Matt's Painting hangs in the office of Angus King in Washington D.C.

Maine Home & Design, January 2015

https://downeast.com/north-by-east/company-men/

DOWNEAST MAGAZINE ARTICLE titled “Company Men”

“My dad has the knowledge, and I have the energy,” Matt Barter says. “Put us together, and we can get a lot done.”

Father-son artists Philip and Matt Barter rebuild a factory town.

By Will Grunewald
Photographed by Mark Fleming

[dropcap letter=”A”]t the Cantown Company Store, salt pork, liters of cola, beans, canned fish, and half-gallons of milk line the shelves. Grabbing a couple of items might set you back several hundred bucks. But that’s because everything on display is art, not food. Matt Barter crafted the groceries from wood, and the store is situated inside his Brunswick gallery, the Barter Art House.

The project started as a nostalgia trip. Matt grew up Down East in the ’80s, when small general stores still thrived. “You’d go inside, and it’s this weird tapestry,” he says. “On the same shelf, they might sell Wonder Bread, bait bags, and shotgun shells.” He wanted to evoke a place like Dunbar’s Store in his hometown of Sullivan — a social hub in the heyday of the sardine-canning industry. To complement the installation with paintings and reliefs of fishing and processing and objects that filled a factory worker’s daily life, he teamed up with his dad, Philip Barter.

When Matt was a kid, Philip earned a living any which way, musseling, scalloping, lobstering. “My dad could be digging clams, up to his knees in mud, but he’d always have a portable easel on his back, and he’d set up and paint while he waited for the tide to go out,” Matt recalls.

“Ever since Matt could walk, he was in and out of my studio,” Philip says. “I told him that if he’d help me wash brushes and prepare canvasses, he’d have free run of it.”

When Matt was 16, the pair had their first joint exhibition, at a gallery in Blue Hill. By then, Philip’s artistic career had taken off — in a 1992 profile, this magazine described him as “one of Maine’s most popular and prolific painters.” Matt and his wife moved to the West Coast for a few years but came back in the mid-aughts, and he worked on a lobsterboat out of South Gouldsboro for a couple of years. In 2015, he bought a home in Brunswick and converted the carriage house into a downstairs gallery and upstairs studio. Cantown is his second collaboration with Philip in the new space. “Really, this is about me and my dad’s connection to Down East and to each other and to what’s sort of a lost era,” Matt says.

“When I was growing up in Boothbay, every coastal village in Maine had a sardine factory,” Philip adds. “My great-uncle had owned one. I saw a video of Eastport from back then — you couldn’t walk in the streets it was so busy. Now, you could take a nap in those streets.”

“That’s what this tribute to the canning industry is about — the cultural vacuum that was left behind, the hustle and bustle that turned into humdrum,” Matt says.

In Sullivan, Dunbar’s Store closed five years ago (although new owners have plans to revive it as a grocery and gift shop). “With the mom-and-pop stores, everybody knew everybody,” says Philip, who still works in his Sullivan studio. “Now, I’ve got a Dollar General on the end of my road.” But, for the Cantown store, he fixed up an old Dunbar’s shopping cart.

“It would be awesome if someone took a painting off the wall, put it in the cart, and walked it over to the cash register,” Matt says. “I’d probably die of laughter, but they would have gotten what the concept was.”

Cantown opens June 1 and runs through August 15. On June 29, a reception will feature food, drink, and a performance of an original song, “Cantown,” by Clyde Bisbee. 68 Cumberland St., Brunswick. 207-460-1453.

https://www.timesrecord.com/articles/ticket/downeast-native-dedicates-brunswick-art-installation-to-maines-historic-canning-industry-those-who-built-it/

Downeast native dedicates Brunswick art installation to Maine’s historic canning industry, those who built it 

| July 12, 2019 

By Kelli Park
Special to The Times Record

Matt Barter in Barter Art House, where he and his father are displaying artwork that harkens back to Downeast Maine’s sardine canning industry. (Kelli Park photos)

BRUNSWICK — Local artist Matt Barter found unusual inspiration for his latest creative endeavor — memories of his home town’s gritty, once-thriving canning industry. 

Cantown Company Store is a collaborative installation exhibit between Matt Barter and his father, Maine artist Philip Barter, on display at Barter Art House in Brunswick through Aug. 15. 

Matt Barter depicts the Downeast experience using symbols from his life: His father’s lunch during Red Sox games (crackers with sardines and Budweiser); shopping at The Dunbar Store in Sullivan for Wonder Bread, pickles, blue bait gloves, fishing tackle, shotgun shells and soda. The exhibit reflects nearly mythic stories about lobster boats, fishing families and workers who could pack more than 5,000 cans of sardines in just three hours — all day, every day. 

Barter spent his childhood in the fishing communities of Downeast Maine, where the canning industry thrived for more than a century. In one of these towns, he and his father spotted a museum relic that sparked an idea. 

IN THE CAN 

Barter and his father visited Lubec Historical Society and Museum last fall, where a cannery company store token on display caught their attention. 

“A lightbulb went off in my head, and I thought it would be really cool to use a vibe similar to the company store [for the installation],” Barter said. “Then I started to think, what do Downeasters like? Hunting, fishing, Red Sox … . I started making all these different items for the show based on what I would find in that store.” 

The father-son artists decided to collaborate on a tribute to the canning industry in the form of an art installation, an idea that would eventually evolve into Cantown Company Store. 

Barter found vintage can labels at an antique store and adhered them to cans from his recycling bin. The cans took up residence in his studio and inspired him to build Cantown. Barter built Cantown one can at a time using cedar — cutting, priming, painting and labeling 70 wooden cans. 

He started out with canning labels for fish products, but later realized Cantown would be incomplete without B&M Baked Beans, One Pie Pumpkin, and a reference to Warhol’s painted Campbell’s tomato soup can. Barter included an old-fashioned time card punch clock, designing labels for Cantown Hunting Gear (repurposed hunting hats) and fired and glazed his own ceramic milk jugs.

“The end of the fish cannery is another piece of Maine history that’s disappeared,” said Philip Barter. 

Maine’s canning industry began to support local economies in the 1870s and reached its heyday during World War II, when large orders of canned food were sent to American troops. Thousands of jobs were created at more than 50 canneries, many of which were filled by women. 

“I used to paint lobster fishermen, mostly men,” Barter said “It’s exciting to define a whole industry where women worked really hard and were super fast and really skilled.” 

Maine’s last sardine cannery, in Prospect Harbor, shut its doors in 2010, bringing an end to what was once among the state’s most lucrative industries. 

Matt Barter created everything in Cantown, in collaboration with his father, Maine artist Phillip Barter.

BARTERS AND TRADE 

Philip Barter supported his family by fishing, clamming, harvesting mussels, lobstering and scallop dragging — all while supplementing that work through his art. 

Matt Barter roamed his father’s studio as a teenager, helping stretch canvases and build frames, giving him access to the creative tools he would need to one day establish himself as a sculptor and painter. With his father’s guidance, Barter learned to paint and create wood relief carvings. 

“I love working with my dad. We work well together,” Matt Barter said. “There’s no competition — it’s just fun.” 

After spending time out west, Barter and his wife returned to Downeast Maine, where he started working on a lobster boat. 

“That cemented what it is to work on the waterfront: the gear, the guys, the boats. It came together,” he said. “When you’re away for a while and you come back, you see it through fresh eyes and see how exciting it is. It’s so different from anything that anybody else does.” 

Barter and his family eventually made their way to Brunswick, where they transformed a carriage house into Barter Art House, an arts venue where they could let their imaginations loose. 

Barter explores the mythology of the livelihoods that were built upon the canning industry in Downeast Maine based on the stories passed down from generation to generation. Cantown illuminates elements of the isolation of living Downeast and working at a cannery — not only the days spent in the factories, but also the home life, the dreams, the feeling of stepping back in time in towns that are marked only with sign posts. 

“It’s like a lost memory,” Barter said. “You’re talking to people who worked in an industry that’s gone. You’re getting this secondhand information, these stories. I fill my mind with it when I’m working on a piece, not only what it would be like to work there, but what would it be like to dream?”