Solstice Community Day
Solstice Community Day
Celebrate the Longest day of the year with Bearnstow!
Led by Fiber Artist/ Naturalist Jo Eaton of No Repeat Fiberworks and Naturalist and Botanist, Gudrun Keszocze alongside Bearnstow’s Staff and Interns we will have programs running all day from 10am – Sunset. Feel free to Drop in for Part of the Day or spend the whole day with us.
Schedule:
10am-12pm – Yarn Bombing a Summer Garden a community fiber art project led by Jo Eaton
12-12:30pm – Lunch
1 -3 – Plant walk led by Gudrun Keszocze (Ending with a swim Weather Permitting)
3:30 – 5 – Spinning Demonstration and Finishing up the Yarn Installation
6pm – Potluck Dinner
7pm – Campfire with S’mores, songs, and stories and watch the sunset over Parker Pond
ABOUT
Jo Eaton is a Maine-based fiber artist whose work blends tradition, nature, and creative intuition. Trained in the time-honored ways of her mother, grandmother, and other family members, Jo brings a deep heritage of quilting, crocheting, knitting, and sewing into her modern practice. Her pieces—ranging from hats and wearable art to handspun yarns—are inspired by the colors and textures of Maine’s landscapes, gardens, and seasons.
Jo allows the materials to guide her creative process, often blending fibers, spinning her own yarn, or incorporating unexpected textures and forms. With a background in ecology, sociology, and traditional arts, she approaches her work as both craft and storytelling. Each piece carries a sense of place, warmth, and history.
For Jo, crochet is more than a craft—it is a way of life, a mode of storytelling, and a joyful expression of color, nature, and heritage.
Learn More at her website https://www.norepeatsfiberworks.com/
Gudrun Keszocze formalized her lifelong interest in native plants, healing with plants and botany in general through a double Bachelor’s Degree in Botany and German at UMaine Orono in 2002. In the 1980’s Gudrun led plant walks with a variety of groups in the Midcoast area. By the early 1990’s she traveled on the annual Penobscot Riverkeepers educational river expedition meeting with students for 28 continous days for several years teaching K-12 students about how to identify plants, preparing college students to look for native species and speaking to all ages at community campfires. For twelve years she was the naturalist at Hirundo Wildlfe Refuge, Old Town creating, leading and often guiding trips by canoe studying the botany, stream and wildlife at the Refuge. Through many years of this work she has also continues to be an adjunct German professor at UMaine Orono. As a Registered Maine Guide for Recreation, Canoeing and Seakayaking, she always integrated botany into her trips. She lives with her husband Glen Koehler in Orono on their twenty-eight acres continuously created her own gardens, primarily of native plants but often with other surprises. In addition to studying plants in Maine, other parts of the US, she has also taken trips to Siberia and Costa Rica studying plants.