Artists Seeking the Best Look to Lincolnville
When it comes to canvas, one company stretches above the rest...
Jamie Wyeth won’t just set his paintbrush on any old canvas. Neither will Alex Katz, Richard Estes, or about a thousand other top-notch artists who rely on the canvases and aspen frames produced by the two-man team of Chris Polson and Joe Calderwood. Polson, a former licensed forester, says their business is unique because they select the aspen logs themselves, dry the lumber in their own kiln, and then finish the frames — they call them “stretchers” because of the way they hold the canvases taut — at their forty-by-sixty-foot woodshop in Lincolnville.“I don’t believe there’s another stretcher manufacturer that does their own drying,” explains Polson of Twin Brook Stretchers. “It’s a great little niche that we have going here, and it’s been supporting two families for quite a while now.”
Since 1992, to be specific. That’s when the late Neil Welliver, who lived nearby, suggested to Polson that there was a demand for high-quality canvases and frames. Since then Polson and Calderwood have shipped their products to artists across the country and around the globe. The two men produce everything from lightweight frames that sell for just a few dollars to intricate canvases that can easily run into the thousands. The largest project they have worked on so far was a massive twenty-four-by-twelve-foot canvas the team erected for a mural in Manila.
For his part, Polson says he believes the canvases and frames he creates for the masters helps reinforce Maine’s spot at the top of the art world. “We’re adding value to a Maine product,” he remarks.
This article was originally published in the October 2006 issue of Down East Magazine.
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