Beloved children’s author and artist Dahlov Ipcar will make her sixth annual birthday appearance at Mid Coast Hospital on Thursday to sign books and calendars in a benefit for the hospital’s Maternity Ward and scholarship funds.

Sponsored by Mid Coast Hospital Auxiliary, the signing will be from 10 a.m. to noon in Café Corridor, at the hospital’s 123 Medical Center Drive complex. All of the Georgetown artist’s re-published books will be available, including three board books she has written since 2010, as well as her 2014 calendar called “Full Circle.”

Additionally, Ipcar’s “Animal Hide and Seek,” first published in 1947, will be available for sale and signature according to her publisher, Islandport Press in Yarmouth. It is about birds and animals, big and small, who live, play and hide in the woods. Ipcar both wrote and illustrated the story, which instructs young readers how to find the animals.

The calendar showcases 15 “circle” paintings she has created. The first, done in 1988 and called “Cat Mandala,” is on the cover and represents her fondness for cats: “The central circles depict wild cats of the world, large and small, and in the corners there are domestic cats,” Ipcar said.

“I have lived with cats ever since I brought home my first small straggly kitten when I was 8 years old. My mother was not thrilled but she let me keep him and he turned out to be a beautiful long-haired golden Coon cat who we named Tooky. He appears in many of my mother’s paintings and my father’s sculptures.”

“The Cat At Night,” her nocturnal tale of a walkabout farm cat, shown through human eyes as well as “see-in-the-dark” feline vision, continues to be a popular family favorite.

Twelve other paintings are found inside, one gracing each month. Finally, two are portrayed on the calendar’s inside back cover.

Each of the paintings includes a brief account of its meaning to Ipcar.

Earlier this year, Ipcar received an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from the Maine College of Art in Portland and its Award for Leadership as a visual artist. In 2012, the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland gave her its prestigious Maine in America Award.

Proceeds from the signing will benefit health career scholarships, as well as the auxiliary’s $120,000 pledge for an upgrade of the Maternity Unit’s infant security system.

For more information about the signing, call Mid Coast Hospital Volunteer Services at 373-6015, or email Millie Stewart, director of volunteer services, at [email protected] om.

The Times Record Sustaining Sponsor
We believe a community must be informed to thrive. bowdoin.edu