(soft music) - Many people living in Maine, find creative ways to maintain a rural way of life.

Up next on the best of RFD Maine, we'll visit full-time crafters from around the state for a firsthand look at how creativity and quality of life dovetail in a way that's just right.

The creators behind InCalico, Barnswallow Pottery, the Wood Wizard and Beach Works will all shed some light on the art of self-reliance.

It's all coming right up on the best of RFD Maine.

Stay with us.

- [Announcer] Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from rural development, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(soft music) - Rich in natural beauty and tradition life in rural Maine offers great rewards.

There's a texture to rural life that many residents of our state would never trade for good reason.

Many feel that nowhere but rural Maine could ever be the place they call home.

(engine revving) - I love farming.

And it's great to just see that aspect of, it's kind of slipping away from the area of Maine.

And I'd like to find something that I can have more of the farm as a hobby, and something else that's more, like money earner.

(wind blowing) - It's first the love of the land, and then it's surviving with your wits and being an opportunist to dictate what you do to stay here.

And that goes in a faster cycle, it seems like, every generation.

And we've already have done, I could probably list five different occupations, already to try to stay here.

- The land, as you work it a bit, you take on a great deal of feeling fine and you love to see the role of it.

And you love to see the trees and you know, there's just some beautiful thing about it.

You go out in the morning, just as the sun is coming up, in a field of blueberries that's got dew on them, and the blueberries are blue, and you think you're looking at a field of diamonds.

I mean the sun reflects off the blue and you'll get the various colors, like a rainbow, it looks like a field of diamonds to you.

You never saw such a beautiful sight, you know?

And you get a feel for that.

(walking through grass) - It's just a part of me.

You know, something you never could leave.

And that's what Maine tradition is.

It's people.

Friendly, you know?

You go by and see somebody broke down, you don't just drive by.

You stop and help them.

But go in the city, you don't get that.

There isn't very many places you do get except rural Maine.

- Hi, I'm Sandy Phippen, your host for the best of RFD Maine.

You know, over the years, Maine people have had to be very creative to stay living in Maine, where they want to be, and to make a living.

It's a hard place to make a living as many of us know.

You have to have three jobs or more.

When I was growing up on the Maine coast, for instance, my father not only drove a truck, but he also was a caretaker for two summer cottages, gave haircuts in our shed on Sunday, and had to splice ropes together.

This quilt that I'm leaning on here, is the handiwork of my mother who has made in her lifetime, hundreds of quilts and potholders, dolls, that are all over the world now.

That was her home industry.

People stayed in their homes and added to their income by doing creative work.

The women you're about to see in the next segment, reminds me of my mother, and so many other Maine women who have had to be very creative to make a living.

- Are you a good dog?

Show me that you're a good boy.

He's a good boy.

Are you handsome?

I get to come to work in my bathroom if I want to.

(laughs) I'm a full-time crafts person.

Artisan, I like to call myself.

The best thing is that I get to be home with my children.

That's always been my most important goal.

I mean, having been through daycare and seeing that the parents, parents miss out on so much.

What kind of angel is it going to be, you think?

- I don't know.

- Christmas angel or?

- Yeah.

- Do you want to go pick up some fabric?

I doodle a lot.

I've always been a doodler and that's where I get a lot of ideas, is just from doodling on scratch paper.

Also, I get ideas from ancient art and a few books on primitive art, and those are really inspiring to me.

My daughter, Alexandra, she is my best assistant.

She does help me turn some things inside out.

And she also gives me some good creative ideas.

All my children do.

This is a drawing that Ellie did.

I think it was just so funny with the little teeth so I'd made this doll.

It was sort of got from that idea.

They're for adults.

I have a little tag that I hang in my booth that says for adults who like to invite the child out to play (laughs).

But a lot of times you shut down I think when you're busy trying to do your work, and being a nurturer to your family and whatever, and just turned it back in touch with the child, the awe of being human.

I like the form of movement, in the alluded movement, but it can, the dolls are designed to hang so that if there's a fan going in the room or even when the heat comes on, they'll dance.

(soft music) Doll makers say that the dolls speak to them.

Or you wait for them to speak to you.

Like this doll here, she just was not going to, she was going to be something totally different, like a colonial thing.

And she just didn't want to be quiet.

She didn't want to be old and colonial boring.

She wanted to be right.

I just have this impression when I say, Oh yes, I make dolls, that you know, that (laughs) just sounded like a weird thing to do.

(sewing machine) I'm online and that way I have access to doll makers that are all across the country, even across the world.

There's bulletin boards for people who do just about anything from birdwatching to crafts, and there's special bulletin boards for just filmmakers on here.

It works out really well for a lot of people who are rural or just really busy.

We can keep in contact with others who make dolls and suddenly you don't feel like a weirdo.

You have other people who, you know, are creating dolls for the fun of it or for their business.

So we won't able to take her to show and tell until today but maybe next week.

She is beautiful.

Great job.

Being a craftsperson is a way of life.

I mean you can't always, if you're going to do this, then you can't necessarily take the big vacations and then you have to make choices.

And the other thing is that there's a lot of support out there and I couldn't have done any of this without the support that I've gotten from the other artisans, and also from the Women's Business Development Corporation.

(soft music) - I hold in my hands, a sample of my mother's handiwork.

She's produced dozens, maybe hundreds of these creatures over the years from her shop in her house in Hancock.

At that time when I was growing up, I don't remember any craft shows exactly, but Hancock had sewing circles.

Like most small rural towns, it seemed like every woman belonged to a sewing circle and had her specialty.

And they would make things that they'd sell at the church fairs later in the year.

When the people from Sullivan started their pottery kiln the next time to Hancock on Route 1, everyone was interested in what they were up to.

And I remember the lady also gave dancing lessons in the front room.

They get community support after awhile.

We saw how beautiful their products were but it took some time.

In this next piece, we meet a lady in Newfield who found community support for her pottery after a few years too.

- There's a real satisfaction that comes from seeing rows of product that you've made.

I work alone.

That part is, is hard because I have nobody to bounce ideas off of.

I have no one to, to share things with.

That's why craft fairs are so important to all of us.

Craft fairs are a kind of itinerant co-op.

I belong to two co-ops one down in York and another in Brunswick, the Stone Soups Artisans Co-op, and I've been part of others in the state.

It's a way for us to come together and use our combined resources for a marketing opportunity that no one of us could pull off on our own.

That's true for craft fairs.

The number of people who come through craft fairs, particularly a well done one, like the one in Brunswick at Christmas, I couldn't attract that number of people to my shop ever.

People don't know where I am.

There are many people who've been buying pots from me for 20 years at the Cumberland fair.

And I dare say, there are customers who do not know my name and do not know the name of the studio, but they know that if they look for me at the fairgrounds, they'll find me.

I sell about 50% of it here at the shop.

I do about, oh 30% of my total year's income comes from craft fairs.

When you do work alone, that contact with customers is vital.

It is the only chance you may have to know if you've hit on something that that people respond to or if it's a bad idea and you've already made 36 of them and you better stop now.

See, I came here to Newfield 21 years ago.

The man who ran Willowbrook Museum, the restoration village here in town, came and told me about a house that was for sale.

And I was facing a move at that time.

And I knew that if I went to the coast and struggled a little more to make mortgage payments, I would be in a better position to do business.

Hi.

Well, aren't you a frisky boy.

But there was something so attractive about coming to a small town.

I had one, a daughter, and I thought there's something good about a town this small.

It's a tight community.

People help one another.

And they support me What a face.

Are you my buddy?

Yeah, you're my buddy.

We barter a great deal in rural communities.

We barter for firewood, veterinary care, vegetables.

Rural communities have a sense of who does what.

And you do have the feeling that people have value as individuals because of what they contribute to the community as a whole.

I think probably, had I stayed in New York, I could never have done what I do here.

Physically, I don't think it would be possible.

I can't imagine the fire department in any long Island town allowing me to fire kiln.

My neighbors here are very supportive.

Even when I occasionally belt smoke out at them.

I think they assume that the still is running and there'll be something to show for it down the road.

- I liked what Barbara O'Brien said in the piece we just saw about how in rural communities everybody knows who does what.

As in my book, The Police Know Everything, I write about small town, Maine, and it's true.

People know, everybody knows in town who is the best seamstress or who cuts up deer meat, the best and so on.

And we all know who the best woodworker is in Pownal, Maine.

(sanding) - I dream about it at night and I have a sketchbook next to my bed.

And I'm not much of a sketchbook user, but I at least have to write down the ideas.

In fact, I'm a horrible drawer, but I do.

I'm thinking about it all the time and what a sort of a new product I can make.

(wood carving) I've always specialized in making the very small items partly because that's the kind of stock I have, partly because I know that when everybody else isn't selling, I always sell.

Take these out to the sander, and I'm going to turn the dust collector on.

In my wildest dream, I never would have thought that I'd be doing this.

I was in the Air Force with computer maintenance background, going into the computer field.

This was 20 years ago.

And dreamed that I'd be doing something like this, but it's not a business where you're going to make a lot of money.

It's a tough business.

I work a lot of hours and you're going to work a lot of hours in this, you also have to weigh the enjoyment factor.

I'll work a hundred hours a week at this before I'll work 10 hours a week in the computer maintenance business again.

I often go up to Haystack and do a variety of things.

These were part of a workshop.

When I was up there a few years ago and in some sort of a workshop, in the wood studio there was a piece of stained glass.

It was sitting against the wall and somebody broke it so I found it in the trash.

And then I was drilling holes for something and I had this piece of wood with two holes, and I said, God, that looks like eyes.

So of course that led to running goggles with mosquito deflectors, which has been the not terribly popular item, but and not something that I make the sell, but it's, it was one of those fun things that just happened spontaneously at the Haystack.

So it's a little twist that make things sell.

It's the finish, it's the novelty, price is important.

They can afford to spend just so much on gifts and I have countless people telling me it's nice to be able to find gifts in the $20 range.

The ant box is not something I'll make a lot of.

I actually have made three plus the original and they're all virtually identical.

And I make them because it's important to have this sort of thing when I'm selling them.

You need to have a variety of things to offer the customer.

They need to see all these things to show them what you can do.

And the longer they stay, frankly, the more likely they are to buy, the more you can get into a conversation with them.

But when you come right down to it at $350 a lot of people see the price and they choke.

And I can understand that.

It's a lot of money to pay.

On the other hand, you have the wooden bookmarks which I sell for $3.50 cents and a little cheaper, and I can make so much more profit on these things than the ant box.

In a way I don't care if I never make another one but I sell 15,000 bookmarks a year.

So my basic philosophy is, that the customer comes to my booth, they see what I have, they buy some boxes, in fact, they buy a lot of boxes, but my goal was to have them buy a bookmark.

(sanding) I use a lot of waste from bigger cabinet makers.

And as you can see looking around my shop, it's very small.

If I had to get a board in here, it'd kill me.

I'd have to cut it in half or I'd be getting it in the door.

(wood carving) I sometimes describe myself as the McDonald's of woodworking, the woodworking craft show business.

And it's interesting.

People always say, well, you shouldn't be putting yourself down like that, but it's not a put down.

I think McDonald's is quite a great business actually, and they're masters of production.

They put out a low end uniform quality product that everybody is familiar with.

And if you think McDonald's isn't doing well, I'll take all the stock you own in them.

- Everybody loves the Maine coast and everybody who lives on the Maine coast is the beachcomber, especially after a big storm when something like this, a nice milk bottle like this, would be smashed to bits probably and make good beach glass.

In this next piece, we're going to meet a couple from way down east in Lubbock, who've turned beachcombing into a business.

- Anything that comes up on the beach is fair game.

- There you go, love.

- We're very much like fishermen.

We have seasons that we make money and we have seasons that we gather.

So we have to know what the sea is doing.

A lot of the communities along the coast or on islands used the ocean as a dump, but they were very methodical about it.

And they were probably the first to really be environmentally conscious or think about recycling because they had rules.

And instead of driving to a dump, you would row out to a buoys that was put well beyond low tide, and you were supposed to break up your glass and throw it in.

So that by the time it reached the beaches it would be all soft.

And it'll eventually go back to sand.

I mean, it's perfectly natural.

- How you doin?

- I was between jobs and I lived in near the beach.

And one of the things that I would do for a little calmness and serenity was I would walk the beach and I started picking up the glass.

And I've got to tell you it's addicting because once you start you can't walk a beach without picking it up.

- Originally, when we started walking beaches, I used to make fun of this picking glass up.

She'd stopped, bend over and pick it up.

And I'm still walking and all of a sudden she's miles behind me.

And I'm saying, well, you catch up.

And in a short period of time I find myself bending over, picking the glass up, then I'm giving it to her.

Then I'm out on beach all by myself, wandering for hours, and hours, and hours, gathering this stuff.

Now it's what I do.

- We'll think of something to do with it.

- This is about a week's worth of collecting, Intensive collecting several hours a day when the tides are right.

And the majority of these pieces are the bigger pieces that I'll use to fill my lamps.

These bags are by color, and these are what I use for my jewelry.

And people say, well, you've made such perfect matches.

You must cut the glass.

No I don't.

But as you can see, I have a lot to work with.

(glass pieces clanking together) The finish that mother nature gives it, it can't be duplicated.

I know people have tried.

They've sandblasted, they've put it in a tumbler, but the feeling isn't there.

I'm often asked, well did you dye the glass, or did you paint the glass to get it that color?

No.

Sea glass is broken bottles and jars that have been made already and nature or God is reworking them.

And the sea glass affords both mystery and history.

You can tell the age of some of the glass by the color.

The purple glass, or amethyst colored glass, which comes in all different shades, is actually, at one time it was clear glass, and it was made between 1880 and 1914.

And in order to get glass clear instead of this Aqua color, which is a natural color glass, they would add manganese but manganese reacts to ultraviolet light.

So if someone either had a bottle that they left out in the sunshine, or they broke it up and they threw it out and rolled up on the beach, and it was exposed to sunlight and back and forth, it would start to turn and it will get darker.

(soft saxophone music) Because we have recycling now, because we have rules in some areas, we're not even allowed to bring glass on beaches and deposit bottles, it's not being added to.

So I'm sort of now going to, again, it's still Beach Works.

Everything is still what we find on the beach or coastal theme, but I'm trying to go to my artwork.

(soft saxophone music) - I get up when I want to, do what I want to do.

I live free.

(soft saxophone music) Hi, baby.

There you go, right in front of ya.

- When I was growing up in Hancock, and on Hancock Point on the coast, I'm afraid we weren't as environmentally correct.

Many people in towns still just dumped their garbage in the trash on the beach, hoping the tide would take it.

There was one summer person, a college professor, he used to make his own beach glass by smashing his beer bottles and wine bottles on the ledges and rocks beneath his house.

And some of that glass ended up later in a memorial to him, and church windows in two churches in town.

Some people were quite offended to think that church windows were made out of beer glass and wine glass.

I'm Sandy Phippen.

Hope you enjoy the show.

See you next time.

- [Announcer] Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from rural development, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

- [Sandy] Be sure to visit the best of RFD Maine on Maine Public Television's homepage on the worldwide web.

- What we're going to talk about is these.

- [Sandy] The best of RFD Maine was taped on location at the Page Farm & Home Museum at the University of Maine.

- Ideal mechanical advantage, that's right.

(soft music) - My basic philosophy is that the customer comes to my booth, they see what I have, they buy some boxes, in fact, they buy a lot of boxes, but my goal was to have them buy a bookmark.

(sanding)