(18 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Solon, Maine – 6 April 2025
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1. Exterior of South Solon Meeting House
2. Lecture being held inside South Solon Meeting House
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3. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“We’re in the South Solon Meeting House, a few miles north of Skowhegan.”
4. UPSOUND (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“Starting in 1782”
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5. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“It was a place to hold religious services the way you have in every single New England town.”
6. Frescoes inside South Solon Meeting House
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7. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“It was built in the 19th century. Was completely decorated in fresco courtesy of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.”
8. Frescoes inside South Solon Meeting House
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9. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“In the early 50s they endowed a prize to select young artists to completely paint in fresco this typical
New England Meeting House.”
10. Fresco inside South Solon Meeting House
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11. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“What we have is painting on a wet plaster preparation. And the technique was really developed and perfected in Italy.”
12. UPSOUND (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“You need to put first plaster preparation to get it really flat.”
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13. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“It’s retained a lot of its original features. So, the steeple is still original.”
14. Exterior of South Solon Meeting House
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15. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“If you look at the windows, they have a feature above it that makes them kind of slightly pointed, right? So, it has some Gothic revival features.”
16. Exterior of South Solon Meeting House
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17. SOUNDBITE (English) Véronique Plesch, professor of art, Colby College:
“It’s really, truly unique.”
18. People attending lecture inside South Solon Meeting House
AP Video Shot by Robert Bukaty
STORYLINE:
From the outside, it looks like any other New England church building — a boxy, white structure with a single steeple surrounded by an old stone wall, set against rolling hills and pine forest.
Inside, though, the South Solon Meeting House has a secret unknown even to some who drive through the tiny Maine town every day.
The interior of the building is covered in 70-year-old fresco murals that encourage some in Maine’s art community to describe it as “Maine’s Sistine Chapel.”
The murals were painted by student artists in the 1950s, and while they have long been appreciated by visitors, the recent launch of a website dedicated to them by Colby College students has generated new interest in the paintings.
Véronique Plesch, a professor of art at Colby, hopes the building inspires many more frescoes.
“I fell in love with the place, because I have studies frescoes all my life,” said Plesch, who is a member of the board of the historical society that cares for the meeting house. “It’s not something that you put in museums, it’s something that is put in public places.”
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