The Southport Memorial Library welcomes Marion Bates as its Artist of the Month in November and December. Bates' mastery of a wide variety of techniques can be enjoyed as you view her beautiful handwork.

Throughout her life she lived in many places, summering in East Boothbay beginning in 1938, while growing up primarily in a Massachusetts home dating back to 1795. The house was filled with family antiques and handcrafts. Everyone was a collector and crafter.

From making clothes for dolls and stuffed animals at age seven, some on a hand-operated mini Singer sewing machine she was given as a Christmas gift. This gift led to making her own clothes and quilting, creating “snakes” of cotton yarn with a toggle for hot dish mats, lacing cards, wooden frames for pot holders.

Bates would go on to braiding, hooking, spinning and weaving. Tie dying T-shirts and coloring eggs were natural preludes to natural and chemical dying fibers for knitting, weaving and all types of embroidery. Making May baskets for special friends led to basket weaving and cutting out paper dolls — the inspiration for making greeting cards and gift boxes.

Those summers in Maine, and Girl Scout Camp in New Hampshire, fostered Bates' love of nature. Coming from a family of collectors, she gathered shells, rocks, sea glass, driftwood, cones, pods, nuts, and anything that wasn't rooted in the ground for a myriad of projects.

As a high school student, Bates learned the folk art of decorative hand painting on tin and wood, tole painting, from a teacher who learned the art from a tole restoration painter at Williamsburg.

Most of the work/crafts the family made were given away, and included candle and soap making, tin smithing and beading.

“If it was an old craft, we tried it,” Bates said.

Before making the cottage on Linekin Bay, bought 50 years ago, her year-round home, she lived in an 1813 stone farmhouse in the Oley Valley of Pennsylvania. There she combined her love of crafts and herb growing into a business doing herbal weddings, decorating houses for Christmas, teaching cooking at the farm and senior's group, and lecturing around the country (including in the Boothbay region).

Bates continued sharing her interests teaching at Albright College through adult education, producing a monthly show on local TV, writing a weekly column for a local newspaper, writing articles for magazines and publishing a monthly newsletter.

Bates is now retired, but remains crafty. She still does ribbon embroidery, bead work and card and box making.

“I have been sharing these with family and friends for years, and am now I am sharing them with you,” Bates said.

See the creative works of Marion Bates at Southport Memorial Library located at 1032 Hendricks Hill Road on Southport Island. The library hours are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7–9 p.m.