Seal Cove artist and gardener Becky Keefe will share her curiosity, passion for lifelong learning, and her artwork at the Gilley on Tuesday, Nov. 4 as the Museum’s People-Nature-Art presenter for November. There will be a 6pm artist’s reception followed by her presentation at 7pm, which will be in person and simultaneously livecast. Both in-person and online attendance is free, but registration is required at www.wendellgilleymuseum.org/calendar.

Keefe is a lifelong gardener, botany nerd, birdwatcher, hiker, mushroom hunter, and wildlife enthusiast, who has lived on MDI since 1987. Her careers have inspired her creativity and expanded her horizons: cook, landscape design for a well-known Maine landscape architect, an administrative job at College of the Atlantic and, most recently, teaching special education at Mount Desert Island High School for twenty years. During all that time, art was Keefe’s respite.

“My connection to outdoor activities and my art have kept me grounded,” she says.

She retired from teaching in 2020 and embraced more time to create, using all the many natural materials she gathered over the years, including her garden which is a years-long passion project.

Recently, Keefe has focused on work with fiber. This includes making natural dyes, eco-prints, felting, spinning yarn, sewing, and knitting. She has also combined art and nature by creating large-scale flower arrangements for events, and she has made several paintings.

“I want to try my hand at nearly everything,” she says.

Becky approaches her creative explorations with questions: Why does that look like that? What is the science behind the medium or phenomena so I can recreate it? How can I capture this reaction to what I am seeing and feeling?

“The expression may change, but the inspiration stays the same,” she says. “It’s the beauty, colors and designs in nature.”

People-Nature-Art is a monthly series that brings artists, writers, carvers, and creative types of all kinds to the Gilley to explore how nature and art interact in their work, and how their art impacts their own approach to nature.