‘Seaweed Shelter’ celebrated at Thompson’s Point

Community leaders and elected officials celebrated new bus shelter art by Maine artist David Wilson at an informal ribbon-cutting June 1.

The installation titled “Seaweed Shelter” – a gothic seaweed fantasy at the Portland Transportation Center at 100 Thompson’s Point Road – was inspired by Maine’s rockweed-covered coast and the elaborate wrought-iron gate work found in Portland’s West End.

The artist was born in Kirkintilloch, Scotland, and moved to Maine in the ’70s. A painter, printmaker and designer, Wilson earned an MFA in Painting from Syracuse University in New York.

Wilson’s shelter is the final installation for phase I of The Creative Bus Shelter Initiative, but Creative Portland was recently awarded a second grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to expand the project with up to four more art installations. An open call for Maine artists will be released in August by Creative Portland.

Waynflete lauds Talbot Ross

Waynflete announced that alumna Rachel Talbot Ross, class of 1978, has been named the recipient of the 2021 Klingenstein Alumni Award. The award recognizes alumni whose efforts at the local, national or international level have had a broad and positive impact.

Talbot Ross is a ninth-generation Mainer who has dedicated her career to public service and social justice. In addition to serving as the city of Portland’s Director of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Affairs for more than two decades, she led the NAACP in Maine and founded several nonprofit organizations, including Maine Black Community Development, Maine Freedom Trails and the Martin Luther King Jr. Fellows. Rachel chaired the Maine State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as well as the African American Collection of Maine housed at the University of Southern Maine.

Talbot Ross is serving her third term in the Maine House, representing the Portland neighborhoods of Parkside, Bayside, East Bayside, Oakdale and the University of Southern Maine campus.

Giving back

Summit Natural Gas of Maine team members were honored to assist the town of Falmouth at Pine Grove Cemetery for Memorial Day by locating veterans’ gravesites. According to Paul Lewis, of Summit, employees in the company’s Volunteer Time Off program, which provides up to 20 hours a year of paid time off to volunteer, plotted veterans’ final resting places for the town website to give the public access to GPS.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation’s Healthy Food Fund grant program distributed 7.5 million pounds of free healthy, local produce to low-income families in the region over the last two years. The amount distributed is the equivalent of nearly 30 million servings of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables reaching households in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The 27th Annual C-U Swish-Out Childhood Cancer Challenge, organized by Town & Country Federal Credit Union, raised $36,000 to support the Maine Children’s Cancer Program during a virtual three-on-three free-throw competition from April 12 to May 8.

Hires, promotions, appointments

The city of South Portland has promoted Karl Coughlin of Windham to serve as director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront. Coughlin has served as the department’s deputy director since 2017 under former director Kevin Adams, who resigned in January 2021.

Nate Franck has joined Bar Harbor Bank & Trust as vice president, portfolio manager. Franck, who lives in Gray, volunteers as a community investment financial reviewer for the United Way of Greater Portland.

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