BRUNSWICK

B efore Spindleworks started artist:artist (read: artist to artist) with a grant from the Maine Community Foundation, Kelly Weingart would have spent most of her creative time just during regularly-scheduled program hours at the 7 Lincoln St. studio of the nonprofit arts center for adults with disabilities.

“Her art, when she’s making it, she’s just laughing and having fun,” Ryan Walker, an artist mentor who oversees the Spindleworks’ sculpture studio said. “But for her audience, for us, it’s a window into her view of the world and how she experiences it.”

That’s important.

Because — as is the case not only with disabled artists, but many visual artists as well — Weingart, who has been creating at Spindleworks since 2002, struggles to communicate her experiences within the limits of spoken words.

About a month ago, Weingart’s experience of the world got a little bigger and her expression of it took on new dimensions when Bowdoinham potter Sara Cox became her community art partner through artist:artist.

They didn’t need words, the pair have found, to share various artistic pursuits. But Cox and Weingart knew that going into their partnership. Cox has been an artist mentor at Spindleworks for the last several years.

“Two or three years ago, we really started connecting and it’s from that that the creativity happens,” Cox said. “We have a good time collaborating and a really similar sense of humor. Kelly loves to make fun of pop culture, of celebrities that take themselves really seriously. We don’t stop laughing the whole time we’re together.”

Over the last year, artist:artist has matched 10 Spindleworks artists with artists in the community. The grant funding supports the pairs with transportation and cultural access costs so that pairs can go on “art dates,” such as visit museums and galleries, attend concerts and theater performances, or simply share studio time.

“A major goal of artist:artist is to help expand the Spindleworks artists’ involvement with their community. We want the artists to understand that their creative time can expand beyond Spindleworks program hours; there is a larger artistic community they are a part of and can come to know through these friendships,” Liz McGhee, program manager at Spindleworks, wrote in an email to The Times Record.

What Weingart and Cox have come to share, in addition to threehour monthly dates, is a way of connecting beyond words.

“I was wondering if our work would make sense outside of the Spindleworks studio, if Kelly would feel as comfortable. Now, in my own studio, I am able to give her my undivided attention.”

Mash-up

As a pop culture icon, the name David Hasselhoff brings up images of sun-god lifeguard Mitch Buchannon from “Baywatch” or the stealth moves of Michael Knight and KITT, the original smart car (albeit a Pontiac Trans Am) from “Knight Rider.”

But for Weingart, Hasselhoff is just the latest celebrity to find his way into the art she makes.

Hasselhoff was also the “draw” Cox employed that got Weingart into pottery.

“I said, ‘Hey Kelly, do you want to go to the pottery studio and make a David Hasselhoff Chia Head or Chia Chest?’” Cox said.

But once in the kiln, the Chia Head — yes, as in the holiday season jingle “Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia” Pets — turned into what Weingart and Cox now call David Hasselhoff ’s Shrunken Head.

“Then she wanted to do a whole series of shrunken heads. She started one of Dog the Bounty Hunter (from the A&E reality show of the same name),” Cox said.

Collections are one of Weingart’s favorite things to create.

“She’s made like 200 Pez dispensers. Now she’s working on a commemorative plate series — but they’re all phony. David Hasselhhoff was her first one,” Cox said.

That’s one of the things they work on at Cox’s Bowdoinham Studio, Delilah Pottery.

They also listen to Hasselhoff ’s music, which is really popular in Germany, and make up interpretative dance spoofs to go along with the tunes.

“She’s fascinated with David Hasselhoff,” Walker, who has worked at Spindleworks for three years, said. “It started at least a year ago. But there are others. Flash Gordon. Superman. She’s into doing goofy mash-ups with celebrities.”

For Cox, it’s all about following Weingart’s interests. “If I had just said ‘do you want to do some pottery,’ Kelly wouldn’t have been into that. By saying, ‘do you want to make a David Hasselhoff thing, she was totally psyched.”

It doesn’t take a lot of words to pay attention to what matters to someone.

For this artist:artist pair, all it took was the common ground of creative expression.

On display

Through the end of October, the work of all 10 Spindlework’s artist:artist pairs is on display at Little Dog Coffee Shop, 87 Maine St, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and Sunday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.