On Friday, December 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Belfast Co-op Café, there will be a free wine tasting of highlighted seasonal wines and the opening for "Exploring Photography:  River School, Belfast", a photography exhibit of work by two students at the River School, Pip McFaul and Matthias Mann, which will be on display in the Co-op Cafe through late December.  Sigrid Coffin, of Easterly Wines, Jaap Helder, from the Co-op's Wine Department, and the River School student photographers will be available to answer questions.  Featured wines will be 10% off during the tasting; participants must be 21 years of age or older to attend.

Pip McFaul is sixteen years old and lives in Belfast, where she attends the River School. She has been taking photography classes with John Butler of Light in the Forest (LTF) Photo Studios for two semesters, and is interested in both portrait and landscape photography. She greatly enjoys photographing the beauty in nature and capturing fleeting moments of life in her photographs, as well as finding abstract views of average objects or places, as seen in her stairwell photograph.

Matthias Mann grew up in rural Thorndike, and was introduced to photography as a child  with a simple digital camera. Initially, he was inspired to photograph nature by the beautiful simplicity of his home town. After becoming a student at the River School, he had the opportunity to study photography with John Butler of LTF Photo Studios. For him, photography is finding and sharing something magnificent while simultaneously discovering the beauty in even the most common-place objects or scenes.    

The community-owned Belfast Co-op is open 7:30am-8pm daily at 123 High Street in downtown Belfast. Everyone can shop, anyone can join. For more information: (207) 338-2532, www.belfast.coop.