SACO, Maine — As old New England barns go, it’s a veritable colt.
Built in 1999 to create a horse property, the eight-stall, two-story barn on four acres was ripe for repurposing. And so in April 2014 my husband and I purchased the former Carter Farm, including the original 1834 farmhouse, ready to take it on. What gave us the idea to use the barn as a base for an art farm?
“Thinking of a sculpture park at first, the radiant fields that were agrarian for centuries, coaxed from us a new understanding,” said my husband, Patrick Pierce, a sculptor originally from Oregon who moved to Maine with me in 2013. “It’s a perfect setting for contemporary continuity with the past.”
His sculptures, made of steel, copper, bronze, wood and curious found objects, needed shelter from the elements like farm animals but also a place to season. The quest to find the right house wasn’t driven solely for living space. An outbuilding or two for studio work was paramount.
“Maine has tons of barns,” our real estate agent said at the time. “We will find you the right one.”
Some barns are hand-hewn beauties. Others are cathedrals to an agrarian god. This one is more about imagination, an empty stage on which new plays and works can be unfolded.
Upstairs in a former hayloft, Patrick paints and sculpts to the sounds of bluebirds and cardinals. Below, horse stalls display vignettes for sculpture, painting and light sculptures.
A traditional gallery this is not. Wisps of hay still linger and stick out from the ceiling. The smell of manure is faintly present, and a salt lick with horsehair is firmly anchored to a wall. Hoof marks testify to the previous occupants’ impatience to break free and gambol in the fields.
When we first set foot in the barn as new owners on a snowy day in March, the names of former tenants, “Misty” and “Lucky Star,” equines that neighed away the nights in this 32 by 48 foot barn, were affixed to the stalls. At one time, chickens flocked in one corner. The “Eggs 4 sale,” sign testified to the history that hatched before.
A few floating feathers still exist here and there. We like that. This is not a museum. It’s an artfarm, dammit.
The coops have been repurposed as a platform for tabletop pieces that include “Tiny Titan,” a copper and steel emblem woven into a potent sculpture, and taller, figurative artworks, including “Pinto,” peek from one stall.
The barn was a perfect fit but not an easy find. It took us years to arrive at the right place.
We almost pulled the trigger on a carriage house up the coast and years before flirted with an extended garage for studio space, but there is something more honorable and upright about a barn.
“It opens to the east and west, so the whole world blows through it,” Patrick said. “It’s sheltered space, but it’s open. It just feels good.”
But not in the winter. It’s a meat locker in January. The large doors slide open for short visits to pick up a tool or adjust a work in progress. In deep winter, the house attic is his painting studio.
Its functional, modern design abets our creative drive. This one was ready-made for our intent. And that intent will shift and expand as we inter-accommodate the dialogue with nature and the land and the spirit that abides here.
It is commodious enough to harbor my creative dreams as well. Will I roast coffee beans in the first stall to the right? Make wood-fired pizza? Work my hands into clay and discover a new expressive outlet? Or just throw a barn dance upstairs?
The story is still being written.
But this I know. The barn feels ready to serve, a place to live and work that can contain imagined scenarios. They say if you take care of a barn, it will take care of you. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
