Sun, 07/02/2023 - 12:00pm

An installation of printed fabric panels with images and texts from Linda Buckmaster’s book “Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands” will travel to libraries and other public places in Maine this year. (Courtesy of Linda Buckmaster)

Author Linda Buckmaster

BELFAST – Belfast author Linda Buckmaster has been awarded an Artist Project Grant from the Maine Arts Commission for her project, "Of Cod and Community."

With designer Lori Harley, she is developing a traveling installation adapted from her book “Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands,” which was a finalist in the Maine Literary Awards.

Eight three-by-five-foot fabric banners will be printed with text and images from the book. They are designed to hang in community spaces such as libraries, to reflect the centuries-long interrelationships between the North Atlantic cod and humans.

Buckmaster is reaching out to coastal and island libraries to participate in hosting the exhibit, which is one of the goals of the Arts Commission grant to bring literature off the page and make it accessible to other readers. The first showing will be the month of October at the Belfast Free Library.

Buckmaster has lived within a block of the Atlantic most of her life, growing up in Florida and moving to Waldo County 50 years ago. She has served as Belfast Poet Laureate, Atlantic and Gulf Editor for National Fisherman magazine, Adjunct Faculty with the University of Maine system, and has been widely published nationally and locally.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Buckmaster at lsbuck1@gmail.com.