First Friday Art Walk - Photo Credit: Maine Historical Society File Photo

First Friday Art Walk

Our First Friday Art Walk will also feature displays by several local artisans. Located at 489 Congress Street, all Maine Historical Society Museum exhibits will be open, including “Notorious: Maine Crime in the Public Eye, 1690-1940.” and “Stitches: Quilt Handwork at Maine Historical Society.” Meet local artisans and vendors. Browse for unique Maine-made gifts in our Museum Store.

Events > First Friday Art Walk
Maine Historical Society
489 Congress Street
Portland, Maine 04101 United States
About the Event
Presented by
Maine Historical Society
(207) 774-1822
August 1, 2025

5:00 PM-7:00 PM

About our guest vendors:

Sarah Shaw is a visual storyteller, illustrator, and Assistant Professor of Illustration at Maine College of Art & Design. She makes nonfiction comics, visual essays, zines, prints, and paintings that feature moments from daily life, nature, travel, language, culture, and women’s history.

Proxima Design Cat Toys is a small business owned by native Mainer Jacquelyn Mansfield, specializing in handmade, durable cat toys. Joyful shapes, organic catnip, and thoughtful designs with kitty’s instincts in mind make these toys irresistible!

Joyanna Margo is a self-taught artist from Maine. She creates whimsical mixed-media abstracts and florals on canvas. She composes her paintings under the influence of coffee, poetry, music, and the beauty abundant all around us. Her negative-space technique comes from a desire to create order from chaos, adjust focus to the positive, and minister joy.

Through a lens of attention, Amy Gwinn-Becker’s photographic art captures exquisite, often surprising details in nature that invite a closer look and offer a nuanced perspective. Each image is an opportunity to see beyond the first impression and be transformed. Available on glass and cards, these are perfect as gifts or decor.

Longfellow Garden Club invites you to explore our urban oasis—the garden—during the First Friday Art Walk. In recent years, the garden club has focused on adding more native plants to enhance food resources for our local, native pollinators. Garden club members will be on hand to answer your questions and provide tours of the garden.

Crafters from Calico Quilters Club of Yarmouth, Maine will be demonstrating hand stitching techniques in the Shettleworth Hall Gallery and Christine Force, Guest Curator of Stitches: Quilt Handwork at Maine Historical Society will be on hand to provide visitors with exhibit Q&A.

Cole Caswell researches the remnants and patterns in our landscape that reflect contemporary strategies of survival. Through strata of observation, technology, subjectivity, and his surroundings, Caswell investigates geography and its impact on our perceived ability to survive. He uses traditional, historic and digital photographic media to investigate our present condition. Caswell travels in an 90’s VW camper van with a portable darkroom mounted to the back and uses alternative photographic process to create works while in the field.

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