Calendar celebrates 20 years of Echoes

Echoes Magazine has begun the celebration of its 20th anniversary with the release of a 2008 calendar with full-color images of magazine covers since 1988.
Featuring the work of 14 photographers whose work has appeared on the front and back of Echoes, the 16-month calendar portrays Aroostook County in every season.     On the cover if Brook Merrow’s classic photo of 14-year-old Stacey Mullen on her knees in Leo Griffin’s Mars Hill potato field, brown-gloved hands grasping potatoes destined for the ash basket beside her.
“What Merrow saw in the Aroostook girl kneeling in the fresh-turned earth was the essence of simplicity and peace that was rural Maine,” wrote Gordon Hammond for the magazine’s 10th anniversary edition. “The meaning was not lost on the readers of Echoes,” he continued, “as hundreds of posters from that back cover photo on the premier edition found their way into homes from coast to coast. Stacey Mullen became the magazine’s cover girl.”
Hammond’s photo of the Center Line Road that was the magazine’s first front cover illustrates the last four months of 2007, followed by Janet Stephenson’s view of a Washburn barn in winter for the month of January.
In addition to photos, calendar pages also display acrylic paintings by Shari Ireland of Mapleton.
Aroostook scenes, wildlife and flowers all reflect the changing seasons, from April’s bright red tulips in the snow, to fiddleheads emerging from a marsh in June, to a potato field in full bloom in July.
In addition to Merrow, now of Bozeman, Mont., Hammond of Westfield, Stephenson of Washburn and Ireland of Castle Hill, the calendar features the work of Julia Bayly of Fort Kent, Michael Gudreau of Presque Isle, Steve Leighton of Fort Fairfield, Erni Roberts of Gorham, Roger Stevens of Lincoln, Mark Savary of Chesapeake, Ohio, Darlene Rossignol of New Brunswick and Ray Burby, Robert Longlais and Mary Sanipass, all of Caribou.
Published quarterly in Caribou, Maine, Echoes focuses on qualities of rural culture at risk in today’s world, celebrating traditional values and the importance of remembering our roots.