Ebenezer Akakpo is a Ghanaian-born designer living and working in Portland, Maine. Using Adinkra symbols as the foundation for his patterns, each Akakpo piece is designed to hold specific meaning and personal significance to whomever it belongs to. With degrees from RIT in Industrial Design and from Maine College of Art in Metalsmithing and Jewelry, Ebenezer’s pieces are a unique and elegant marriage of the precision of technology and the soul of handmade design.
Possum Hollow Farm Soap, LLC is a family owned and operated natural soap business for 18 years. Our business began as an experiment to prove our ability to make and live with natural hand-made products. That experiment soon became a passion. Over the years we have worked to create natural products using skin nourishing ingredients and fine oils to soften and moisturize skin. This labor of love has blossomed into two soap lines and a wonderful, carefully formulated line of skincare. We are proud to make these fine products available for your use.
Don Best lives and works in Norway Maine. He received his BFA from Portland School of Art in 1979.Since graduating Don has continued studying and working with a variety of mediums. This has allowed him to develop his own unique style as a sculptor. The Littlefield Gallery in Winter Harbor is Don’s Maine gallery.
Mary Forst began making pearl jewelry as a way to investigate my sentimentality and the relationship thy have with particular objects. Mary inherited two pearl necklaces from my grandmother at the age of nine and always cherished them. During the process of creating their senior thesis work at Maine College of Art the pearl became a material to me and design aesthetic took the front seat. After the completion of this series, Mary still toyed with the pearl and with the desire to make contemporary jewelry incorporating this material.
In the fall of 2017, Mary began to work on a small production line utilizing this concept. This line of jewelry is often inspired by traditional designs but has an edge to it that its classic predecessor lacks. My goal is to redesign this traditional adornment and to create trendy, stunning, badass jewelry that can be worn by people of all ages, anywhere and any time.
Mark Marchesi was born in a suburb of NYC in 1977. He moved to Portland to attend MECA, and graduated with a BFA in Photography in 1999. Mark’s images have been shown and published widely. Notable group exhibitions include Unframed First Look at Sean Kelly Gallery in Chelsea and Port of Portland: A Ship Shaped History at Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. Solo exhibitions include Slack Water at Space Gallery in 2011, and Evangeline at PhoPa Gallery in 2016. Mark has been awarded four individual grants from Maine Arts Commission to support photographic projects, and one from Maine Humanities Council through a fiscal sponsorship with Maine Historical Society to support production of his first hardcover monograph Evangeline: A Modern Tale of Acadia, published in 2016 by Daylight Books. Mark currently resides in South Portland with his wife and two daughters.
Kari Radasch is a native Mainer, mother, potter, mosaic artist, tile maker and educator living in Portland Maine. She received her BFA from the Maine College of Art and her MFA from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Using earthenware clay, color as a metaphor for joy, and an occasional historical reference and ironic nod to kitsch objects, Kari makes celebratory work. She plucks nostalgic observations from her life and reassembles and reimagines these investigations, onto functional dishes and tile– a format that has the unique ability to hold a warm, sentimental place in our lives. She has taught workshops and lectured across the country and loves to share her excitement for clay with her students. Kari lives and makes in Portland, Maine.