A Summer Solstice gathering highlighted the organization’s larger goal: creating a welcoming “third space” where art, wellness and community intersect.
Jul 01, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.
TOWN HILL—For years, ArtWaves has been combining art and community and celebration.
That continues this summer which started off with a solstice celebration at the nonprofit’s Town Hill campus.
“It was a fun evening as community members of all ages gathered to welcome summer with the irresistible steel drum music of Flash! In The Pans. Members, friends, neighbors, and visitors explored the Summer Solstice exhibition featuring artwork by ArtWaves Artist Members, enjoyed floral face painting and beautiful henna tattoos by Acadia Simmons (@hennabyacca), or settled in with a needle-felting project—a quieter creative option for the evening,” Board Vice President Kelly Cutler explained.
Good art, good community, is all about connections and insight, creating and glimpsing into things a little bit more deeply than might normally make us comfortable. It’s about stained-glass nippers, felted rocks, stack upon stack of unfinished projects, the smell of turpentine and glue, the feel of a chalk pastel against the skin.
There is something vulnerable about creating, but there’s also something so joyous in that. Community is the same way. Reaching out to others, sharing experiences while you create a stained-glass piece, a project, serve on a board, or even just stand in a grocery store line can be frightening, exhilarating, vulnerable, and powerful.
ArtWaves combines all of those possibilities at its Town Hill campus of barns and grass, flowers and trees, combining experts in art, dance, and wellness with people who sometimes know nothing about art, dance or wellness.
It was founded by Liz Cutler approximately 16 years ago.
Back in 2019, Rob Pollien, former president of ArtWaves’ board and a founding faculty member explained the goals of ArtWaves.
“It’s about building community,” he said. “It’s about trying everything.”
“At ArtWaves, we strive to be more than a place where people take classes. We want to be a community gathering place—a ‘third space’ beyond home and work where people can connect through creativity. As the sun set and the music carried across campus, it was wonderful to see people laughing, dancing, making art, and simply enjoying being together,” Cutler said.
Many believe that art is humanity emphasized. It’s broad strokes, finite pieces. It’s about illumination and illustration but with the magical element of communication thrown in. It often makes something bigger than its pieces. It’s community within a form and then expanding beyond it. Artists seem like magicians as they open up worlds that we only slightly imagine. Those worlds aren’t just on the canvas or stage or page. Those worlds also become part of communities.
Or as Suzanne Gerber writes in Next Avenue, “Putting art at the heart of a community enhances our lives by stirring hard-to-articulate feelings and inspiring us to look beyond what we believe to be possible and imagine a more vibrant, exciting future. It also reminds us that we’re all creative beings — and that whether we’re making art or music, telling stories or cathartically sharing in the experience, we’re all connected.”
Those connections are the bonds that hold people and communities together in difficult times full of strife and polarities but also in good times. Places like ArtWaves quietly soldier forward in a war towards art, connectivity, expression and understanding.
Unless otherwise specified, all photos provided by ArtWaves.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Joan Vienot made a wonderful video from the band to the exhibit at the kaleidoscope studio that can be viewed on Facebook.
To find out more about ArtWaves.
To check out its annual report and strategic plan, click here.
The Americans for the Arts’ blog is here.
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