UMaine Professor Invents Air Cleaner for Artists
Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO and BRISTOL, Me. — While the result may be easy on the eyes, the artistic painting process can be hard on the senses. Artists like Kathleen Galligan know full well how fumes and dust from paints can be irritants, causing headaches, respiratory problems and other issues. Galligan, who has been painting for 25 years, tried lots of solutions, including wearing a surgical mask, but her health issues continued to worsen.
Galligan’s husband, UMaine Research Associate Professor Warren Riess, has developed and begun to market a device that has made a real difference for Galligan, allowing her to more fully enjoy the process of creating art at her Bristol studio.
“Necessity was truly the mother of this invention,” says Riess, a maritime historian and archaeologist based at UMaine’s Darling Center in Walpole. “Kathleen was really struggling to enjoy the work that is so important to her. I knew that there must be a solution, so I took a systematic approach to figuring out what to do. We educated ourselves about the health issues related to painting, and studied other attempts to solve the problem. Then I came up with a system that worked well for her.”
Riess does not feel developing the system was very different from what he does at UMaine.
“Whether I am teaching, researching history, or investigating an underwater shipwreck site, I am always studying situations and devising solutions, sometimes technical, to improve an educational, research, efficiency, or safety aspect of my work, he says.”
Before long, other artists began asking Riess to make an air filtering system for them. Riess and Galligan decided to create a product that could fit any easel and be affordable for artists. With help from Prof. Thomas Christiansen of UMaine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center they improved the system’s collection unit and with assistance from the Maine Small Business Development Center they developed the product for market.
The product is called Artist’s Air. It is designed to attach to almost any studio easel. The offending substances are drawn into a collection device directly under the artist’s work space. They then travel through a hose to a sophisticated filtering system, which returns clean air to the studio. A less expensive version is available for use when dust is the only issue in a particular studio setting.
Riess says Artist’s Air is the only system available that gathers harmful substances from between the artist and their work. He also points to the energy savings from filtering studio air, rather than venting it outside. “Vented air has to be replaced by heated or cooled air. Also, venting harmful substances pollutes the outside environment.”
The units cost about $1,000 and Riess says there is not much profit involved because they are handmade. “We will be happy eventually to break even,” Riess says. “Our satisfaction comes from helping to alleviate the suffering that some artists experience, and any long-term health problems associated with fumes and particles they inhale, in the practice of their craft.” More information is on the product website at www.artistsair.com.