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.

Words by Helene Swarts | Images by Elizabeth Budington
Limited Edition Prints $375 Framed/$125 Unframed
Contact Gallery for more information on purchases of sets of two or more.
All prints are 11”x17” on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper. Frame specifications available on request.

Sculptures by Richard Swarts
Found Stone, Freshwater Pearls, Wire Armature 
All approximately 3”x2”x2” $125 Each

Helene Swarts is a 90 year-old internationally recognized poet, playwright, and short story author. Ms Swarts, an alumnus of NYU and The New School, has had well over 200 works published over the past 70 years.  She is still actively writing and expects her lifetime collection of poems to be out this year. Stay tuned to Casco Bay Artisans for information and release dates. 

Richard (Dick) Swarts is a 92 year old retired space engineer. After designing guidance, navigation, and light control equipment and inertial components for space, aircrafts, and missile systems, Swarts translated his technological designs into medical equipment technology where he was able to optically investigate human blood flow through the skin by using his invention of the life saving Pulse Oximeter.  

Combining his scientific hands-on skills with his artistic sensibility, Swarts has designed these one-of-a-kind “Noble Watcher” rock and pearl art sculptures. In 2010, Swarts designed a new one-of-a-kind method of setting precious stones into sea stones maximising the refractive index of the precious stone.

Both Helene and Dick live together and create on the back shore of Peaks Island, Maine where they met as children some 77 years ago.

Elizabeth Budington has been collecting turn of the century glass plate negatives for over 25 years and has spent a great deal of time becoming acquainted with each of the 5000 or so negatives in her collection. She gathered this collection at estate sales, flea markets, auctions and special photography shows.

She was a student of photography at the Boston Museum School when she discovered her first box of 1890’s glass plate negatives at an estate sale. Ms. Budington works in both a traditional darkroom setting and with a desktop digital darkroom and prints on a high end commercial photo printer.  She has gained a reputation over the years as the go to person for private collections that need digital archiving.