Michelle Y Souliere » Profile

Location

Region

United States of America

City

Portland ME

Profile

Website

http://strangemaine.blogspot.com

Personal Statement

Curiosity (an excerpt)


Nevertheless, to be curious

is dangerous enough. To distrust

what is always said, what seems,

to ask old questions, interfere in dreams,

leave home, smell rats, have hunches

do not endear cats to those doggy circles

where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches

are the order of things, and where prevails

much wagging of incurious heads and tails.


And what cats have to tell

on each return from hell

is this: that dying is what the living do,

that dying is what the loving do,

and that dead dogs are those who do not know

that dying is what, to live, each has to do.


– Alastair Reed


An artist and illustrator living in Portland, Maine, Michelle Souliere graduated from the Maine College of Art in 2004 with honors, holding a BFA in her self-designed major of Illustration, a minor in Drawing, and a concentration in Printmaking.


Since then she has switched from working full-time in an office environment to working part-time as a supervisor at the lending services desk of the Portland Public Library's main branch, which has helped her maintain a vital studio practice.


She has a finished, as-yet-unpublished manuscript for a children's book, Grandy Hand, which she hopes to peddle about to a few publishers, and meanwhile self-publishes the Strange Maine Gazette, which is driven by the material from the Strange Maine blog, as well as independently researched original articles.


Michelle works primarily in ink, watercolor, and pencil, but frequently experiments with other media such as cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown, and Gum Bichromate printing, silkscreening, acrylic paint, and whatever else comes to hand. In addition, she whips up over 200 light switch plates each year (available at her etsy.com site) which reflect her irreverent sense of humor in their collaged combination of recycled vintage imagery paired with new and frequently unexpected text elements.


Michelle has a crazy musician/special-effects-artist husband and two cats that live with her and two other roommates (and their two cats) in a big old Victorian apartment in her favorite city, where she frequently finds herself wishing there were just six more hours in the day.

History

Member for

4 years 6 weeks