“Let’s Do Something That Feels Right.”

Carrie Jones

Jan 13, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.

---

BAR HARBOR—On a dreary winter late afternoon beneath the high rafters of the Hidden Barn Bookstore, voices rose, hands moved, cameras clicked, and sea shanties shifted from lamentation to wry callings. Nearly 80 people gathered, not to debate politics, but to make something together: art as a way to speak, to listen, and to stay connected in a divided moment.

“Make a place where the day speaks to the night and the earth speaks to the sky,” poet and essayist Stuart Kestenbaum read to the crowd gathered upstairs beneath the lofty barn roof before they headed off to free workshops. “In our imperfect world, we are meant to repair and stitch together what beauty there is.”

Soon after Kestenbaum read his poem “Holding the Light,” attendees scattered into workshops: drawing, singing, photographing, and stitching together art as a way through politically uncertain times. Kestenbaum and artist Susan Webster led one workshop around a long wooden table, combining word and image.

In politically divisive times, Rep. Gary Friedmann’s idea to have eight artists mentor and workshop others as a way to express their political feelings seems a bit dangerous.

It wasn’t.

Instead, it was a 90-minute community gathering where people hugged, greeted old friends, ranted, smiled, fake-screamed, sang tweaked sea shanties, and made art. Together.

“At the end of the event, almost every artist and participant was filled with a combination of awe, delight, hopefulness, and gratitude for the warmth of community and connection that we created together,” Rep. Friedmann said.

Nancy Jones, the artists, volunteers, and Hidden Barn Bookstore owner Genie Thorndike all worked to help Rep. Friedmann’s idea come together.

The professional artists shared their own experiences using the creative process to communicate and inspire activism before leading hands-on workshops to foster personal artistic expression.

Artist Susan Webster said, “We’re in despair and we’re all worried.”

But art, art can make a personal and community difference.

Artist Linda Rowell Kelley said she’s been doing a lot of political art and spiritual art, something she’d been familiar with decades ago. She led groups creating two collaborative paintings with acrylics and canvas and motivating kindness.

“This is about being fearless and powerful and feeling that power without negative messages,” Rowell Kelley said. “Let’s do something that feels right.”

Kenn Chandler spoke to how photography is a visual journaling and there’s a point when photography transcends journaling and becomes art.

“You should photograph something for not only what it is, but what else it is,” Chandler said, quoting street photographer Garry Winogrand.

He and David Manski used instant photography cameras to take images and develop them before hanging them with clothespin on strings.

“Let’s work to make the world a better place,” Manski said.

Sometimes, he said, that’s by capturing something beautiful and sometimes, sometimes it isn’t, he said.

Professional musician Bennett Konesni had the crowd figure out how their “inner foghorns” were working.

“We’ll haul away. We’ll haul away together,” he sang in a back and forth with the crowd.

Sea shanties, he said, often transform things from suffering and into play.

”We accomplished everything that I wished for. People from all walks of life and a variety of perspectives raised their voices in unison to fill the barn with a powerful song of hope,” Rep. Friedmann said. “In these dark times, we were able to turn a wet and cold winter afternoon into a beacon lighting the way toward a better future.”

---

THE ARTISTS

Kenn Chandler, a landscape, portraiture and wildlife photographer for six decades, who also enjoys impressionist and abstract photographic forms.

Linda Rowell Kelley, a versatile visual artist and sculptor who works in oil, pastels and watercolors.

Stuart Kestenbaum, an author of six collections of poems, as well as a book of brief essays on craft and community.

Bennett Konesni, a musician who studied and practiced work songs such as sea shanties, farmer’s hollers, and lumber camp ballads since he was a teenager working aboard schooners on the coast of Maine.

David Manski, a wildlife biologist who worked for 35 years with the National Park Service, is an active documentary and street photographer.

Carol Shutt, a painter, mixed-media artist and writer living and sharing a studio in Hulls Cove with her husband, potter Rocky Mann.

Susan Webster, a visual artist who works with a variety of materials and processes and has taught at a variety of creative centers both domestically and internationally.

---

All photos: Carrie Jones/BHS.

Artist bios via Gary Friedmann.

---

Follow us on Facebook. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.

Bar Harbor Story is a mostly reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for being here with us and being part of our community too!

Thanks for reading Bar Harbor Story! This post is public so feel free to share it.

To support The Story

If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR COMMUNITY