{"id":63862,"date":"2022-09-01T15:40:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T19:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=63862"},"modified":"2022-09-01T15:40:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T19:40:11","slug":"a-curators-residence-in-rockland-is-a-museum-unto-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/a-curators-residence-in-rockland-is-a-museum-unto-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"A Curator\u2019s Residence in Rockland is a Museum Unto Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Anna Queen and Ernest the dog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rockland’s North End, a few blocks up from the ocean, is a neighborhood of shady trees, meandering gardens, and beautiful, idiosyncratic older houses. Nestled among these are a few remarkable examples of contemporary architecture, including artist and curator Anna Queen\u2019s home and studio, which was completed in late 2020. The site once contained a structurally unsound antique house that held promise as a platform for something remarkable. \u201cI wanted a space that reflected my work,\u201d Queen says. We are in her pristine kitchen, which at the moment is graced by her two large striped cats, Basil and Dorian, and her slender brindled dog, Ernest. \u201cIt was important to me that everything be very minimal, with clean lines, open, and with good light\u2014and having material be at the forefront.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queen, the curator of Dowling Walsh Gallery in downtown Rockland, maintains an independent curatorial practice and is a sculptor with a background in ceramics. Her art involves the use of readymade objects\u2014such as a box of confectioners\u2019 sugar and a Lucite-framed packing slip for a Roald Dahl book\u2014 presented cleanly and precisely to the viewer for a sense of connection, immediacy, and humor. These qualities are also present in her home, which combines a studio with living areas on three levels. New York architect Dimitri Brand\u2014a friend of Queen\u2019s since they attended art school together at the Maryland Institute College of Art\u2014worked on the design with Queen, and local builder Casey Hufnagel saw the building process through to completion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The second floor\u2019s lofty open plan allows for rest and focus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As in Queen\u2019s sculptural practice, material specificity is the dominant factor in her home. The exterior, which has no street-facing windows but lets in abundant light from all other directions, is clad in pale metal, emphasizing its Modernist geometry and mirroring the landscape-focused geometric aesthetic of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts campus in Deer Isle. Inside, a glass door leads to the bright kitchen, which in turn opens into the artist\u2019s studio. Translucent glass doors can close the kitchen and studio off from one another when more division is needed, and a sliding garage door to the backyard converts the studio into a semi-outdoor space in warmer months. The studio is lit with rosy, nebulous light from LEDs hidden in the slats of the wooden ceiling; the walls feature a recessed space at floor level in the place of trim board, visually lifting the height and emphasizing the gallery-like nature of the space. Cement floors are heated with hot water, which is the home\u2019s only heat source, utilizing a heat recovery system for air exchange. Up a set of stairs (featuring a grid railing that echoes the grid-like tile in the quasi-futurist bathroom) is a living area with a step up to a sleeping area, and, accessible via a small ladder, an additional nook that looks out from below the high, peaked ceiling. Bright white walls move light through the space, filtering it from large windows and a tunnel-like skylight, which contains LEDs that continue its illumination at night. The natural linear wood patterns of the plywood are visible, and large, lush houseplants break up the regularity of the lines. \u201cI like to shift the material, repeat it, and repeat it again,\u201d Queen says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The bathroom tile grid echoes the detailing of the stairwell railing for visual continuity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Queen in her attached studio, where her art practice unfolds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The home continues to a third-floor loft to create continued spaciousness and light.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Architect Dimitri Brand echoes Queen\u2019s perceptive relationship to materials. \u201cThe house was conceived as orbiting around art making, with three primary goals: to be adaptable, minimal, and livable,\u201d he says. \u201cThe space allows the art and objects in it to be the foreground, while also utilizing nonprecious materials that allow the house to be lived in.\u201d Another important consideration in the home\u2019s construction was affordability and sustainability. \u201cAs an all-electric house, it takes advantage of the fact that 79 percent of Maine\u2019s electric generation comes from renewable sources and will only continue to get greener as the overall grid does,\u201d says Brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The house\u2019s location in Rockland connects it to the growing vibrancy of the midcoast arts community, being situated within walking distance to the Center for Maine Contemporary Art; the Farnsworth Museum; the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation (which is in the planning stages of expanding into a new and improved space); Interloc Projects; the Caldbeck Gallery; and of course, Dowling Walsh Gallery. Fresh aspects of community continue to unfurl and grow in the neighborhood, with new venues like the distillery Luce Spirits and various pop-up events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The home\u2019s small dining area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Reggie Burrows Hodges\u2019s painting Foundation illuminates the stair space.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Queen\u2019s own art collection is also on a trajectory of growth as she acclimates to her studio. By prioritizing a blank space where most of the color and energy are concentrated in the artwork the house contains, Queen\u2019s personal curatorial vision is given the chance to inhabit the interior with radiant strength. On the high wall of the open stairwell, Reggie Burrows Hodges\u2019s 2019 painting Foundation <\/em>has a sensual palette of pale, luminous colors against a canvas gessoed in black, depicting a man in a formal suit with a mysterious woman moving into the frame. The painting sets a tone of narrative complexity and powerful formal choices that continues throughout the house\u2019s collection of contemporary artwork. Point of View Inn<\/em>, a 2019 painting by Tessa Greene O\u2019Brien, continues the sense of lurking magic in a composition that revolves around the shadowy, glimmering patterns in a swimming pool. Other artworks, by Sam Finkelstein, Jamie Gray Williams, Justine Kablack, Robert Hamilton, and Baxter Koziol, among others, move across the walls and up through the house\u2019s levels to imbue the minimalist interior with narrative and meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead to future projects, Queen envisions finding new ways to share the powerful simplicity epitomized in her house\u2014an incredibly productive container for the creative mind\u2014with her community. Dreaming of creating a future multiuse flux space in the midcoast that draws artists and other intellectually motivated people to the area, she also posits the question of how affordable housing, access, and equity can become part of this growing conversation. The clarity and generosity of Queen\u2019s home, studio work, and curatorial practice lead the way toward a future in which a white cube can hold both dynamic color and narrative, and barriers are lowered for creative people from all backgrounds, in Rockland and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking out over Penobscot Bay from Rockland\u2019s North End.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\t\t
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