There’s a microcosm of Bangor on the third floor of the Bangor Public Library, and it’s made entirely out of felted wool and paper.
“How I Felt About Bangor,” on display through July 30, depicts an eclectic array of vignettes from all around the Queen City, with figurines crafted from felted wool by artist Peg Killian, a graduate of the Intermedia Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Maine and a longtime resident of the Bangor area. They represent everyone from patrons at a local sushi restaurant to people who are homeless and living their lives on the streets.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is a diorama of lower Ohio Street, where Killian lived between 2012 and 2017 with several other local artists, including Orson Horchler, who at the time created street art under the name Pigeon. From the vantage point of their porch, Killian watched life unfold on a daily basis — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Inspired by those street scenes, the Ohio Street diorama showcases everything from someone getting their haircut at a barbershop to a woman walking her dog to a Bangor police officer giving someone a sobriety test on the sidewalk. The set pieces in the diorama are crafted from white paper and are purposefully primitive, to keep the attention on the dolls.
“While lower Ohio Street has a dubious reputation in town, I wanted to show that the people there are interesting and diverse, and often I found sweetness and poignancy where others might not even bother to look,” Killian said.
Killian also crafted smaller felted vignettes housed in glass boxes, including people at businesses like Garland Street Laundry, Pro Libris Bookshop, Japanese restaurant Ichiban and the former Leadbetter’s Mini Mart on Ohio Street. Another shows the mannequins that used to grace the display windows of Dave’s Romantic Supermart, and one shows three homeless men that Killian calls “The Three Wise Men.”
“I took this photo of these three guys hanging out in front of the Main Street Dunkin about ten years ago,” Killian said. “I stopped and said to the middle guy, ‘You are always holding court here, giving advice to your friends.’ The guy on the right asked what advice I wanted, and I asked to take their pic instead.”
Killian has been making figurines of people she knows for decades now, starting way back in the mid-1990s, when she crafted clay figurines of members of her family back in the Upper Midwest, where she grew up. She’s also made crocheted dolls, and got into dry felting, also called needle felting, in 2016.
She hopes to create many more felted figurines and scenes of the Bangor region, and is actively collecting aquariums and other glass containers that can be lit from inside to showcase her work. More images of her felted figurines and many of the photos that inspired them can be seen on Killian’s website.
Killian said that through her art, she tries to explore the social value that people assign to the elements that shape our daily lives and to rethink the assumptions people make, and to foster appreciation for the overlooked in society.
“It’s always been about perception. I know I’m socially awkward, and have assumed and said things about others that have been very hurtful. The older I get, the more I understand the need to self-reflect before jumping to conclusions.” she said. “It’s about seeing the value of the individual. You’re finding humanity instead of just avoiding and looking down on people.”
