WINTER HARBOR — Under sunny skies, with a light breeze blowing, Susan Barrett Merrill, Susanne Grosjean and Geri Valentine set off in a lobster boat from South Addison in early June. It was the 40th year that the women had made the journey to help round up the resident flock of sheep, whose heavy wooly coats were to be shorn for summer, on Flat Island. They also skirted the snowy white mounds of shorn fleece, picking out dirt, twigs, seaweed and other debris from the shiny, lustrous fiber to be spun and hand-dyed in coming months.

For four decades, the three Maine fiber artists have ventured 3 miles offshore to Flat as well as neighboring Big and Little Nash islands in Western Bay. For just over a century, sheep have grazed on these treeless, lush-green isles. Since 2008, Alfie and Eleni Wakeman and their family have owned and tended two of the three island flocks originally kept by the late South Addison lobsterwoman Jenny Cirone. Jenny’s father, who was the Little Nash Island lightkeeper, started keeping sheep on that island in 1916.

Besides being an artist, Geri Valentine is among coastal Maine’s few sheep shearers, and she had a job to do that June morning. Susan Barrett Merrill and Susanne Grosjean also performed tasks involving the shorn fleece. But at day’s end, the artists had bed sheets full of fleece to tote home. They use their fibers to create compelling felted masks, vibrant knitted garments reminiscent of stained-glass panels and wool and linen rugs whose rich colors are derived from madder, weld, goldenrod, black walnut and other wild plants.

“Hands-on” is an overused term, but it firmly applies to the trio who have handled and helped round up the Romney and Coopsworth cross sheep, pluck manure from their fleece, spin, dye and knit, felt and weave the island wool. In their hands, the fiber comes full circle.

That age-old cycle is celebrated in their artistic creations on view and for sale from Friday, July 1, through Wednesday, Aug. 31, at Hammond Hall in Winter Harbor. Schoodic Arts for All will host an opening reception for the “Island Wool: Local Color Exhibit” and the three artists from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, July 3. A closing “Tea and Textiles” reception, featuring textile collector Tom Leonhardt, will be held Sunday, Aug. 28, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Hammond Hall.

Besides the annual sheep-shearing, Geri, Susan and Sue have been bound by another related ritual. For nearly half a century, the women and as many as two dozen other hand-spinners at a time have met every Wednesday from the fall through spring in one of their homes. They’re called the Wednesday Spinners.

In “Island Wool: Local Color Exhibit,” the public will see South Addison artist Geri Valentine’s knitted garments including a jacket, sweater, double-brimhats and mittens. In the sunlight, Geri’s crew-neck sweater literally glows. The hand-spun wool’s natural lanolin creates a satiny sheen. That shine makes the lilac, sky-blue, mustard-yellow, salmon-pink, olive-green and other hues pop. Even the goldenrod and other Maine plants, found on the islands where the sheep graze, are planted as natural dyes in the one-of-a-kind knitwear. Unlike some wool clothing, the garments are soft on the skin.

“My garments are the work of one pair of hands,” Geri declares matter-of-factly. “I shear the sheep, spin the wool, dye the yarn and knit every stitch.”

Shearing the island flocks is physically demanding work. The sheep take to the hills knowing only too well what’s going on. So, they first have to be rounded up. Working with electric shears, Geri and fellow shearer Donna Kausen then deftly relieve the protesting creatures of their winter coats. Manure clumps and stained tips are snipped from the gray and white fleece laid out on the skirting table. Susan Grosjean grades the fiber and she, Susan Merrill and others remove hay, seaweed, brambles and other detritus.

“The island wool is long, strong and lustrous,” Geri said. “It’s free of barnyard stuff and dirt. It’s very clean and easy to hand-spin.”

At their respective homes in South Addison, Franklin and Brooksville, Geri, Susanne and Susan each has a garden where they grow indigo, madder and other plants readily available to create dyes from. For instance, goldenrod, tansy, rhubarb root and onions’ glossy skins produce different gradations of yellow.

The alchemy of making those colors is what absorbs Susanne Grosjean. Originally a biologist by education, and a brief time spent working as a lab technician, she delights in the dyeing process. She’ll dye black wool, say, to produce a rich maroon. Or, she’ll combine alder and black walnut to dye gray fiber and yield varying shades of brown. Indigo, Garland daisy and coreopsis are just a few of the dozens of plants that she grows in her garden at Hog Bay Pottery in Franklin. That broad palette of natural colors is then celebrated in her weft-faced rugs and tapestries hand-woven on a heavy Scandinavian floor loom. She wove six rugs specifically for the “Island Wool: Local Color Exhibit.”

“You get these colors, and no one knows how you got them,” Susanne said, chuckling. She was referring to the natural dyeing process.

For her floor rugs, Susanne especially likes the Flat Island sheep’s long, coarser fleeces. The fiber withstands foot traffic better. For over 40 years, the weaver has participated in the annual Nash and Flat islands springtime convergence. In 1979, her 4-month-old son Carl went along too. On the return trip to the mainland, she recalls the lobster boat drawing up to the old wharf at low tide. She climbed up the pier’s steep ladder. Carl, snug and secured in a bait basket, was simultaneously hauled up via a pulley. Getting to and from the islands is part of the adventure.

“They are just bare islands with these wild animals,” she said. Even the island sheep’s wool smells different. “It smells like seaweed and salt air. If you could bottle it, it would be worth a million.”

Like Susanne, Susan Barrett Merrill also weaves magic with the island fleece. The Brooksville weaver’s artwork takes the form of human faces that emerge from the woven, felted wool. Like us humans, her visages are made from the Earth’s natural elements. The mask-making sprang from a 1989 dream in which an older woman gave her a handwoven mask and explained how to make one. She made her first the next day. Her technique is called “Zati,” an Urdu word meaning “intrinsic, from an inner place,” because it came to her in a dream “from the inside out.” She created a series of masks for “Island Wool: Local Color Exhibit.”

Susan’s experience of laying hands on the sheep and harvesting the fleece is intrinsic to her process. She prizes the island fiber for being so clean and easy to hand-spin. The masks are hand-woven flat. The three-dimensional sculptural faces take shape when she cuts the warp from the loom and tightens the warp on the warp threads. Of its own accord, the face’s nose, chin, eyes and other features emerge from the woven shapes and spaces. The mask is then felted onto a headpiece. The colorful headdresses are enlivened with other material and techniques such as crochet and needle-felting.

“I find that the rich relationship of nature and spirit embodied in the masks shows all creation to be a mask of the divine,” Susan created.

The annual sheep-shearing and their time spent on Flat, Big and Little Nash also binds the three women together. The springtime ritual affirms their friendship and shared way of life.

“This is 40 years of hanging around with the same people and doing what we do,” Geri summed up.

Admission is free to see the exhibit “Island Wool: Local Color Exhibit” at Schoodic Arts for All’s Hammond Hall at 427 Main St. in Winter Harbor.

For more info, call 963-2569, email [email protected] and visit schoodicartsforall.org.

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