NORWAY – Downstairs, three volunteers were installing insulation. In a future gallery, two more were helping Pamela Moulton paint a sculpture made out of discarded fishing gear. In an office, Anne Stuer was cataloging video interviews of Maine artists while Daniel Sipe and Reed McLean worked on fundraising postcards. Upstairs, two people were getting ready to install speakers in a soon-to-be dance studio. Later, Georgia Ryan would heat a big pot of turkey mole for a shared lunch.

It was a typical Wednesday at Lights Out Gallery on Tannery Street in Norway.

The nonprofit is trying to turn a rundown former snowshoe factory into a multidisciplinary arts hub for western Maine. The plan is for the building, eventually, to house a community woodshop, a gallery, a dance studio, artist studios, a co-working space, and a sculpture garden. The ambitious project will take years to complete and has so far relied mostly on volunteer labor, with locals showing up nearly every week to do whatever tasks need to be done.

The founders – Sipe, McLean, and their friend Karle Woods – say Lights Out Gallery is both a reflection of a vibrant local art scene and an attempt to fill its gaps.

“We could run it as a business, but what we really wanted to see is a community space that doesn’t really exist here right now, a space for people to gather and work on whatever project they might be working on, to dance, to paint,” Sipe said. “We wanted to create a space where people could come together and experience and make.”

Scott Berk, owner of Cafe Nomad and president of Norway Downtown, said Lights Out Gallery will raise the town’s profile in Maine and the region.

“Norway has gone through overall a really successful revitalization, and Main Street has changed significantly,” he said. “This just fits in perfectly with the direction we have hoped for and been headed in for the last 20 years.”

GETTING CURIOUS

Lights Out Gallery started with a power outage.

Sipe, 32, grew up in Presque Isle and worked in political organizing. McLean, 28, has a background in dancing, printmaking, writing, and making videos. In 2019, the partners – in work and life – were planning a pop-up exhibition in Sipe’s Portland apartment when the power went out on the entire peninsula. They rented a generator, hooked up construction lighting, and opened the show as planned.

“We were the only thing happening,” Sipe said. “It was a three-day show. It was 10 artists. It was just in my apartment. And people just started coming. It was really successful. A lot of it was in part because the power went out.”

They started planning another show for March 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic put their plans on hold. Sipe moved to Norway, where McLean grew up and was living. In 2021, they started making video interviews of artists, mostly friends of theirs at first but quickly expanding beyond their immediate circle. Their pop-up shows eventually resumed, but they decided to keep doing the interviews. They’ve made 80 and counting.

The format is intentionally informal. The interviewers ask the artists not to clean their studios or prepare in any way. They pose a couple of planned questions but mostly see where the conversation goes. McLean said they “have deepened my outlook on everything, not just art.”

“In the context of the pandemic, everyone was just so lonely,” McLean said. “It was depressing, and I was so bored. I knew that there were all these people out there who make great work. What were they thinking about? I had no idea, and I wanted to know. We weren’t doing anything, and it was the perfect time to get curious and start looking under some rocks.”

They also got curious about a dilapidated shell in the center of town.

“We just walked by this huge behemoth of a snowshoe factory that was just falling apart,” Sipe said. “Reed was trying to find studio space and couldn’t find anything that was reasonably priced. So we were like, how much do you think it would cost to buy that abandoned building?”

‘A REFLECTION OF THE COMMUNITY’

The answer was $200,000. The building is more than 15,000 square feet and sits on nearly one acre on Tannery Street. Sipe and McLean saw that the space could be much more than one artist’s studio. They started dreaming about an arts hub and formed the nonprofit to realize that vision.

“Each of the things has a component that the community has been asking for or has been lost,” Sipe said.

The nonprofit officially bought the building in February, but they started working on it a year earlier. The first task was to remove the stuff that had accumulated there over the years. Then, they lifted the building and replaced the foundation. They installed new windows insulation and sheetrock. So far, the work has been mostly completed by volunteers and funded by donations. Wednesdays became community work days, and sometimes more than a dozen people showed up to help with the punch list.

Most of the building is still unfinished and unheated, but the dance studio will be the first section to be completed and is on track to open in the spring. The goal is to have Lights Out Gallery fully funded and operational by 2028.

Sipe and McLean estimated the total cost of renovations will be at least $3 million. The nonprofit has secured grants from Norway Savings Bank and the Betterment Fund; Bancroft Construction is donating an exit staircase. Someone who read about Lights Out Gallery in the Advertiser Democrat called to donate tools for the woodshop. A fundraising show over the summer included more than 120 artists and garnered $55,000 for the nonprofit. The next major need is a new roof, and a GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $46,000 toward a $75,000 goal.

The time and money donated to the cause has moved the organizers.

“I was ready to plug away at it forever and do the carpentry myself and just go bit by bit,” McLean said. “Seeing people show up every week just to make it happen, I just don’t even know how to process it.”

It is also a sign of local support for Lights Out Gallery.

Sarah Carter, vice chair of the Norway Select Board, grew up in the region and has lived in Norway for seven years. As a child, she attended her sister’s many dance performances. As an adult, she loves the annual summertime Norway Music and Arts Festival. She said Lights Out Gallery is tapping into an unassuming but strong community of artists that has always existed in western Maine.

“They are coming in with a new idea and a new space and making it their own, but not ignoring the community,” Carter, 41, said. “It’s a reflection of the community. They’re connecting with the community. They are bringing the community in physically. They are definitely really responsive to what they are looking for as artists but also what the community needs for spaces to connect.”

Jess Cooper is the executive director of Creative Norway, which aims to provide accessible arts programming in the Oxford Hills area, and a member of the Nevaeh Dance Social Circus, which will soon have a physical home in the dance studio on Tannery Street. She also lives with Sipe and McLean. She has been dreaming about the possibilities for the former factory since her roommates bought the building.

“Their gallery show that they did this summer was a really huge eye opener for the community that we can do things like that here, that they can pull off something of that scale and offer it to the community for free,” Cooper, 28, said. “I think this summer really changed a lot of what people could see is possible here in Norway.”

She pointed to other projects downtown that are seeing bursts of energy – the restoration of the Norway Opera House, a housing development at Odd Fellows Hall.

“It’s kind of unfathomable to think about what it’s going to look like, but I’m excited about it,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about it.”

JOINING A MOVEMENT

Snowflakes were swirling on a recent Wednesday in December, but the winter temperatures did not deter the small crew of volunteers who trickled into 10 Tannery St.

Walter Petrelle, Jeff Teixeira, and Francis Kohl got to work on the insulation in the walkout basement. Petrelle and Teixeira live in Norway, but Kohl drove an hour from Portland. The three said they are excited about the community woodshop that will someday occupy this space, where people can access shared tools and develop new skills.

“I was interested in the cooperative concept,” Petrelle, 88, said. He was one of the first people to start helping out around the former snowshoe factory nearly two years ago. “People can come someplace and produce something for themselves rather than go out and buy it.”

On the main floor, Anne Stuer worked at a laptop in the quiet office, the only heated room in the building. She is cataloging the dozens of videos Sipe and McLean have made over two-plus years; the interviews will be archived by the library at Colby College.

A mixed-media artist, Stuer has lived in Norway since 2006. She said galleries and local businesses often display work by local artists, but she is excited about the potential to show and see more at Lights Out Gallery.

“Shows are important just to give you a place to put your art on the wall so other people can see it,” Stuer, 60, said. “I’m always looking for something more in that area.”

In another big room, Pamela Moulton has taped sheets of plastic to create walls and conserve heat in her makeshift studio. She found Lights Out Gallery when she was looking for a large space to assemble a new sculpture for the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Like “Beneath the Forest, Beneath the Sea,” the bright pink installation Moulton created for Payson Park in Portland, is made out of discarded fishing gear. Moulton, who lives in North Bridgton, first met Sipe and McLean because they interviewed her for their video series and has since joined the nonprofit’s board.

Lights Out Gallery recently hosted a field trip for local fourth graders. The students made drawings of her sculpture, and she had a sign hanging in the studio with all their theories on what the large figure could be. (“Tree canopy.” “Mutant mushroom.” “Mushroom alien.” “Fisherman’s spirit.” “Portal to other dimensions.”) Moulton, a teaching artist, said she hopes the gallery will be a place for many such collaborations.

“The spirit of Lights Out is unlike any place I’ve been involved,” she said. “Everything is possible. There are some people and some places that are ‘yes’ people that give everything a chance, but it’s kind of rare. And they really do. They make it happen. They always find a way. I’m just carried forward on their energy.”

Moulton was also joined by two volunteers who have become studio assistants of sorts. Kat Grier and Kyle Costanzi are both new to Norway and sought out the gallery as a place to meet new people. They were helping to create knots and put a base coat of paint on the sculpture.

Grier, 31, works as a certified nursing assistant at Stephens Memorial Hospital and is also a nursing student. She found the gallery when she was walking her dog downtown. When she knocked on the door, Moulton invited her inside. Her time at the gallery has inspired her to spend more time painting with watercolors and working on needlepoint projects.

“I didn’t really realize how big the art scene was or that there even was an art community,” she said. “Just working here so often, artists come by all the time, and I’m meeting so many new people. I’m recognizing that there is a huge art movement, and I definitely want to be a part of it.”

Costanzi, 60, moved from Philadelphia to Norway in March. He has struggled with mental health and substance use issues in the past, and he came to Maine to live with his brother. He met Sipe downtown and joined volunteers who were preparing the building for the summer’s fundraising show. He has a long background in photography, but his time at Lights Out Gallery has inspired him to start painting as well. The opportunity to have serious conversations about art has been “everything,” he said.

“It is something I have always wanted to get into, and this place has given me the chance to wrap myself entirely in it,” he said. “It has definitely given me a lot of peace and a lot of direction.”

Lights Out Gallery will present two shows in January and February. One, in Brunswick, will showcase the work of 11 artist couples living in Maine. The other, in Portland, is themed around poetry. Organizers and volunteers said they look forward to the day when they can host more events on Tannery Street, but they already have a community there.

“It’s unfinished, so it has that raw, playful feeling,” McLean said. “That’s something I want to hold onto when it’s finished. I want to see a finished floor and an efficient heating system. But I want it to stay feeling like every day is a new day and anything is possible. I want people to be able to come in and have an idea and to be able to take their initiative, and we will support that in whatever way we can.”

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