Holdfast!: A Seaweed Exhibition

Holdfast!: A Seaweed Art Exhibition will be an innovative group show taking place in late summer 2026 in a warehouse space on the working waterfront of Rockland. Maine. It features a diverse group of at least twenty artists stretching from York to Eastport whose work will showcase seaweed as an experimental, sustainable, and unique material and subject matter that resonates with current environmental concerns in Maine. It will engage its audience with challenging visuals and installations, as well as offer insight through its programming into the Maine seaweed industry and the ecological health of these vital species from the perspective of educators, harvesters, aquaculturists and the scientific research community.

Ian Ellis on Instagram

Artist bios
Ian Ellis has been exploring using seaweed in various forms since 2022. This feels like an important moment in time to curate an exhibition that addresses current environmental issues. I would like to see artists included who currently use or have used seaweed in their work, and would also like to give artists who have not, but whose work would lend itself well to seaweed, the opportunity to do so.

Celeste Roberge (exhibition co-curator) has been working with seaweed in her art practice since 2010. She had the first solo seaweed exhibitions in Maine at PhoPa Gallery in 2017 and Waterfall Arts in 2018. Her work was included in the historic exhibition The Cultures of Seaweed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 2023. She is a member of the Maine Seaweed Council and has interviewed 12 seaweed artists for the MSC on-line Newsletter.

Image caption: Ian Ellis, Shrouded in Nostalgia, 2025, Seaweed, 192″ x 96″ x 2″