Running With Scissors Art Studios owner Kate Anker in the print shop at the studio. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Ariette Scott, Joanne Cameron and Susie Schweppe met as art students. Each worked in a different primary medium – one in clay, another in video and visual art, the third in printmaking – but they became friends. Upon graduation, they did not want to leave their classrooms for solitary studios.
“We started imagining a studio space that was modeled on the diversity in both art mediums and artists that you have in art school,” Scott said. “We didn’t want to leave the variety behind us when we left school.”
In 2003, the trio founded Running With Scissors Art Studios in Portland, a shared workspace for artists across disciplines. Twenty years later, the studios have moved and grown, but the mission is the same. The 16,000-square-foot building is now home to more than 80 woodworkers, painters, ceramicists, printmakers, jewelry makers and other creatives.
To celebrate this anniversary, Running With Scissors organized the first juried show in its history and curated pieces from current and former members at nearby Cove Street Arts.
Kate Anker joined the studios as a printmaker in 2006 and bought the business from the founders in 2011. When she saw the exhibition in the gallery, she described it as “a reunion.”
“It was a really wonderful gathering of all these people who have built this community over 20 years,” Anker said. “It was like a lot of friends just coming into one place together.”
‘AT THE HEART’
Running With Scissors started with a dozen or so members in a former mattress factory on Portland Street. Portland artist Daniel Minter was new to Maine then, and he joined the studio soon after he moved to the area. He didn’t need the workspace so much as he wanted the connection.
“It became more of a social place for me than an actual workplace,” he said. “I did work there, but I exchanged ideas with the other artists and learned about different techniques from the other artists and sat around and talked. It was the creative energy that was more valuable to me than the actual space.”
Running With Scissors Art Studios is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
The studios moved to a larger space on Cove Street in East Bayside years before the neighborhood was buzzing with breweries and galleries. In 2011, the founders were ready to move on in their careers, so Anker took over. She had been watching as buildings that had once housed artist studios became condos, and she wanted to make sure Running With Scissors survived. In 2013, she moved the studios around the corner to Anderson Street and eventually bought that building in 2020.
Today, Running With Scissors offers private and open-air studios, communal areas and shared equipment. There is a wood shop, a printmaking studio and a clay center. Memberships start at $150 per month and go up based on studio size, access and length of lease. Artists can use the building 24/7. Some come for a short period, while others have been there for years. Programming has expanded to include events such as a summertime Print Jam, a community block print in the parking lot, and a holiday market.
“Running With Scissors is at the heart of the local visual arts scene,” said Dinah Minot, executive director of Creative Portland, where Anker is the past board president.
SUPPORTING YOUNG ARTISTS
Christine Caswell and Meg Walsh were ceramicists working at Running With Scissors when Anker started planning the current location. Both helped develop and manage the clay center, which was greatly expanded from the previous location, and also started a business together called C&M Ceramics. Caswell eventually left the business to focus on sculptural work but is still the manager of the clay center; Walsh still runs C&M Ceramics and last year moved to a larger studio in Scarborough.
Walsh said she encouraged her intern to seek out studio space at Running With Scissors.
“She’s utilizing the community setup that we envisioned, and in that way it’s nice to be able to see it working and continuing to do what we hoped it would do and be what we hoped it would be,” Walsh said.
Woodworker and painter Ben Boothby works in his studio space at Running With Scissors Art Studios. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Running With Scissors also recently launched the Emerge Artist in Residence program, which provides free studio space and other support to a printmaker and a ceramicist for five months twice a year. Anker said she is looking for long-term funding for that program and sees it as critical to the business’ mission. (A portion of the proceeds from the anniversary show will go to the fund that supports the residencies.)
“It can be a make-or-break situation for a young artist if they don’t have access to those materials or equipment,” she said.
NEW CHALLENGES
Minter is now the co-founder and artistic director of Indigo Arts Alliance, also in East Bayside. The nonprofit has some workspace to offer its own artists in residence, but Minter said he knows he can turn to Running With Scissors for more space or specialized equipment when needed. For example, Indigo Arts Alliance doesn’t have a kiln, but he would not hesitate to invite a ceramicist to the program because the clay center is right around the corner.
“We consider them a huge resource for the artists that come to our artist-in-residence space,” he said.
But access to studio space and equipment isn’t the only challenge facing artists today. Many are struggling to find affordable housing in Portland, and Anker said she has lost members who can no longer afford to stay in the city or even the state. Among them was Julia Luft, who moved to Maine in 2019 and joined Running With Scissors in 2020 to combat the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But she lost her apartment when her landlord sold her building last year, and she ended her studio lease as she searched for a place to live and bounced between temporary rentals. Last month, she moved to New York City. She hopes to come back to Maine someday, but the housing market in the state is prohibitive right now.
“The prices I was looking at were pretty comparable in Brooklyn,” she said. “I rationalized if I am going to be paying New York prices, then I may as well live in New York where there’s more opportunity and resources and higher wages.”
Luft has a painting in the show at Cove Street Arts called “Among.” She made it in her studio before she had to end her membership, and it is a testament to the landscape that inspired her while she lived here. Layered in the oil paint are local flowers, dried and pressed.
THE ARTISTS AND THEIR WORK
The anniversary show is called “Cross-Section” because it represents just that – a slice of life at Running With Scissors. Here are some of the 50-plus works in the show and the artists who made them.
Ceramicist and clay center manager Christine Caswell inside her studio space at Running With Scissors. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Artist: Christine Caswell, 38, Portland
Medium: Ceramics
Membership: Since 2011; clay center manager
Christine Caswell, “Bloom,” stoneware, 2023. Photo by Christine Caswell.
On Running With Scissors: Caswell described the studio as her “art family.” “It can be really isolating to work in a private studio and not have any contact with any other artists. It’s a really rich place to make those connections, even if they are fleeting.”
On her piece, “Bloom”: “I was thinking a lot about the relationship between interior spaces and exterior spaces, and how often the inside parts fold and become outside parts.” Caswell, a self-described introvert, said her sculptures are a metaphor for how much we reveal about what is inside ourselves. “I feel like that one is more open, it’s more revealing of the internal part. It’s not as closed and hidden as some of my previous sculptures.”
Artist Carter Shappy, inside his office space at Running With Scissors. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Carter Shappy, “Red Tide,” screen print and acrylic paint, 2023. Photo by Bret Woodard/courtesy of Carter Shappy.
Artist: Carter Shappy, 31, Portland
Medium: Printmaking
Membership: Since 2015; print and wood shop manager
On Running With Scissors: “It’s become a pretty beautiful little community. I don’t know if I bought into that idea at first. I was young and cavalier. I think as I have gotten older, I’ve really valued that we have cultivated this lovely group of passionate people who do so many different types of things and care about those things very deeply.” Shappy is also the guy who gets to drive the giant asphalt roller at the annual Print Jam, which he said is a highlight of his summers now.
On his piece, “Red Tide”: As a student at now Maine College of Art & Design, Shappy started picking up litter and washed-up fishing gear from local beaches. He has used it ever since in his printmaking and often explores plastic pollution and climate change in his work. “Something I try to push and play with in the work is this contrast between high unnatural and man-made and organic and lush.”
Running With Scissors Emerging Artist Resident Jenny Ibsen. Photo by Bret Woodard/courtesy of Jenny Ibsen/Running With Scissors
Jenny Ibsen, “Pest Picnic,” terracotta, 2022 Photo by Dana Clark/courtesy of Jenny Ibsen
Artist: Jenny Ibsen, 27, Portland
Medium: Ceramics
Membership: Emerging Artist Resident
On Running With Scissors: Ibsen has a background in printmaking and had been a member once before in that department. More recently, she has been working with clay. At Running With Scissors, she found a place where she could experiment beyond the beginner level. “It can be as solitary or as community-oriented as you want it to be. People there are really receptive to talking and troubleshooting and sharing ideas and experiences.”
On her piece, “Pest Picnic”: This piece, which depicts Japanese knotweed, is part of a series of invasive species on vases. (The pun is intentional.) Ibsen, who has a long history of working in restaurants and also hosts performance meals, said she is playing with the intersection between the decorative and the functional in her work. “A lot of my work is pretty playful and colorful, and that series in particular is thinking about the environment around us and food that you can forage and eat that is also arguably harming the area around us, so it’s extra incentive to forage them in that way.”
Julia Luft, “Among,” oil, pressed flowers, 2022. Photo by Julia Luft
Artist: Julia Luft, 28, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Medium: Painting
Membership: 2019-2022
On Running With Scissors: “It was nice to go into the studio and see somebody else working on something. Being around other people who were working was really inspiring to continue working. Especially when the social climate of the world feels pretty heavy, it’s nice to see that there are other people who are still toiling away at this thing, and it makes it feel important.”
On her piece, “Among”: Luft works mostly in a middle ground between representational and abstracted painting. “I worked on a farm while I was living there – Snell Family Farm – that was a second home to me. It helped me fall in love with the Maine landscape.”
Woodworker and painter Ben Boothby in his studio space at Running With Scissors. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
Artist: Ben Boothby, 48, Portland
Medium: Wood shop and painting
Membership: Since 2020
Ben Boothby, “Rotary Dial and French Toast,” oil on veneer panel, 2022. Photo courtesy of Ben Boothby
On Running With Scissors: Boothby has a private studio and also uses the communal wood shop, which he said helps him keep his workspace cleaner and more organized. “I think Running With Scissors is really good for interdisciplinary artists like me who are bridging two different traditional media, or exploration is really important to their process.” He described it as “a very rich potential Petri dish.”
On his piece, “Rotary Dial and French Toast”: Memory is a central theme in Boothby’s work, which is abstract rather than literal. “When I was building it, I was thinking about memories of the kitchen in our childhood home, and it being the hub of the house. Not a fancy kitchen. It had the washer and dryer in it that were old and clunky. It was where the rotary dial phone was, and any conversations were had within the sphere of that kitchen space. When I was painting it, I was making color choices from aspects of that memory and trying to get at that warmth, but also the conflict and the emotional content of that kitchen space.”
Meg Walsh, “Night Wave,” vase and mugs, porcelain, 2023. Photo by Meg Walsh
Artist: Meg Walsh of C&M Ceramics
Medium: Ceramics
Membership: 2010-2020
On Running With Scissors: Walsh said the clay center allowed her to learn about and “test drive” equipment over the years so she was more knowledgeable when she was ready to move her growing business into a bigger space. “Making the decision to leave Running With Scissors was very hard, but I knew I was never going to be leaving them. Within the context of a community studio, you’re never really away from those relationships and that knowledge that was gained, and it felt so good to know that even though I was branching out on my own and leaving the comfort of all that camaraderie, it was never that far away.”
On “Night Wave Vase”: C&M Ceramics is focused on handmade, handcrafted tableware and home goods. But it’s also about “celebrating places and spaces,” Caswell said. “I wanted to play with color balance and landscape and this notion of soft fascination where there’s just enough going on to keep you intrigued and keep you interested in the piece, but you’re not necessarily getting all the information. You’re not learning everything about the piece. They’re landscape, but they can be water, they can be mountains. They have this fluidity to them.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
