By David D’Arcy

This summer’s installation of new sculptures is evidence that creative interventions in nature can be harmonious.

The most visited cultural institution in Maine is a woods in the woods. The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, a 300-acre expanse of nature — curated and wild — is in Boothbay, an hour east of Portland. Two land-inspired projects on those grounds add to an ongoing recognition of the people who lived on the land before Europeans arrived.

That recognition, like any garden, is a work in progress.

A look at Eci-Mahsosiyil/Fiddleheads. Photo: David D’Arcy

A short walk from a low-lying building in the woods is Eci-Mahsosiyil/Fiddleheads. Inspired by a local plant, two sculptures rise in the form of the hook-shaped fiddler fern, a green delicacy that comes up in the spring. These iterations of the fern are hollow, and look braided and woven in shiny bark, as if they were baskets. They are cast in lustrous copper, creating a woven trompe l’oeileffect, giving the project the feel of permanence, as if the plants in metal were monuments. When I was there, visitors scratched their heads as they walked around the standing ferns, as if they were eyeing works of contemporary art in a museum or a gallery.

The artist, Shane Perley-Dutcher, comes from Wolastoqiyik Neqotkuk, an indigenous Wabanaki community in New Brunswick, just across what he calls the “colonial border” with Canada. Wabanaki (“People of the Dawn”) is the general term for the tribal confederation of the region. When I met Perley-Dutcher at the gardens, he noted that fiddleheads have been part of his landscape since childhood, and part of his livelihood: “I learned how to pick them, clean them, and sell them.” The pair of works were commissioned by the CMBG.

Perley-Dutcher explained that he had been trained as a silversmith. “I’m a jeweler that’s lost his way as a sculptor,” he said. Found his way, you might say.

His Fiddleheads are part of an ongoing program called Deconstucting the Boundaries: The Land Fights Back, curated by the Indigo Arts Alliance in Portland, an organization of African-American and other artists of color, as part of a three-year project to expand the range of art shown at the CMBG.

“For me it’s about belonging,” Perley-Dutcher said, “to maintain that continuum of passing on a traditional knowledge. Tradition evolves, which is why I make metal baskets — I don’t make baskets the way my ancestors made baskets, and that’s OK. That’s a form of me saying, that’s how we make things, there’s even more value in how we’re going to continue to make things.”

A look at Trolls. Photo: David D’Arcy

“It really symbolizes our resiliency to survive, no matter what the atmosphere and the environment is around us,” the artist noted. “It’s an act of resilience, it’s fighting for our connection prior to contact, prior to colonization.”

Past a pond occupied by some croaking frogs, in a flat opening in the vegetation bordered by paths into the woods, there was another vision on view. On that grassy surface, called Cleaver Lawn, lie four gently rising mounds, protuberances covered with grass, except for a vertical opening lined with shells, inspired by the Wabanaki practice of piling up oyster shells and other objects into “oyster middens.” You can find real examples, created over a thousand years, still intact in the nearby town of Damariscotta, Maine.

Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis, an enrolled citizen of the Navajo Nation who describes herself as Muskogee Creek and Greek, discussed the mounds when they were unveiled (if that’s the right word) at the CMBG. She stressed that “if you’re not Wabanaki, you’re a guest in this place,” noting that her middens, with their clear references to the region’s past, will be there until they decompose. There should be plenty of time to visit them.

Looking toward the more immediate future, Tsouhlarakis asked, “How do we enable an indigenous artist to thrive past the two years of your honeymoon period?” Putting an artist’s work in the landscape ensures some staying power: “We always hope that work will go beyond [making a statement about] land acknowledgment.”

Along with the middens’ salute to ancestors, there’s a lighter side. Children are sure to climb all over them. In the dense forest beyond the lawn there are other sculptures, including five massive grotesque Trolls hacked out of wood by the Danish artist Thomas Dambo — figures that seem inspired by the forbidding images of Francisco de Goya along with a touch of Sesame Street. When the giant figures entered the landscape in 2021, attendance at the CMBG jumped upward. This boost in the gate offers a valuable lesson: 300 acres of protected land can accommodate many different kinds of art in a natural, and protected, environment.

It’s reassuring, and not to be taken lightly. This summer’s installation of new sculptures is evidence that creative interventions in nature can be harmonious. That wasn’t the case a short drive up the coast. In Camden, normally a place where art and the environment are valued, if not venerated, members of the outdoorsy L.L. Bean dynasty found that trees and other plants on their waterfront property were dying. An investigation revealed that the trees had been poisoned by neighbors in the house behind them. They had used a toxin (tebuthiuron, brought from Missouri) to remove obstructions (trees) that spoiled a splendid oceanfront view. A view to kill for? The townspeople were aghast. News of the crime to the land was met with incredulity and then public outrage. Fines to the wrongdoers did not stop the poison from doing its work: placed in the soil to kill the trees, it spread underground, reaching the bay nearby. Criminal charges might be in the offing, but locals say with regret that it’s a long shot.

Meanwhile, back at the poison-free CMBG, lush summer green dominates the gardens’ rich palette, which should turn autumnal by October. Think of Monet’s Haystacks. If you don’t like the background now, wait a season.

David D’Arcy lives in New York. For years, he was a programmer for the Haifa International Film Festival in Israel. He writes about art for many publications, including the Art Newspaper. He produced and co-wrote the documentary Portrait of Wally (2012), about the fight over a Nazi-looted painting found at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.