Fairy Museum of Natural Wonder

The “Farmington Fairy Museum of Natural Wonder” is a building of magical wonder and whimsy, built to the scale of a 5- or 6-year old child, coming to be, in a world of exquisite beauty and grace. 

Funded by the University of Maine at Farmington’s School of Education, Early Childhood Development, the Museum will be used as part of their pre-school teacher training program.  Enrolled children will curate rotating exhibits, displaying natural wonders gathered on sojourns into nature.  Found items – a stick, a stone, a shell, a leaf or feather – will be placed by the children on display upon shelves nestled beside porthole windows.  

The design is as complex as it is compelling.  Consider these facts:

• framed as a dodecahedron, with 1/2” plywood sheathed to 2×4 studs cut at 18.5 degree angles;
• the 6″ slab foundation used 14.4 cubic feet of concrete, with rebar mesh reinforcement;
• sheathed in native-Maine Tamarack, using board on batten style;
• 31 circular windows of 5 sizes, all parts custom built; 1/2” plate glass sandwiched in “Kuwaiti plywood,” with a rubber gasket air seal then faced with 2” ribbon mahogany exterior trim, cut on the bias, grain running horizontally, so water flows away from the structure;
• a Squirrel gargoyle stands guard over the custom made, ribbon mahogany entry door
• a Basilica dome, framed by laminated plywood, covered with 480 aluminum shingles, all custom cut, bent to shape, then hand nailed into place;
• “purple martin” mini birdhouses nestled in, for good measure, among the metal shingles;
• a Cupola towers over all, covered in 31 galvanized shingles, cut from aluminum flashing;
• upon which, like a cherry on top, sets the weather vane, with mice running to and fro.

In Southern Maine, everyone, it seems is a carpenter, or a DIY warrior at the least; but few, if any, could build such a structure, let alone conceive, design, and draw same.  The Museum is the brain child of Chris Miller.  It has been my highest honor to assist as his mere carpenter.  

Inside the Basilica dome, Chris has painted the starry night sky, and through a keyhole oculus, the golden glow of the sun lies beyond.  The Vatican may have Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but Farmington has the Fairy Museum; Bernini and Michelangelo could do no better than Miller has done. 

We built the Museum at Chris’ studio in South Portland, then moved the structure 72 miles north to Farmington.  Jesse Salisbury, a sculptor of large granite and hard stones, graciously helped on this task.  An artist friend once said to me, “The coolest people on Earth live in Maine,” and Jesse is exhibit A of same.  Jesse’s story is almost fantastical, and I speak from personal experience as my daughter and I visited his studio, when she was 5 years old.  

Jesse was born Downeast, a fisherman’s son.  He began carving wood while in grammar school, but then his father became the Founding Director of the Portland Fish Exchange, America’s first all-display fresh seafood auction that opened in 1986.  This lead to his Father becoming the Attache for Asian Fisheries, at the USA Embassy in Tokyo, Japan.  In Tokyo, Jesse attended high school and began his formal artistic training, including with traditional ceramic artists.  https://www.jessesalisbury.com/

His path lead back to Steuben, Maine where he and his father built his studio by felling trees, milling them into beams, to create a 32’ x 64’ post & beam workshop with design room, stone cutting, metal forging, fabricating and equipment repair shops.  As a young man he foraged rocks from the fields Downeast, hauling them in his pick-up truck, but when the scale of his work increased, he purchased used heavy equipment from Bangor Hydro, the utility generating hydroelectric power on the Penobscot River.   

Jesse and his Father laid 70 feet of train tracks, so that granite slabs weighing 10-tons or more easily move through the studio, from the wire saw to its indoor and outdoor fabrication areas.  Jesse has carved and transported major installations throughout Maine, the Atlantic Seacoast, and maritime Canada.  His work has also been displayed in Japan, China, South Korea, Egypt, and New Zealand.  In his spare time, he founded the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium, a ten-year project which resulted in a world class collection of large granite works that make up the Maine Sculpture Trail.  https://www.schoodicsculpture.org/

We made two trips north.  First, Chris and I poured the dodecahedron concrete foundation, a 6” slab reinforced with rebar and anchor bolts set in the concrete.  The forms, of course, were custom built.  For the second trip, Jesse arrived at Chris’ studio on a Friday.  His boom truck hoisted the structures easily onto his trailer.  We strapped them down, then early on a Saturday morning convoyed North as misty fog hung upon the Casco Bay.  

In Farmington, the sun was shining.  On that idyllic September day, as crimson and golden leaves fluttered down, the installation went easily, each section stacked up, each upon the one below.  A deus ex machina, indeed.  The “silo” was anchored to the slab’s sill plate and the weather vane set atop the cupola.  

By dusk we were gone.  Chris returned later to apply finishing details.  

And then, one Monday morning, children arrived at their daycare astonished to behold this creation.  Like the “Night Before Christmas” I imagine they uttered, “When what to my wondering eyes should appear/But a Fairy Museum overnight landed here!!”