Heather MacLeod on penny whistle. The sidewalk is their stage! Portrait photographer Amy Lewis will be walking around the Village making instant, take-home portraits for visitors as a WAW souvenir. Artisans and community volunteers will be lining the sidewalks to share their passions with visitors. And the hand-made raw log Amadinda and cajóns will return for the playing pleasure of the music-maker in all of us!
