Honoring the Artist: Dana Heacock

Lest we imagine that being both an artist and a businessman does not compute, consider this week’s cover artist, Maine resident Dana Heacock. While a lot of us think that most creative individuals don’t have much marketing skills and conversely, that most business people lack artistic abilities, Mr. Heacock proves us wrong.

The following interview demonstrates the point:

Q: The cover painting, “Catching Snow Flakes,” is part of a series you did for your yearly calendar. How did that come about, technically?

A: Many of my images are from photographs that I take. This image, however, is a composite: the barn in the background and the dog are taken from different sources. It’s probably the calendar’s most popular image. By the way, the calendar is a fold-out portfolio; each monthly poster can be framed.

Q: How does your selection of images come about?

A: The paintings give you a sense of the season without it being obvious. For example, there’s a rowboat tied to a dock for August. The images have to be things that people relate to, no matter what part of the country they live in, not just indigenous to Maine.

Q: How did the calendar itself, which your company, Abacus, publishes, come about?

A: It’s a long story. I inherited the project from a woman in 1997 who was doing the calendar. Up to that point, I didn’t paint. I studied graphic arts, photography, drawing and illustration at The Rhode Island School of Design. I was an entrepreneur, running four retail stores in Maine, including Portland and Freeport, where we sold crafts, jewelry, and ceramics. I’ve been in the retail business since I was a young child.

Q: How did that come about?

A: Even though I was born in Maine, I grew up in Connecticut. Each summer we would come back to Maine. As a child, I would collect beach stones, draw on them and sell them to the tourists. When I was a teenager, I would do pen and ink works. When I was twenty-one, I opened my first store in Bennington, Vermont, and then came back to live in Maine, opening a place in Boothbay Harbor.

Q: Where did you get this double talent of art and business? Anyone in your family who had these talents?

A: My mother was in the arts, doing watercolors and sculpture. My great uncle was in business in Boston during the early part of the Twentieth Century. He had a pharmacy.

Q: Besides your retail abilities, do you have any other creative skills, like architecture, for example?

A: As a matter-of-fact, I designed my house which was in a national magazine. It’s a traditional Maine cottage with cedar shingles, but it has lots of glass. I’ve also changed the design in my stores, most notably the one in Freeport. I have been asked to do interior design, but I am too busy to consider it.

Q: If you weren’t too busy, what would you consider in ten years or so?

A: I’d like to do abstractions.

Q: But I bet you’d still live in Maine, a place lots of people would find too cold.

A: You’re right. But people have the wrong idea about Maine. They think it’s like Newfoundland. It was sixty -six degrees here about ten days ago. The ocean keeps it temperate. We are milder here than Chicago or Detroit. I’m here to stay.

–Marion Wolberg Weiss

Mr. Heacock’s website is: www.abacusgallery.com. You may order calendar s and prints by calling 1-800-206-2166.