The annual Lincoln County ‘Hearts and Hands’ Haiti Benefit Dinner will feature a new range of brightly colored and whimsical handicrafts and papier mache art from Haiti’s southern artistic and cultural capital, Jacmel. Alna resident Donna Flynn and Damariscotta resident Dean Curran traveled to Jacmel in January to search out the best and most affordable work from the imaginative artists of Jacmel. Flynn, who lived in Jacmel for many years and still has a 19th century merchant’s house in the historic district of Jacmel, and Curran, a former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, visited dozens of shops and artisans to choose items to be sold at this year’s dinner.

Lonely Planet has called Jacmel “the undisputed handicraft capital of Haiti.” Wandering the streets of this once rich coffee exporting town, one is reminded of old New Orleans; amid the still all too visible rubble of the 2010 earthquake, Jacmel boasts lacey wrought iron balconies, pastel colored houses and more and more a bustling art scene with galleries, workshops and above all an explosion of works in brightly colored papier mache. From full body carnival masks, to hatted hens, fanciful jungle animals and decorative bowls and boxes, the Jacmel artisan has turned the discarded paper (often bags of cement), water and glue which comprise papier mache into a fantasy land of color and whimsy.

Moro Baruk has lived in Jacmel for four decades. An American citizen of Egyptian origin, he and his wife have established a very successful handicraft business supplying items to U.S. outlets such as Macy’s and Bloomindales. By providing work for scores of artisans, he has helped revitalized the art scene in Jacmel and is the original designer of the popular "sitting people."

Blaise Emilien has been making papier mache since he was six years old. With assistance from the U.S. NGO Aid to Artisans, he and his wife started an artisan workshop in 1998. Even though he has had orders from Macy’s, he still prefers to work outside, sitting on the ground. Using old cement bags and bright hand painted decoration, he now produces some of the most beautiful and artfully decorated papier mache bowls in Jacmel.

Bedythe Nicolas is the head of the Jacmel Women Astisans Coop. Her shop has a wide variety of items from women artisans from the entire Jacmel region, including villages high in the mountains.

The work of Baruk, Emilien and the women of the Coop will be available for purchase at the Haiti Benefit Dinner. See picture for a small sample.

It is important to note that not only do these entrepreneurs and artisans maintain Haiti’s cultural heritage, they provide the jobs that are key to sustainable development in Haiti. And, your purchase helps twice; one by making sure money goes directly to the artisans and secondly through the projects in Gros Morne financed in part through the profits the dinner generates from handicraft sales.

While in Jacmel, Flynn and Curran also shopped for Haitian food items both for the dinner and to fill a Haitian handmade basket for a door prize (also pictured). The door prize includes, among many other items, Haiti’s famous Barbancourt Rum, mountain coffee and moringa tea, jams and jellies, spicy peanut butter, and a Haitian recipe book.

Many of the new handicraft items and the culinary door prize basket will be on display at Skidompha library from Feb. 23-26.

Proceeds from the sale of all art and handicrafts at the Benefit Dinner go directly to projects that benefit the poorest residents of the Haitian town of Gros Morne.

The dinner will take place Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. at St Patrick’s Church in Damariscotta Mills. Adult tickets are $30 ($35 at the door) and children $15. They are available at Sherman’s Maine Coast Bookshops in Damariscotta and Boothbay Harbor, Skidompha Library, Treats in Wiscasset and through local churches.

For more information on the dinner or to volunteer to help, call Barbara Williams at 563-1931.