At just 21, Maggie DiGrande will be the youngest artist to have her work displayed at Nahant’s Open Studio craft fair Nov. 28.
A senior art major at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, DiGrande, who was studying abroad in Italy when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, said she first began to paint scenes from her hometown while stuck at her parents’ house in Nahant and finishing up the remainder of her classes remotely.
“I was so bored,” she said of the lockdown. “I was taking a painting class and got really into it. I was just doing it in my basement, and I’m so glad I was in that class because it took my mind off of everything. After (the class ended), I just continued.”
DiGrande’s oil paintings, which have become wildly popular with Nahant natives in recent months, are inspired by beloved Nahant landmarks and celebrate DiGrande’s small-town upbringing.
Primarily gathering inspiration from her frequent walks around town, she said she began with what she called “the four iconic scenes of Nahant”: The Coast Guard station, Bailey’s Hill, Nahant Wharf, and Greenlawn Cemetery.
It wasn’t until her mother posted some of her work on Facebook, however, that DiGrande’s paintings really began to take off.
“I was getting a lot of positive feedback from people around town, and then my mom and I came up with the idea of printing them on note cards,” she said.
After contacting a local print shop in Saugus, DiGrande initially began small, selling her note cards in packs of 16.
“It blew up,” she said. “Almost everybody in town bought them. I was driving around delivering them and shipping them off to people in North Carolina and California. It was crazy the number of people who wanted a keepsake because they moved out of town or because they wanted to send it to a relative who used to live here. It was awesome.”
In anticipation of this weekend’s upcoming craft fair — which is now up to nearly two dozen vendors — DiGrande has ordered prints of several more of her works and said she’s looking forward to the big day, which historically attracts more than a hundred buyers seeking homemade gifts for the holiday season.
“Right now I have six Nahant scenes and one of the Marblehead lighthouse at sunset,” she said. “My favorite one is probably the wharf. I can see it from my house and I grew up jumping off the wharf, so it’s a very special place to me.”
DiGrande added that her love for her hometown is apparent even among her friends and professors at school.
“When I was talking to my studio art capstone professor, she was like, ‘wow, it seems like you have a lot of love for your hometown,’” she said. “A lot of people in college are dying to get away from their hometown, but I’m always talking about it. It’s a very special place to me.”
DiGrande’s work will be available for viewing at the Open Studio craft fair Nov. 28. More details are available on the event’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/events/town-of-nahant/nahant-open-studios-community-art-and-craft-sale.
