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We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art & Nan Kellam – Book ReviewBook review by Gabriel Thoumi, special to mongabay.comFebruary 14, 2012
On this February 14th, this Valentine’s Day, let us celebrate the rugged romanticism and unbridled inspiration of Art and Nan Kellam as an encouragement to all of us. Art and Nan Kellam, married in 1935. They were college graduates, one in engineering and one in economics, during a time of great international difficulties. They left their home in southern California in 1949 and bought an island off the coast of Maine to live in simpler, more elegant life, closer to nature. To do this, they moved to Placentia Island alone, isolated on the island where they lived a romantic story hand-in-hand with each other celebrating the rhythm and seasons of Maine’s seasons without electricity and running water for over 35 years. In We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art & Nan Kellam, Peter Blanchard, III writes about and David Graham describes through photographs the Kellam’s beautiful and arduous life story, living on their 550-acre island home. Growing vegetables, entertaining guests, rowing to the mainland for food and supplies, experiencing the boredom and excitement of daily life, all everyday activities engaged in by the Kellams with a robust gusto and silent determination examined through a lens of a profound foundation of romantic commitment and participation in a commonplace oneness of nature. The beauty of the Kellam’s story this Valentine’s Day, shown through their deep commitment and passion for each other and their engagement in nature, and described in We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art & Nan Kellam is that we too can experience the day-to-day existence the Kellams too felt living off the grid growing with nature—as a couple and as part of Placentia Island’s ecology—for over 35 years. This Valentine’s Day let us celebrate the intimacy and the inspiration and the difference of Art and Nan Kellam as described in We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art & Nan Kellam by letting their intimacy and romance with nature impact us and inspire us. How to order: We Were an Island: The Maine Life of Art & Nan Kellam Hardcover: 191 Pages Publisher: University Press of New England ISBN: 9781584658603 Author: Peter P. Blanchard, III Photographer: David Graham
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