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HOLLIS, Maine — Nina Fuller said there are four steps to catching a spry spring lamb: Go slow, go slow, go slow — then move very fast.
Fuller demonstrated the technique at her rambling farm Monday morning, snatching up a bleating baby before showering its fuzzy noggin with kisses. The ungrateful lamb accepted the affection with a small amount of ungrateful protest, before Fuller placed it back on the ground and watched it lope across the farmyard to its anxious mother.
It’s no secret, Fuller loves her animals.
That’s why the accomplished photographer, with a long string of national and international commercial and editorial credits to her name, has lately turned her lens almost exclusively on her wooly flock, capturing them in every shape, hue and mood, transforming her otherwise ordinary farm animals into works of art.
Fuller’s latest batch of mammoth-sized sheep prints go on display at Portland Art Gallery on Middle Street next month. The opening reception is slated for Thursday, May 2 from 5-7 p.m.
Fuller first moved to Maine from her native New York in 1972, searching for “The Good Life.”
“You know, Scott and Helen Nearing and all that,” Fuller said.
But instead of raising organic crops in a hippy back-to-the-land existence, she instead nurtured a family and successful photographic career, making pictures for L.L. Bean, Land’s End, the Irish Tourist Board, New York Times, Boston Globe and National Geographic Traveller magazine, among many others.
Fuller was even briefly a Maine daily newspaper photographer. But she decided to give it up when her editor said the family in one of her photos, who’d just been burned out of their home on Christmas Eve, didn’t look sad enough.
“At that point, I knew it wasn’t for me,” Fuller said.
Then, about 20 years ago, with her kids grown and career firmly established, Fuller finally found her slice of Good Life, buying a former dairy farm on 34 1/2 acres in Hollis. Though she originally stocked it with horses, sheep more or less took over 13 years ago when someone convinced her to buy a small flock of 12 from a Mainer getting out of the wool trade.
Unbeknownst to her, many of the sheep turned out to be pregnant.
“A couple of weeks after they arrived, they started having babies. It was crazy. It was nuts,” Fuller said. “A couple years later, I had 59 sheep.”
Though she doesn’t currently have that many, Fuller’s photographic eye has revolved around her sheep and farm for more than a decade. Most of her images are warm portraits, with each sheep’s individual personality shining through.
Will, her most photographed animal, sports stately curled horns and a majestic profile in several pictures. The corners of his mouth are slightly upturned, giving him a knowing grin, as if he can guess a viewer’s secrets.
One of Fuller’s Will portraits shows him smirking through a snowstorm while two other sheep remain under cover, inside the barn behind him. The square, 36 x 36-inch print is presently listed at Portland Art Gallery for $3,400.
Another sheep-in-the-snow photo by Fuller, which is included in next month’s show, depicts a ewe named Hanna. She stares directly at the camera, head lowered, in an almost sinister pose. Though both photographs are essentially straight portraits, without any kind of visual trickery, the otherwise anonymous sheep have distinctly delineated personalities.
Fuller said she was at first drawn to photographing her sheep for their sheer personal and aesthetic charm.
“I think they’re majestic. I think they’re beautiful,” Fuller said. “People think they’re stupid. They are not stupid.”
But later she was drawn into their ancient gazes, realizing how looking at a sheep’s face is like looking into the past.
“They’ve looked how they look for thousands and thousands of years,” Fuller said, “and their survival has been in flocking together as like-minded individuals. I just love the little communities that they have.”
She admires how sheep stick together in times of danger and uncertainty. It’s a quality Fuller wishes more humans possessed.
Walking through the back 40 of her farm on Monday, Fuller came to a length of weathered baling twine hanging from a tree. She said it was her “grateful string” where she likes to pause, grab hold and say what she’s grateful for aloud.
“I’m grateful for this beautiful day,” Fuller said, among a longer list, “and I’m grateful for these sheep.”
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