While many Mainers have responded to the plight of underpaid lobster fishermen and women by dining more often than usual on lobster, Kristin Pine of St. George recently bought 100 pounds of lobster for another reason. She incorporates the complete shells of that crustacean in wreaths, wall hangings, and even coffee tables that she designs and builds.
“I know for a fact that I would never buy this many lobsters if I weren’t helping [the lobster fishermen] through a tough year,” Pine said during a recent interview in her home workshop. “We’re sick of eating them,” she said, smiling at her fiance, Pete Blake.
Pine has good reason to be keenly aware of the ups and downs of local lobstering. The Rockland native is the daughter of Vincent Pine, a lobsterman who worked around Metinic, off Spruce Head Island, from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Describing herself as “always a beachcomber, always!” Pine said she can’t remember a time when she hasn’t used her finds creatively. One of her early girlhood hobbies entailed painting seaside scenes on smooth stones. More recently, she began to use shoreline finds to make framed, three-dimensional artwork, and to construct wreaths, too. Initially, she put together the projects for family and friends.
“I never thought I’d do more than that,” she said. “But when I saw the reaction of people to my work, I knew I was on to something,” she recalled.
Not every reaction was positive, however. She laughed to recall an early adventure in wreath-making. After constructing an elaborate wreath and storing it in an unheated shed, she delivered it to her office as a decoration. Everyone oohed and aahed over it at first, but this delighted response was quick to fade when some organic matter remaining in the seashells decomposed with odoriferous result.
“At first they thought the wreath was so cool, but when it thawed out, they said, ‘Euh! They stink!’” Pine remembered. “It was really embarrassing. Since then, through lots of trial and error, I’ve learned how to properly clean them. Now I’m not all scattery,” she said. “I have a process.”
That process can still stink, but the only place that this occurs is in Pine’s own home workshop, where she cooks (and eats) countless mussels and clams and lobsters, and where she boils periwinkles, conchs and other sea creatures. “You don’t want to be here when I bake starfish!” she exclaimed. “My house smells really disgusting then, but I have to do what I have to do.”
Armed with tide charts, Pine finds many of her raw materials while combing the beaches on little-known stretches of shore. “I go to places that you gotta work your way to get to,” she said. Friends also help out. Lobsterman Spike Goehry of Owls Head often brings starfish to her. Eric Culver of Port Clyde supplies oyster shells he shucked for catered events. Her parents set aside sea urchins they find on Jameson Island in New Brunswick, where they now reside.
Pine also collects good finds as well as creative ideas while working in her daytime job as a meter reader for Central Maine Power. For instance, she found what she called “a mother lode” of conch shells in a lobsterman’s traps that were stacked near an electric meter. With the lobsterman’s blessing, she harvested all the shells she could carry.
“My CMP job works great for me,” she said. “I’m reading the meters and I’m thinking.” Recently, while on her daily rounds, she envisioned a new idea for lobster-crate-style coffee tables inset with lobsters and minilights and topped with plexiglass.
Kristin Pine’s creations are sold at Harborside Market and Garden in Tenants Harbor, at Farmer’s Restaurant in Port Clyde, and at C&S Seafood in Cushing. She takes orders at kristinpine1@yahoo.com.