Mainebiz

V O L . X X X I N O. X I X 80 Fact Book / Doing Business in Maine P H OTO E S S AY "C ould artists revive a fading Maine town?" at was the headline atop a Boston Globe story. e year was 2017 and the fading town was Monson in Piscataquis County. I was the photographer for the story. At the time, the town looked uninspiring and pretty dull. Many homes were in varying states of disrepair, with peeling paint. ere was traffic, but most drivers were just blasting past on Route 15, on the last stretch to Greenville and Moosehead Lake. Car after car rolled through. Hardly anyone stopped. "It was rough, really rough," says Lucas Butler, who was town manager from 2014-17. Fast forward eight years: I went back this summer to see if the fading town had been revived. And to ask whether artists could revive such a town. History written on slate Monson, located two and a half hours north of Portland or an hour and 20 minutes northwest of Bangor, has had heydays and busts since its founding in 1822. Its first heyday started around 1870 with the discov- ery of black slate. e graves of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Arlington National Cemetery are made of Monson slate. Immigrants poured in and the population swelled to about 1,200 by the late 1800s. But the quarries mostly failed following WWI and the Great Depression. For some six decades, Moosehead Manufacturing was the major employer, selling high quality furniture in Maine, the U.S. and overseas. But it closed in 2007. It should be noted that Piscataquis County is the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined with just 17,432 year-round residents. While Monson has always been a stop for Appalachian Trail hikers and while oreau once stayed here and artists gravitated here in the early 20th century, the notion of it one day becoming an arts community seemed a distant dream, at best. red J. Field is a photojour- nalist who has completed more than 15,000 newspaper and magazine assignments. He has been a staff photogra- pher at newspapers in Maine and Massachusetts, becoming photo director at two of them. He has done long- term projects (greater than one year) for Harvard, Boston College and Bowdoin and has taught pho- tojournalism at the University of Southern Maine for 22 years. He has worked for dozens of newspa- pers and magazines all over the U.S. and beyond. Fred is the author of "Maine Places, Maine Faces," a photojournalistic tribute to Maine and her proud people. He has earned state, regional, national and international awards for his photojournalism. Monson's moment A photographer visits a Maine town with an arts community and a James Beard Award-winning restaurant S t o r y a n d p h o t o s b y F r e d J . F i e l d F P H O T O / RO B E R T F I E L D Eight years after his first visit to Monson, a photographer returns. Caitlyn Dauphinee, foreground, has fun as she works near Jemma Gascoine at Gascoine's studio in Monson. "I watched her grow up," says Gascoine. Libra Foundation President and CEO Craig Denekas on Route 15 in downtown Monson. Beginning eight years ago, the Libra Foundation began pumping $10 million into the ailing town and created a nonprofit artist residency program. "I think this is a great place. If one could pick a place to make a life, I think this would be a good one," says Denekas.

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