Works in Words, Images, and Stone
from Helene Swarts, Richard Swarts, and Elizabeth Budington

Exhibition Statement

“That cold winter the island women cut and pinned old cloth into neat patterns avowing the limits of love and other calamities”- Helene Swarts excerpt from ‘Quilting Bee: 1883’

The gray days of a hibernating New England lend themselves to more interior time, both in our homes and our thoughts. While we may be within walls and under layers of flannel and wool, our imaginations can run wild between what has been and what could be. It’s a warm nostalgia that wraps around our memories that makes even the most blustery winds harbingers of the deep connection we have to the world around us.

From this connection of land, sea, and memory, we present Inside and Outside the Frame, a show dedicated to Helene and Richard Swarts and their friend Elizabeth Budington about how art and language converge on a rocky coast on an island at the edge of the sea.

Created from Helene Swarts poetry and the plate glass negative collection of Elizabeth Budington ‘Playing with Time’ pairs words and images that weave stories both imagined and very real. Presented in limited edition prints Helene and Elizabeth combine their art forms into evocative works both ephemeral as the breeze and tangible as the rocks beneath their feet. This exhibition was first presented at Casco Bay Artisans and then through the New School in NYC, where Helene is an alumnus.

Bringing in the direct connection to land and sea, Richard Swarts’s ‘Noble Watchers’ reimagines cairns as permanent forms crowned with fresh water pearls, both objects familiar to the New England coast that are imbued with their own iconography and histories. These intimately small forms show a quiet reverence for that place where the salt water smooths the most steadfast of rocks and carves the deepest of connections between those who live there.

We are honored to bring this show to you for this season of valentines and the sowing of spring fields.

For inquiries into the works or any other information, please contact: