Kate Cheney Chappell
Cofounder

As cofounder of Tom's of Maine with husband Tom, Kate was involved in many aspects of the business with an emphasis on the research and creation of new products.  

Kate serves on the Foundations for Ministry Committee for the Episcopal Diocese of Maine and the advisory councils of the Maine Audubon Society, the Chewonki Foundation, the University of Maine Alumni Association, and Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility. She is also a past member of Hospice Volunteers of Saco Valley and a past president of Kennebunk Health Services, as well as a current member of their Ethics Committees.

Kate attended Chatham College, Sarah Lawrence, The Sorbonne and the University of Southern Maine where she graduated summa cum laude in 1983 with an A.B. in Communications after an 18-year hiatus from college. On a 1991-92 sabbatical from Tom's of Maine, she attended the Charles River Studio Workshop in Watertown, Massachusetts, and also attended the Haystack School of Arts & Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine in 1993.

A professional artist, Kate maintains a studio in Kennebunk, where she also resides with her husband Tom. Each summer, she spends time painting on remote islands off the coast of Maine. She is represented by Mast Cove Gallery and the Lupine Gallery on Monhegan Island. She has had three solo shows at Harvard Divinity School and has participated in group shows at West Newton Cinema Artspace, Cambridge Technology Partners, the Actors Workshop in Boston (poetry and performance art), River Tree Center for the Arts in Kennebunk, ME (The Art of Printmaking), Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, ME (Maine Printmakers 1980-2205), University of Maine Presque Isle's Reed Art Gallery (Prints from Peregrine Press), and The Saco Museum in Saco, ME (Prints from Peregrine Press).

Kate's artistic affiliations include Peregrine Press, Woman Artists of Monhegan Island, and Maine Women in the Arts.

Visit her website to learn more about her artistic accomplishments.

Return to the Summer House

Air before rain,
air so sweet
I weep
my grandmother's tears
as I open
each window

of the closed house,

remembering the scent of water
in the air,
and her hair down to brush out
before the sun had fully set,
that slow, slow going down
of the July day,
the smell of gas from the stove
where she was warming milk

to drink before bed.

How fresh the sheets of night air

that surround a child of eight,

how close the sound of the
whip-por-will at dusk,

how certain the smell of her

grandmother's old skin.

II.
When we got to the cottage,

the grass was not mowed.

It lay like long bleached hair
in swirls

as if under water,

flattened like beds where
lovers had lain.
I feel their ghosts as close as
the marks
left by damp hair against damp skin,
like corn husk where the silk has pressed,
like rivulets of sand where
the tide has run.

III.
I shiver
walking naked to the bathroom,
the night sky follows me
at every window,
last streaks of sun linger
on the horizon
after the storm has passed,
the sky above

still,

black on blue,

and the flames of light lick out
like tongues on the rim of the sea.
Returning, I sleep the deep
sleep of the very young who go
to bed
before the sun.

Reprinted from Chrysalis
Journal of the Swedenborg Foundation
#3, Vol IX.

Thomas M. Chappell
Cofounder

Tom O'Brien
Chief Executive Officer

Bill McGonagle
Chief Financial Officer

Kate's Envelope Art Show

Take a short video tour of the show and hear Kate describe her work.
(To view this video, you must have Windows Media Player. If you do
not have Windows Media Player, you can download it for free here.)

Read an Art New England review of Kate's show.
Reprinted with the permission of Art New England.
(When the review opens, hold your mouse over the article and click on the small box with arrows in it; this will increase the size of the article and make it easier to read.)