Transcription of Weavings #12
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland, Maine and broadcast on 1310 AM Portland, streaming live each week at 11:00AM on wlobradio.com and available via podcast on doctorlisa.org. Thank you for joining us. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Jill: I think the one thing that kept me going was the customer feedback and I really think that helped me through the worst times was when I would hear positive reinforcement from the customers. They were some really lean, lean years and so I think it was customer feedback all the time and just positive feedback of keep doing what you’re doing and love your product and finally, someone’s getting it, gets what we want and what we need.
Alex: I think as an artist, one of the things that I’ve learned is that it’s really important to be true to self and to live in your truth. Sometimes making art is really about living your life and really improving on that and building that, experimenting with your life as a kind of material.
Sarah: What is the thing that brings you back to yourself, that’s just such an easy as riding. I can get on a horse and the day looks very different for me at the end of that ride.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the generous support of the following sponsors: Maine Magazine; Tom Shepard of Hersey, Gardner, Shepard & Eaton; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage; Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; Whole Foods Market; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine; the University of New England, UNE; and Akari.
Lisa: Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast number 12, airing on Sunday, December 4, 2011. Our theme this week is weaving. In 2006, I recognized that being the type of physician I was, was not quite enough for my patients. As a family physician trained in family and preventive medicine and with a Masters in public health, I knew that I was impacting a few people but not quite to the extent that I wanted to so I went on a quest to find things that would be helpful to my patients to weave in new and different and yet evidence-based things that I could make their lives better.
On today’s show, we will be talking to individuals who have had the same experience in their lives. They’ve recognized that need exists and they have found ways to meet that need. We begin with a conversation with Jill McGowan, internationally known clothing designer based here in Maine. We speak with Alex Rheault of the Maine College of Art and the Quimby Colony and we conclude with a conversation with Sarah Armentrout of E-Quest and the Carlisle Riding Academy.
We hope that you continue to contemplate the theme of weavings and its impact and its meaning in your own life as you listen to our discussions with these guests. As you listen to our daily tread quote and our bountiful blog reading, we hope that we continue to inspire you and support you as you seek to live your own bountiful life. Thank you for listening.
Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we feature a segment that we had been calling Food and Sustenance but we’ve decided to call Deep Dish, mostly because Jen Morgan and I, we dish a lot on things that maybe aren’t completely food related from a physical standpoint but here I am with Jen again.
Jen: Hi Lisa, it’s so nice to be here.
Lisa: Nice to have you. This morning, I went to Wholefoods. Wholefoods is our sponsor for this segment and it is December now so there are fewer things in the store that are locally raised but there’s still a lot there. What I had today was we have some Brussels sprouts. We have some carrots. We have some carrot juice and some butternut squash and some spinach.
Jen: It does. It looks like a delicious winter feast over there actually.
Lisa: Yes and so I thought we would talk a little bit about these weavings that we do with food because weavings is our theme of today’s show.
Jen: You bring up a good point because Lisa you’ve done a lot of weaving in your life. You started out as a traditional medical doctor, a family doctor, I believe. I think in our interview that we did last year, you studied and you were going to have to traditional practice and then something happened along the way that made you rethink your plan. What was that?
Lisa: Well, you’re right. I was trained in family medicine. I did that. I did a Master’s in public health. I did training in preventive medicine. I had a family medicine practice. I was doing that actively. I had done it long enough that in 2006, I realized what I am offering my patients is not exactly what they need. I’m very practical that way. I went and studied Chinese Medicine so it doesn’t maybe seem maybe practical but it’s very practical. I am all about tools that you can use.
Jen: You actually said that in the article. You said that you could measure the results of your acupuncture practice.
Lisa: That’s right and this is an article that people can still read online and actually will link to on our website, the doctorlisa.org website. There’s an article that you wrote for the inaugural wellness issue for Maine Magazine.
Jen: Yes, all about integrative medicine and the tsunami effect that’s having on healthcare in our state which you are at the lead of.
Lisa: We need to have a tsunami of sorts because things are not in a great state right now. We all recognize that. This is why I did go back and studied traditional Chinese medicine and I studied acupuncture but I also had spent a lot of time looking at food and nutrition and every week on the show, we read from the Bountiful Blog. I believe that I mentioned to people that this started as a food blog. It started as me going back and learning how to cook myself as an individual so that I can share this information with my patients.
Jen: Why is that so important to you?
Lisa: For me personally, I spent a lot of time in my life feeding other people literally and figuratively. I was a mother. I was a physician. I was the oldest of 10. There was a lot of outgoing energy. I was a wife, so I spent so much time nourishing and nurturing other people which I love doing but it left me empty and starving in some ways so when I realized how starving I was and I had some very physical sort of manifestations of starvation and I even realized that I was almost starving myself, almost intentionally starving myself to try and maybe get myself out of the life that I had created that didn’t quite resonate that I went back and I said, “Okay, now I need to feed myself and let’s start with the physical because if you can’t feed yourself physically, then you don’t exist anymore physically.”
Jen: Correct, yes. I’m glad you recognized that.
Lisa: It’s a hard thing to come to. I think a lot of women have this problem.
Jen: Absolutely or they have the opposite problem which is they use food as a way to insulate themselves from those feelings.
Lisa: It isn’t just women, it’s also men but I have noticed this a lot in my practice and amongst my friends and family members that it does tend to be fairly female and we had Marcelle Pick talking about this topic on Are You Tired or Wired, that’s her book. Our show that we did a few weeks back, this was this whole idea of feeding yourself.
Jen: Yes, and the book that she and I did together, The Core-Balanced Diet, we found in our research that you cannot dissemble, you cannot unweave emotions and food and that’s really what you’re talking about.
Lisa: That’s right. When I go to Whole Foods every week and I pick up food, it’s not just about the physical, I’m actually trying to figure out what can I do with this food that is going to feed me in a physical way but is also going to nurture me in some way spiritually. It sounds like a funny thing until you’ve actually, well we’ve talked about beets, until I’ve actually sliced open a red, red beet and you thought to yourself, “This is the most amazing magenta I’ve ever seen,” or until you’ve taken the time with a purple cabbage to slice it in half and to see this sort of crenulations around the outside and the design. I think there is this very visual, very sensual element to food that feeds us and this is why I needed to do this with myself and my own life to feed myself physically and I became spiritual. I do this with my patients on an ongoing basis and why we talk about food on the show because food is just … It’s a microcosm of the macrocosm. It’s an example of something smaller, something more tangible that can be done, that can actually nurture you in a less tangible and extremely significant way.
This week, speaking about these foods that I had just mentioned, I actually brought along what I … I love this book. We have actually, we time to time talk about books that we use as resources. For people who already have some background in food, this book that I love now is called the Flavor Bible. It’s not a book that has recipes but what it does have is it has, and this is by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg and we’ll reference this on our website, you can go in this book and you can look up brussels sprouts and they will tell you what season it’s from, if this is an autumn, winter sort of food.
The taste is bitter, the relatives are broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens, kale and kohlrabi. Remember, we talked about cruciferous vegetables. We know that these are already good for our hearts and for our cancer prevention and it gives you some techniques as to how to use them but it also, which I love, this is one of my favorite, favorite things to do with food is to bring together, to marry together tastes and smells and textures is to bring them all together and create something new to weave them all together. This is why I love this book and again, it’s not for the kind of faint of heart. You have to have a little confidence in your cooking skills. You have to be able to say all right, I know how to braise a Brussels sprout, so now I’m going to try some of these combinations.
Jen: It sounds like it educates you on how to take it to the next level?
Lisa: It does. This is the sort of a next level book and I think about levels of wellness in food, cooking, life, wellness and this book is sort of an upper level book. But I love it. It’s just a great book. So Brussels sprouts, they talk about some of the taste combinations, one of them is Brussels sprouts, lemon juice and thyme.
Jen: Thyme, really?
Lisa: Mmhmm (affirmative). So these three tastes go really well together. They talk about … They put vinegar, a cider and white wine vinegar is important sort of braising and it is the balance between the taste that actually that gives you that oomph.
Jen: Isn’t that true on your tongue. I know that the tongue is very important in Chinese medicine that you have different tastes on your tongue. Dos that play into … when people talk about your palate, a chef’s palate, is that what they’re talking about?
Lisa: Yeah, it’s the same … it’s different languages saying the same thing whether you’re educated in food per se or Chinese medicine and Chinese cooking or whether you’re talking about Ayurvedic, it’s always a balance of taste. In Western medicine, there’s different places on the tongue that have different salty, sweet, bitter and in Chinese medicine, you can actually do a tongue diagnosis. You can look at a person’s tongue and say, “Okay, this person has a heart fire imbalance, for example.” In fact, the tip of your tongue is where you look to see if you have a heart fire problem.
Jen: What does that tell you? You’re under stress?
Lisa: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it means that you’re just not quite resonating with what you’re meant to do in your life. Your heart is sort of it’s overacting. It’s almost manic. We have, getting back to sort of the grounding and the weaving, one of the reasons that I have taught myself to cook, that I blog about it but I keep talking about food even though I know that the ultimately, health ends up being emotional and spiritual. It’s that when I have patients who come in, they maybe are not ready to talk about emotional and spiritual health, maybe they’re not ready to talk about resonance with their lives. Maybe they just want, need to know how to cook carrots.
Jen: Feed themselves.
Lisa: Feed themselves from a physical standpoint. One of the reasons I picked out all of these foods for today is that so you have Brussels sprouts. Those are those cruciferous vegetables and we’ve talked about how to cook them before. You can slice them thinly and you can pan roast them with a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, maybe just a little bit of maple syrup which cuts the bitter taste. You can also shred them very, very finely and you can toast up some walnuts and you can mix them with a little bit of honey and vinegar and make up a salad. That’s something we’ve seen in local restaurants.
The butternut squash, I brought this in just to remind us that they actually have pre-cut versions. I’ve had patients in my cooking classes before who have said I can’t cut a squash, it’s too hard on my hands. Well, there is one that’s already cut for you so don’t have to …
Jen: And cleaned out.
Lisa: And cleaned out which is really good if you’re in a hurry. That’s one of the reasons I brought this particular squash. When you’re talking about making your butternut squash soup or you’re talking about trying to pan roast some vegetables, if you got a gourd and you can’t use it, it’s not a helpful gourd.
Finally, the reason that I brought in this particular variation of food is that people who are in a hurry, they need something good, they need something green and they can’t figure out how to … They don’t have time to make a 5-vegetable course meal, I often will encourage them to create something called the green smoothie and what I often use in my smoothies, I use as a base either carrot or apple juice. I’ll add in some either carrots or apples depending upon what I’ve used as a base. I’ll cook up some beets and have those readily available. I’ll add in some spinach or some kale for the green part. It ends up looking a little off but it’s pretty tasty. I’ll add in a little bit of maple syrup or honey for a sweetener and then also some ginger or nutmeg. So that’s one of the reasons why … That is the reason why I brought in those particular foods is if you’re looking for your vegetable punch of the day that’s got great fibre and it’s got green-
Jen: What are the greens you brought in? I see them in there for your smoothie.
Lisa: These greens are just baby spinach, pre-washed baby spinach. They come in a tub. It’s very easy …
Jen: Throw it in the blender.
Lisa: … it’s about a handful. Throw them in the blender. Right. I will often, what I will do with my green smoothies is make up a blender’s worth. I’ll drink half in one day and put it in the fridge and hope it doesn’t spill and drink the half the next day, and actually bee pollen. We’ve talked about bees before. So ill add in some bee pollen there because you can’t actually …
Jen: For extra energy.
Lisa: Yeah for energy. It’s very energizing and it’s not something that you can cook. You can’t use bee pollen heated. This is just an example of something very physical that I will do for myself especially maybe after the Thanksgiving meal, the day after, you’ve had some heavy foods and you just need to come back to balance, just to weave together things that you have to keep yourself healthy.
Jen: And they’re all power-packed with nutrients.
Lisa: Yes, they absolutely are. We’ll continue to bring forth some of this information and put in on our website and we’ll continue to talk about this sort of thing.
Jen: That will be great.
Speaker 1: This segment has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market of Portland, Maine and by the University of New England, an innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number one educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about the University of New England at une.edu.
Lisa: On this week’s wellness innovation segment which is sponsored by the University of New England, I’d like to talk a little bit about the neuroscience of gratitude and I’d like to talk about something that was written by Ocean Robbins, this is from the neuroscience of why gratitude makes us healthier.
“Negative attitudes are bad for you and gratitude, it turns out, makes you happier and healthier. If you invest in a way of seeing the world that is mean and frustrated, you’re going to get a world that is more mean and frustrating but if you can find any authentic reason to give thanks, anything that is going right with the world or your life and put your attention there, then statistics say you’re going to be better off. There’s an old saying that if you forgotten the language of gratitude, you’ll never be on speaking terms with happiness. This isn’t just happy talk, it turns out, your brain knows the difference. Several studies have shown depression to be inversely correlated to gratitude. It seems that the more grateful a person is, the less depressed they are. Phillip Watkins, a clinical psychologist at Eastern Washington University found that clinically depressed individuals show significantly lower gratitude. Nearly 50% less than non-depressed controls.”
Thank you to Ocean Robbins from “The Neuroscience of Why Gratitude makes us healthier” and thank you to the University of New England for sponsoring this wellness innovation segment.
Lisa: We have in the studio with us, Jill McGowan, who’s nationally and actually internationally known for the work that she has done in clothing design. I’m going to read just a little bit about her. Although, I don’t think this is going to give you quite the scope of how truly interesting and amazing this story is. The first line of clothing from Jill McGowan was a series of white shirts. This line was inspired by her work as a pattern maker in the men’s shirt industry. After comparing her work on men’s shirts to women’s clothing of equal price, you realized the genuine need to improve the standard of women’s clothing. Her shirts and seasonal collections are now available in over 300 specialty stores around the country and her work has been featured in several publications including Women’s Wear Daily, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, Victoria, Real Simple, Rescue and more magazines. There’s so much more. We’ll put it on our website but that’s just the start. It’s great to have you here today.
Jill: Thanks for having me. Hi Jen. Hi Lisa.
Lisa: Jill, tell us how you came to be doing what you were doing. So I see that you have this pattern-maker, you were in the men’s shirt industry. You saw something … our theme today is weaving. You saw something that wasn’t quite right and you wanted to create something new. Tell me how that … Set the stage for that.
Jill: It goes way back because my mother had 4 girls, 1 son and she always sewed for us so it goes that far back into my childhood where I would watch my mother put these pieces together and take fabric and turn it into something 3-dimensional. I was really impressed with that process but let it go and went to school, went to college and studied something completely outside of what this theme is. Then in my mid-20’s, decided to go back to school for design and so I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology and while there, it’s a really intense environment.
I don’t think I would’ve survived as an 18 year old there but I’m really glad that I was there as a 29 year old. They’re brutal. They’re just really hypercritical and what they really do ultimately is help you develop a critical eye for what you’re doing, for apparel design, for construction and so through that, my eye was a little more critical and jaded, I guess you could say. Every time that I would try to shop for women’s clothing, I would never find what I wanted. Throughout my internship, I worked in couture and so you just saw designers working with the best fabrics in the world and I wanted to do that but I didn’t want to do it at that price point which was in the thousands of dollars. I decided to work with more affordable fabrics and use a construction, really hardy construction and make a really durable product.
Lisa: You ended up with this … I went on the website and I was looking at it with my 15 year old. I mean, that’s a striking product that you’ve created. It’s very simple and elegant. It’s white shirt against a black background and some pearls looped around the neck, I mean, striking. It’s interesting that you were able to pull together something with such focus. You were able to identify this is the white shirt. Why was it the white shirt specifically that you decided that you wanted to work on first?
Jill: That’s a good question. I think it evolved and it came from my background in men’s wear. I worked at the Hathaway Shirt Company for 3 years. They were known for their men’s shirts and particularly launched their brand in the 1800’s. When I started reading more about their history, I thought this person CF Hathaway was able to develop a product in the 1800’s in Maine. I wanted to do it in the 20th Century in Maine and white shirts I just love. I’ve always loved white shirts. I love the way they wear and I think that if you do need to look presentable, you put that on with a jacket and you look … People are going to believe that you’re professional and take you seriously.
Lisa: What challenges did you come across when you were first trying to do this?
Jill: Oh everyone you could imagine. Financial, I took my business plan to the bank and try to get a term loan and line of credit and they turned me down and it was only because I didn’t have any collateral. It didn’t have to do with race or gender, it just they needed collateral. They needed a guarantee.
Lisa: And you were in your early 30’s at this point or …?
Jill: I was 34 at the time. I started at 34. It was just a step by step. I used my savings and I used credit cards and I worked 24 hours a day. It was an incredible challenge and another obstacle was being in Maine because I didn’t have access to the resources that someone on the 7th Avenue has access to on a day to day basis. That was a bit of a challenge. I could go on and on.
Lisa: But it is interesting because I think that what oftentimes, people will learn is that when they’re trying to weave together authentic lives, they come across challenges and it’s very easy to just give up. What kept you going? What kept you wanting to move the process forward?
Jill: I think the one thing that kept me going was the customer feedback and I really think that helped me through the worst of times was when I would hear positive reinforcement from the customers and there should’ve been many times that I should’ve quit or filed bankruptcy. They were some really lean, lean years. I think it was customer feedback all the time and just positive feedback of keep doing what you’re doing and we love your product and finally, someone’s getting it, gets what we want and what we need.
Lisa: That must’ve been good to hear after all of the struggles and all of the challenges. How did your family feel about this? Tell me where you’re from?
Jill: I grew up in Pittsfield, Maine. My parents still live there. My mother wanted me to do what I wanted to do but I was in … I worked at a newspaper at the time and I had a pretty stable job and she would question why I would go back to school but once they realized that I really was serious about this, they were behind me and really supportive, very supportive.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsors: Akari Salon, an urban sanctuary of beauty, wellness and style, located on Middle Street in Portland Maine’s old port. Follow them on Facebook or go to akaribeauty.com to learn more about their new boutique and medi-spa and by Robin Hodgskin, Senior Vice-President and financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Portland, Maine. For all your investment needs, call Robin Hodgskin at 2077710888, investments and services are offered through Morgan Stanley’s Smith Barney LLC, member SIPC.
Genevieve: Jill, you have a workroom in downtown Portland, is that right?
Jill: Yes in Newcastle Street.
Genevieve: When you were starting your business, how did you go from being a one woman show to having this workshop, what was your process and what do you need to do the work that you do?
Jill: It started in the bedroom of my house and then evolved into a smaller studio and as I grew, I would add new spaces on. I was in the artist studio on Congress Street for years and really love that space because I was surrounded by painters and photographers and it was really a nice atmosphere but I started in a room by myself and I craved having other people around me and so I built it to … Now I have 7 employees, 10 at high season and 7 on average. Now, I need to get back to being alone. It’s like when I really I’m able to create, I’m in my studio alone, it’s usually a Saturday where I can have some great music on, no distractions, the phone’s not ringing and that’s my process. I needed space and I love … the space that I work in is really beautiful, it’s an old brick building and my husband converted it into a nice, gorgeous studio for me so I’m really loving where I’m working right now.
Lisa: Would you say that’s common among people who create, the need to simultaneously have external connections but also have focused solitary time?
Jill: I think so, yeah I think that’s not unusual to need the support system and I need feedback. I really like critical feedback. It’s hard sometimes but I do need to hear it because I feel that I have the skillset but I don’t always have the perspective of where to edit, where we talked about earlier, just where to narrow things down and when to stop. Because once you get on this creative jag, you can just keep going and it’s a great feeling because time just dissolves. You’re in this space that’s really wonderful. It’s probably like writing for you, Jen. It’s just like … and then you just need to know where to pull it in, when and where and oftentimes, for me it’s a deadline. I’ll have to meet a trade show deadline and so that’s where I have to stop and sometimes not when I want to stop but I just have to, I’m forced to stop.
Genevieve: I have a personal question, when you were meeting with, when you were in New York and you were meeting, having those experiences on 7th Avenue and also when you got your degree and you didn’t get the support, how do you deal with rejection and criticism? What are your tools?
Jill: I think humility’s a good thing. I had so many rejections. I set my sights really high. I was making cold calls to Barney’s and to Neiman’s and to Louis’ in Boston. I didn’t have a body of work really that they could buy and present and it was just a riot. I was just like I’m going to the top and that’s where I want to be and my customer now is more the independently owned specialty store. The rejection part is people do me a favor when they say, “No, that’s not working.” I just through my experience at FIT, I’ve developed thicker skin and I can separate it. It is a product and I’m the person. The criticism that I don’t like hearing is just negative things that are beyond my control. One is my price point because, “Oh, her stuff is so expensive.” It’s expensive because I put a lot of money in it and there’s a lot of fabric, there’s a lot of cost is the fabric and that’s something that customer takes home and I feel good about that. They’re taking that with them. I don’t put a lot of dollars in advertising and I don’t draw a huge salary and money is in the product so I’m really proud of that.
Lisa: Aside from being around people who are creative, what do you do to inspire yourself on an ongoing basis?
Jill: I love going to museums. I just went to … FIT had an exhibit on Daphne Guinness’s work and this is … she’s a socialite. She’s one of the Guinness heirs and she has this amazing collection, probably a 20-year collection of couture. It was in FIT Museum and I just walked through it and it was awe-inspiring. It’s just this body of work was just incredible. People criticize her as being this dilettante of sorts and she just really had an amazing eye and she knew what to collect. She has a lot of Alexander McQueen’s work who is now gone. She has this great body of work that we won’t ever see again. That was really impressive. I love to read and I’ll go through magazines. I’ll go through publications and I love historical couture and I’ll go back in history and try to get inspired by that.
Lisa: Are there other clothing or non-clothing related things I should say that inspire you?
Jill: Non-clothing?
Lisa: You talked about food and you talked about furniture and somewhat architecture I guess.
Jill: Yeah, I just am really passionate about design in general, landscape design, buildings. My husband, when we go on vacation, we’re constantly pulling over to the side of the road and just taking a picture of a porch or skyline or whatever. Design is what really inspires me and I really connect with other people who are doing things outside of my field but design-related and I just love that people keep trying to improve the world that way. I don’t know if you’ve been to New York lately but the high line, I have been obsessing about this park. It’s a vertical park. I think it’s 20 blocks and it is just amazing. It’s just amazing what they’ve done to this part of New York that was a decrepit part that was … They were going to tear it down and they’ve turned it into this amazing park.
Lisa: It makes sense that you would sort of like the transformation of something not quite there to something there as with the shirt that you saw that wasn’t quite right so let’s make it better. What’s in the future for you? What do you think’s coming up in your life?
Jill: Right now, we were really set back from the 2008 recession but we have this great opportunity to open a store and so we have this store in Freeport Maine which I am loving. We opened it last November so it’s been a year, a full year now that we’ve been open. We’re going in to our second year. We decided to do it again. I just am loving the fact that our product is in a store on a day to day basis and we can show the entire collection. We have a little outlet corner too for the Freeport shoppers who liked finding bargains. We have a teeny outlet where I have left … It’s more discontinued items, discontinued fabrics but it’s all first quality. I’m nurturing that right now. I just want to nurture the customers that we have. We have a great base of customers across the country and I want to take care of them. That’s our goal right now, it’s just take care of what we have in front of us.
Lisa: How can people find out more about you and what you’re doing, what your shops are doing and your dresses are doing, your stores are doing?
Jill: They can go to 56 Main Street in Freeport and shop. We’re open 7 days a week. If you’re far away, you can go to our website which is jillmcgowan.com and we have an online shopping.
Lisa: Thank you for coming in and talking to us today. This is a great and very appropriate theme, weaving, springing together things, what was and what will be.
Jill: Thanks for having me.
Lisa: Each week, on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we feature a segment that we call Maine Magazine Minutes which is hosted by our all the time co-host Genevieve Morgan, the wellness editor for Maine Magazine.
Genevieve: Thank you Dr. Lisa. Today, you and I are joined in the studio with Alex Rheault who is an artist, independent curator and writer living in Portland, Maine since 2001. Rheault serves as chair of illustration and assistant professor at MCA that’s the Maine College of Art. She is the artistic director of Quimby Colony’s fashion costume and textile arts program and founder of the Drawing Room, a roving community focused art project. Hi Alex.
Alex: Good morning everyone.
Genevieve: I’ve just been looking at your bio and reading everything that you’ve done. You are probably the ultimate weaver and so perfect for our show today. Can you tell us a little bit about the artist and residency program at the Quimby Colony?
Alex: Sure. I’d be happy to tell you. We’ve just finished our second season. The location is right here in Portland, Maine downtown which is great. It creates an urban coastal setting for our artists who come from as far away as California, Chicago, Santa Fe most recently. Many artists are also graduates of Maine College of Art, have come from Maine from as far up as Bangor, Vinalhaven most recently and yeah so …
Genevieve: What’s your role there?
Alex: My role as artistic director has been initially to create this incubator for the colony to see and experiment with what the artist need, how does it play a role in the community, how can the artist tap into the wonderful resources community-wise that we have. How can the community be involved in some ways? Well, so there’s a give back both ways in a reciprocal dialog.
Genevieve: Now, the Quimby Colony was founded by Roxanne Quimby?
Alex: Yes.
Genevieve: What is her vision?
Alex: My understanding of Roxanne’s intent behind this project was she sees Portland as a renaissance city much like Florence with an abundance of resources and perhaps under-appreciated in some aspects. She also wants to celebrate the legacy which has a lot of roots in textile and local farming, producing, making thing right here, whether we had blanket factories, shoe factories, textile factories, there are still 10 textile factories left. Her own interest as a designer, she has a new children’s clothing line that she’s been working on, so she actually designs herself and wanted to celebrate the arts of fashion, costume and textile because in some ways, they’re under-represented in a colony setting. Her idea was to bring artists from other places to come and enjoy Maine and work here and perhaps revitalize those industries and bring to the forefront the idea of entrepreneurship, which I think is so important in Maine.
Genevieve: Absolutely, Jill McGowan was just in and talking about the Hathaway shirt industry that started in Maine in the 1800’s. Here we are 200 years later and you’re participating in a renaissance.
Alex: I think there was a shirt factory actually somewhere around Middle Street some place that was located by some USM professors who were doing women’s work history.
Genevieve: The Quimby Colony is just one of the many things that you do?
Alex: Yes. I wear many hats in this town.
Genevieve: I think we can all relate in this room.
Alex: Yeah. What’s fortunate about that is that I was able to, when I met Roxanne, was able to offer some ideas, some community contacts that we could bring to the colony and have the artists meet. So we’ve had artists and residents who’ve given lectures at the main historical society on textiles or a tea at the colony around hats and women from the community brought hats and brought stories and ate tea and cookies and it just creates a really warm and invigorating environment for dialog and a feeling of community.
Genevieve: And you personally since 2001 have chosen to bring your personal thread into this fabric. Describe a little bit about the other things that you’re doing because they’re equally fascinating.
Alex: Thank you. The Colony has given me an opportunity to bring all of those things together in one place but I came here as a local artist and immersed myself right away by taking some classes. I attended the Salt Institute and then went on to do my graduate work which allowed me to tap in to the MECA community and I worked with … all my mentors were MECA professors. Then, I started a little projects because I noticed that artist studios here are fascinating and they’re all over the place. There are many hidden artists which is a thing that also fascinates me. I started at-
Genevieve: Wait. Can I just interrupt for a second? When you say hidden artists, describe what a hidden artist is?
Alex: I think the hidden artist is the artist that works diligently, quietly and passionately in their studio and is often unrecognized, not for any reason except that perhaps they could be shy or they’re reticent to be part of the larger machine, if you will, of the art world and perhaps they seek alternative venues but they don’t know where they are. I feel often it’s my calling to be an advocate and kind of an activist for artists so I started looking up different artists and asking if I could come visit them in their studios. That created a project called Drawing Conversations which then became something larger with a space for a couple of years which I call Drawing Room. That has now become this roving community project which has extended itself. Its tentacles are now in Cambridge with a youth group that I’m working with.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsor, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedics Specialists in Falmouth Maine, maker of Dr. John’s Brainola Cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicspecialistsme.com.
Genevieve: How have your choices as an artist coming up here to live in Maine, how have they impacted your life right now, your wellness, your sense of who you are and where you’re going?
I think as an artist, one of the things that I’ve learned is that it’s really important to be true to self and to live in your truth and to remain open. More recently, I’ve done a lot of spiritual work, trying to deepen my own yoga practices, my own meditation practices so that I could also expand my artistic practices. That means sometimes taking yourself out of the visible public eye and going, retreating into your studio, filling the well, doing some research and maybe being around a different demographic such as children or elders and having more reciprocal relationship with the work. I also teach at Maine College of Art and I find that the students give me so much. I don’t think they have any idea how much they teach me. I find that sometimes making art is really about living your life and really improving on that and building that, experimenting with your life as a kind of material.
Dr. Lisa: What challenges have you had in trying to deepen this practice? What have you encountered that you’ve had to overcome or maybe are still trying to overcome?
Alex: That’s a great question. I think artists struggle with confidence and even in searching for your truth and knowing what your truth is. There is a really critical … I was just having this conversation with my students yesterday about the hierarchies that are out there in the world, that we’re judged good and bad and students are graded, artists approved or disapproved and I think that we have to find other practices in our life that keep us grounded and balanced so that we don’t focus too much on whether something is good or bad but that it has a worthy value that it’s process in and of itself is the thing that’s most significant, not the outcome.
Genevieve: How do you take what’s found out there? I’m asking you really how to describe your work.
Alex: Describe my work. That’s very interesting. My more recent work has been figurative and is featured on my blog and I think I was really looking at how the body is in constant motion and at the same time, it’s that change is such an important thing to notice and connect to. I think the disparate objects came from my love of collecting and gathering and amassing. I think it’s something that we all do. I like the fact that there’s so much diversity in the world and one of the bodies of work I did was relating to this idea that birds carry contagion in their feet and they can transport it from one place to another and I think in the same way, we can transport things that flourish, that grow. We don’t even know what they have as potential. It’s about finding our potential for me.
Genevieve: Now, what’s up for the Quimby Colony and for you? What’s coming next?
Alex: Quimby Colony is just closing its second season. We are seasonal at the moment and if we were to be able to expand perhaps, we would run the season the whole year but at the moment … We just had our final residents and we were going to regroup and look at the applicants. We have a bunch of applicants who have already been accepted. We have a very fine review committee who has been incredibly objective and supportive of the artist that we’ve had. We also will continue to nurture and support our alums. We had an alumni who came to do a trunk show and is working with Swan’s Island quite possibly. We’re looking forward to seeing what her designs produce and what kind of collaboration. She’s also going to be coming back and doing some consulting work locally.
Genevieve: How can people see more of the fellow’s work or your work?
Alex: For the Colony’s work, we actually have to update our blog and our website. We just had a server crash so we’re trying to work with that so please be patient but people could always contact me. I’m always open to have a cup of coffee or talk with people. I do that weekly. I’m always finding people who are interested in the Colony and my own work can be found on alexRheault.com or headonastick2.blogspot.com and hoping to update all of those things too. It’s hard to stay in touch with technology when you’re in the community and for me, that’s more important.
Genevieve: We’ll make sure that we link through to your blog and your website on our Dr. Lisa website so people can easily find you.
Alex: Thank you.
Genevieve: Alex, I think you’re a terrific example of a creative person living in Maine and doing so many different things and making it work and I really thank you for coming and joining us today on the Maine Magazine Minute.
Alex: Thank you. It’s been a privilege to speak with you. Thank you.
Genevieve: Roxanne Quimby and the Quimby Colony were profiled in an article by Peter A Smith in the June 2010 issue of Maine Magazine. Read it online at the mainemag.com. Maine magazine is available monthly by subscription or for purchase at a local newsstand near you.
Lisa: Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we read from a book titled Our Daily Tread. We created Our Daily Tread in honor of my late Bowdoin College classmate Henley Denning to raise money for her organization Safe Passage. I was fortunate to have recently visited safe passage and more information about my travels to this organization in Guatemala City, Guatemala are available on bountiful-blog.com and also through our Facebook page.
This week’s quote is from Tao Jian, “Though we are different, we are born involved in one another.” For more information about Safe Passage, visit safepassage.org to buy the book Our Daily Tread. Go to islandportpress.com.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible by the support of the following generous sponsors: Thomas Shepard of Hersey, Gardner, Shepard & Eaton: Am Ameriprise Platinum Financial Services Practice in Yarmouth, Maine. Dreams can come true when you take the time to invest in yourself. To learn more at ameripriseadvisers.com and by Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage, it’s your move. Learn more at ourheritage.com.
Lisa: Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we feature a segment we called give back in recognition of the notion that health is more than just about the individual but is woven into the health of the family, the community and the world at large. This week on our give back segment, we have a special guest in our studio, Sarah Armentrout. Sarah, along with her husband, Nick, co-founded the E-Quest Therapeutic Riding Center in 1998 which led to the founding of Carlisle Riding Academy in May of 2011. Sarah served as executive director for all of E-Quest’s 12 years.
As head of school in their new enterprise, Sarah combines her passion for horses with a desire to serve her community and today is involved in all aspects of managing Carlisle Academy from organizational oversight to fiscal and strategic planning. Sarah has been in the field of e-client assisted therapy since 1995 when she was first certified as an instructor by the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship. We’ve been talking with people about how they weave things together and how it is that you weave sort of your own health into the passion for what you do in your life. It sounds like this has been a real passion for you for a long time.
Sarah: Yes.
Lisa: How did this get to be your passion?
Sarah: Oh gosh. I started riding as a 6 year old. I’m sure I never looked back after that. With the first pony I rode who bolted on me and ran up the hill and I got off and said, “Wow, that was really fun. Let’s do that again.” My parents sign me up for riding lessons and then at age 10, I got my own horse who was just a love for me and probably really planted the seed early on of horses as inspiration, as solace, as a just a touch stone for me and my life. Through just many phases of life and then off I went to liberal arts college and didn’t really give a thought to incorporating horses or riding as a career choice for me, I thought I would actually end up more in a world of academia and coming out of that, I realized that I needed to be very much in touch with what I was doing and I had a sense of service in my life.
I looked at whether I was going to go into social work or some kind of human service industry but as I went along and found my way, I did some AmeriCorps type work and just was trying to just figure out what I wanted to do with my life post college and I discovered a therapeutic riding center that I volunteered for. It was a sidewalk or early on in the 90’s and I just fell in love with it. I said this is kind of the thing that resonates with me as a way of giving back. I knew that in the work that I had done, in the social work, the volunteer work that I had done, I really knew that in order to feel sustained in that work over the long haul, I had a sense that it would also have to resonate with who I was as a person and also fill my coffers if you will at the same time. It’s been this kind of constant feedback loop of something that I love to do. Riding for me, people have said what is the thing that brings you back to yourself. That’s just such an easy …
Lisa: For you, it’s riding.
Sarah: Easy … it’s riding. I can get on a horse and the day looks very different for me at the end of that ride.
Lisa: This is the intention that you have for the people that you bring in to help as part of the Carlisle Riding Academy and the therapeutic program.
Sarah: Yes.
Lisa: I see in your brochure, it’s interesting, transformation as a part of 3 sided, integrity, passion and efficacy. The cornerstones of our organization whose core reason for being is transformation for the individual, family, and community. You are weaving in your passion to create something new which will not just be helpful for the individual but also for the people around this individual.
Sarah: Yes, absolutely. I think that everybody, or not everybody, but people who choose to make a difference have their stamp on it or way of approaching it and we just happen to love making a difference in people’s lives. Definitely for transformative reasons, we have found that there have been often very profound changes that can happen in therapeutic riding, hippotherapy which I can talk more about. We have a program for elderly people called Silver Spurs.
We’ve worked with veterans with PTSD returning from war and really wonderful things can happen in this medium and it’s simply that we’re using the medium of a horse. It’s a four-legged live thousand pound animal that is very much in the moment, commands our presence, kind of experience and so that is our I guess stamp on giving back and offering a way to achieve wellness or overall health in somebody’s life. It’s not the be all end all for everybody, it’s really complementary to other therapies they might be doing. For some, it’s really often the thing that might kick them over the plateau that they’re currently on or just be that additional injection of whatever therapy it is that they need, that they come for, it could be physical rehabilitation, it could be emotional wellness, it could be neuro development in a small child.
Lisa: How can people help you out in this mission of yours?
Sarah: One thing is when we made the change in 2011, in the beginning of 2011 with Carlisle Academy becoming a full spectrum riding academy rehabilitative all the way through recreational. We also maintain the charitable legacy of the E-Quest Therapeutic Riding Center which became the E-Quest Foundation. The foundation is the entity that is out there. Fundraising is asking for the support of community members who will give towards scholarship funding for families who could not otherwise afford the full tuition that hippotherapy is or adaptive riding which is a little less expensive all the way down through.
The foundation is currently giving away thousands of dollars in scholarship but it means that we can run the best quality that we can. We can employ excellent staff that are occupational therapist and physical therapist, wonderful certified instructors and these people all have their credentialing, all have certifications through American Hippotherapy Association or the Path Association that we talked about. If you want to do this right, you can’t do it on a shoestring budget.
Lisa: You need some cash flow.
Sarah: Yes.
Lisa: You need people to give.
Sarah: We need people to give and the foundation is set up solely for that, to raise money for scholarship. In addition, I’ll tell you my personal crusade is that I am bound and determined to have the insurance world get behind what we’re doing. That’s why I’m so excited that Harvard Pilgrim has gotten behind us as a full … They’re not just saying we’ll cover the time in the therapy room because our therapist will do 30 minutes in the therapy room. Harvard Pilgrim says we’ll do also the 30 minutes on the horse because they get it, they understand the outcomes, they believe that it’s effective and we have been able to show over and over that there are effective outcomes that come from this type of therapy. There’s research, more and more research coming out to back this up.
Lisa: Is this available on your website?
Sarah: Which is available?
Lisa: The research, the research that you’re speaking of.
Sarah: We can make research available. Anybody who asks us for some of that it’s all done third party but I’m not sure actually how much is on our website.
Lisa: They could contact you and …
Sarah: Yes, absolutely.
Lisa: … you could give them some of that information so they could have a communication with their insurance company should that be warranted.
Sarah: Yes. Absolutely. We will just continue to advocate for the Aetnas and Anthems of the world to say, “Yes, we want you to cover the time in the therapy room but we also want you to cover the time on the horse.” That’s sort of my personal crusade for the next 10 years however long it takes because I believe in what we’re doing and I know it works and I know families who know that it works and families who have given us testimonial that it’s changed their children’s life. We want to be there, keep going.
Lisa: You’re doing a great job and I’m impressed with all the work that you’re doing on so many different levels.
Sarah: Thank you.
Lisa: Tell people the website that they can go to get more information.
Sarah: The Carlisle website is carlsileacademymaine.com, all spelled out. The E-Quest Foundation website is equestfoundation.org.
Lisa: I encourage people who are listening who have an interest in hippotherapy or figuring out how to give to your organization or even want to work on this insurance issue to actually go and take a look at your website, get in touch with you, get some information from you. You’re doing a great job. Keep up the good work.
Sarah: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Lisa: Thank you. Each week in the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we read from my Bountiful Blog which is available on bountiful-blog.com. The Bountiful Blog represents weaving of sorts itself. It is the weaving of feeding myself, oneself emotionally, physically and spiritually. The selection this week is a post from September 13th 2011 entitled Magic. Labor is so named because the process is just that, laborious. Few women get through delivery without some modicum of discomfort and hard work. Likewise, few people get through a significant life transition or purposeful decision to change without labouring. This labor may be physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual.
Typically, it is all of the above. Laboring in any of the above has the propensity to be difficult, which many of us do not expect or at the very least, do not want. I have been doctoring since my medical school graduation in 1996. I have been coaching people through change for much of that time. I can tell you that lasting change does not happen quickly or easily. I can also tell you that many people give up before they have completed a change transition. Most people would prefer to believe that there’s a magical pill or a potion that will cure their woes. They are always looking for the next big thing. When things do not happen quickly and without effort, they give up and move on.
The magic is this, show up. Keep showing up. Engage in your life. Look at your patterns, refuse to follow the ones that have gotten you to where you don’t want to be. Create new patterns. Be uncomfortable on these new patterns. Engage in an energy building practice such as Qigong or Tai chi that will help you maintain these patterns. Labor, labor more, keep showing up. Get help if you need to. Find someone who will help you look at your patterns and create new ones. Find someone who will help you with your discomfort. Find someone who will be with you while you labor. If you want the change, be willing to put in the time, be willing to put in the effort, be willing to labor. That is the magic. This blog post and other post like it are available on bountiful-blog.com.
On this week’s Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we have addressed the theme of weaving. We spoke with clothing designer Jill McGowan, Alex Rheault of the Maine College of Art and the Quimby Foundation and Sarah Amrentrout of E-Quest and the Carlisle Riding Academy. Each of these individuals saw a need in the world and also equally found their own passionate desire to meet that need. They wove together what they knew of themselves and what they knew of the world around them to create something new and beautiful and amazing and more importantly, they kept showing up to do so.
Each of them encountered trials and tribulations. They found difficulties along the way but they kept showing up and as we said in the blog, that is the magic, that is the magic that creates the weaving. We hope that you’ve enjoyed our theme on weavings this week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast and that you’ll join us again next week. Please do let us know what you think of our show. Go to doctorlisa.org, send us an email, friend us on Facebook, send us a message. We want to know what you’re thinking. Thank you for listening again this week. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the generous support of the following sponsors: Maine Magazine; Tom Shepard of Hersey, Gardner, Shepard & Eaton; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage; Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; Wholefoods Market; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine; the University of New England, UNE; and Akari.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle, editorial content produced by Chris Cast and Genevieve Morgan, audio production and original music by John McCain. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today, visit us online at doctorlisa.org. Tune in every Sunday at 11am for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on WLOB Portland, Maine 1310 AM or streaming wlobradio.com. Podcasts are available at doctorlisa.org.