Bloomsburg State College

The Maine Experience:

Summer Art Classes at

Moosehead Lake, 1975 - 79

Brochure cover from 1975

This online exhibit is intended as a means of documenting the history of the Bloomsburg State College art classes that traveled to Maine during summers in the 1970s to better learn the art of painting and drawing. In the spring of 1974 art professor Ken Wilson proposed an intensive, six week summer course for students who would live, eat, and breathe art in the woods of Maine. The students would live together, immerse themselves in nature, and develop their skills to a new level. The course was approved, and in the summer of 1975 the first students went up to a ski lodge near Moosehead Lake, Maine where they ate and slept while sharing cooking and cleaning responsibilities. Just down the road at a nearby farm they used a remodeled chicken coop as an art studio where they created work inspired by their environment. Throughout the week Ken Wilson guided the students as they painted, and each Friday they would critique each other's work as their skills grew and developed.

This course was offered for three summers, and it gave 28 Bloomsburg art students a chance to do what they enjoyed most: to paint, draw, and create objects of beauty. But it wasn't all work. They swam, hiked, climbed, fished, canoed, went moose watching and took full advantage of what the Maine wilderness offered. These six weeks were an important part of their education and enriched their lives, and this website attempts to show some of that, as well as the art that came out of the experience. The online exhibit includes photographs, brochures, correspondence, flyers, maps, clippings, paintings, and drawings. These physical items provide an historical record of a wonderful time in the lives of the students, which will live forever in their memories.

This exhibit is dedicated to the memory of two art students whose lives ended far too soon.
Those who knew them will never forget them.


Diane Marie Tedeschi Kulevich, 1955 - 1990	William Michael McGraw, 1957 - 1997

Created by Robert Dunkelberger, Bloomsburg University Archivist
and Kristen Sullivan, Archives student assistant