Hello, my name is Jim Sharkey. I live in Brunswick, Maine. Thank you for visiting my web site. I've been making these particular types of documentaries on crafts people since around January 1999. Before I started doing this I worked at WFMY TV in Greensboro, and WXII TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Before that I was a navy photographer in San Diego, California. I spent five years in the navy and enjoyed it very much. I joined the US Navy from my home in Ireland where I grew up in County Roscommon. Actually, I had to go to London, England to officially join. Me and a friend almost didn't make it back home after one recruiting visit - we were late for the plane - but we eventually got a seat and got home. Ireland was a nice place to grow up. We worked hard on the farm, but we ran wild and free too. I imagine that where you grow up always remains a big part of your life and who you are. At the moment, I teach High School special education here in Maine. I enjoy being around young people. They're full of life. I hope to continue teaching for many years. I also hope to continue making local documentaries whenever I can, however, I haven't been able to do one for a while. I have just started working on a documentary on Tony and Susan Reilly who are the founders of AIRE Theater in Portland, Maine. When we moved to Brunswick AIRE Theater was one of the first enjoyable finds in the area. Tony and Susan are excellent. They keep Irish theater alive in our area. I am hoping to follow their production of  Juno and the Paycock which will be staged sometime in the summer of 2010. Another project I did which I truly enjoyed was the National Poetry Foundation "Poetry of the Seventies" Conference in June 2008 at the University of Maine in Orono. We taped for the five days of the conference where I met, and got to hear, many wonderful poets and others associated with the conference. I also did a video workshop at UMaine a few weeks later and then again in 2009 that was a lot of fun too. I met many people who are interested in videotaping in order to record life around their own neighborhoods. Since then, however, I have been busy teaching - I'm enjoying that too!

The best part about doing the documentaries is getting to know and becoming friends with the people who are in them. For a time my family lived in Asheboro, North Carolina which is very close to the pottery community of Seagrove. That is how I came to know the Luck, Cole, Owens, and McCanless families. They are all gifted potters, storytellers, musicians and more. We visited Seagrove this past summer and got to visit with everyone again and it was so nice to see them all.

 "Penobscot Basket Maker"  was completed in 2003 and is about the life and work of Native American basket maker Barbara Francis. Barbara is a Penobscot Indian who lives and works in Maine on Indian Island. She is an amazing person and basket maker, and is becoming well known and appreciated throughout the country. In addition to numerous awards at Native American art shows Barbara was recently awarded a grant by the Smithsonian Institute to research Native American artifacts held by the Smithsonian Museum. She also was invited by the Peabody-Essex Museum to exhibit and demonstrate her work in September 2004. I met her and her husband, Marty, in 2001 when we moved to Maine.
 

Shortly after completing Penobscot Basket Maker I met Professor Carol Toner who teaches in the Maine Studies Department at the University of Maine in Orono and we began working on  "Hard Work" .  Years before this Carol had bought a used and tattered copy of an 1888 Maine Labor Report printed in book form. It contained the writings of many women factory workers from 1888  in response to questions about their working conditions at the time. Many people helped to put this documentary together. Several women from the university came in to record the "voices" of the women and many librarians and other people searched for and helped find photographs throughout Maine and elsewhere. Click on the title to go to the "Hard Work" page. Thanks again for visiting my site. Email me or call if you would like more information. To view a short clip of Crawdad Slip, or New Life, on YouTube click on the two links below:

Crawdad Slip

New Life

You can also stream these two documentaries as well as many others at folkstreams.net. Folkstreams is a wonderful site with many excellent documentaries of American culture