Barn Shingle Prints from Northern Maine

  Contact:  Paul Cahan   paulc111@verizon.net  973-460-5060
I have been going to northern Maine for the last 51 years, and have admired the
wonderful old barns that seem like sculptures in the landscape of a place where
human beings and the land, the wood, the trees, the weather and nature
lived in harmony.... and animal hunting for subsistence.
   Over the last few years, I have sadly seen the old barns falling apart.  Some are
being replaced with vinyl, or aluminum.  The rest are left to fall and rot.
I have been documenting the texture, feel, and energy of the barns' decline by
placing water based paint on the shingles and doing the art from there.
Please find below pictures of the barns that I have done most of my art on.
One is on Quimby Pond road in Oquossoc Maine that is a small barn that covers a well that was built in 1848.  The other is about 5 miles south on Route 232 South from Rumford Point Maine., Route 2 West.   It has been in the family for 4 generations, is well over 100 years old, and used to be a milk farm, which is no more for many complex reasons. (From new job opportunities, to the increased technological requirements/expenses being too much for a small family farm to bear in competing with the larger corporate operations.
July 29, 2014   Rangeley, Maine

Barn Prints from Northern Maine

These delicate old barns of weathered shingles are in disrepair. They are still strong though, more than a century old. Even during their slow and splintering demise, the shingles hold onto each other, standing and leaning firm.  I press my hands gently against the paper.  I feel the grain and contours of the wood. An image then appears, a mirror of their tenacious existence against the elements.  They remind me of myself.

Ink, wood, paper, and human hands work together. This quartet marked the beginnings of human mass communication.  Early printings were holy documents of words and images, first by hand, then by printing press.  I feel somewhat spiritual when in a creative process and the barns seem almost like a holy structure but without an appropriate name that appreciates their function.  They are the place where the land, people, animals, and the earth join together in a shelter and a way of life in tune with nature through all seasons, guided by sunrise, sunset, birth, life, growth, and death.

  excerpt of book yet to be published:  barns and bark.   paul cahan

more prints from 100 year old barns in northern maine, and examples of prints made of the driftwood at Bemis on the shores of Lake Mooselookmeguntic, as well as prints from the contoured lines within the bark of the birch trees.

BARN PRINTS FROM NORTHERN MAINE 2012-2013

I have admired the old barns of northern Maine ever since my family built a summer house on Lake Mooselookmeguntic in Rangeley Maine in 1959.  I have seen the barns deteriorate over the years, and sadly they are disappearing from the

bucolic landscape of the wilderness.

barn print 2