Sandy Crabtree, a Bath resident of over 50 years, former Morse High School art teacher and children’s book illustrator, will have her work featured on Pine Tree Society’s holiday cards this year to raise funds for the organization. 

The Scarborough-based nonprofit, which offers support to Maine children and adults with disabilities through therapy and other programming, expects to raise $75,000 from holiday card sales, according to Chief Development Officer Erin Rice. 

“We are lucky to have a number of Sandy Crabtree’s paintings,” Rice said. “Her work is definitely a favorite among our customers.” 

This year is not the first time Crabtree’s artwork has been featured on Pine Tree Society’s cards. She has been offering her artwork to them for about 20 years and her work has been selected a number of times over the years. She submitted work for a long time before first being selected, she said, and she has been working with them ever since.  

During the pandemic, the organization stopped taking new art submissions for their holiday card fundraiser, and in that time it used her archived paintings, Crabtree said.  She’s grateful and also hopeful that next year Pine Tree Society will reopen submissions to give opportunities to new, younger artists.

“I feel very lucky,” Crabtree said. “They’re a wonderful organization and fulfill a lot of kids’ dreams.”   

COVID-19 restricted much of what the organization has been able to do in the last couple year, and had a significant impact its Pine Tree Camp, a 285-acre barrier-free camp in Rome, Maine. Next summer, however, they plan to relaunch the overnight summer camp.

When Crabtree was an art teacher, some of her students attended Pine Tree Camp and she saw how enthusiastic they were about that experience and how much it meant to them, she said. 

She cited a treehouse at Pine Tree Camp on North Pond in Rome as a notable example of the organization’s work.

“I thought that was the most amazing thing because they built a handicap ramp, so if you were in a wheelchair, you could go up into the treehouse,” she said, adding that those kinds of efforts “inspire artists to do work for them.”

Much of her own work comes from her love of nature. She originally went to school as a science major before changing her mind and developing an affinity for landscape paintings. Pine Tree Society’s mission of providing young people with opportunities to enjoy the outdoors was one of the things that appealed to her about it. “Appreciating and caring about the environment crosses all sections of our culture,” she said.

Crabtree, a member of Sebascodegan Artists, will exhibit her work at Curtis Memorial Library next month. 

 

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