Wild Maybes

Wild Maybes is a semi-permanent public art installation located in Levine’s Park, created by artist Chris Miller of New Paradigm Design Workshop. Commissioned by Waterville Creates and presented in partnership with the city of Waterville, the installation will be on view beginning August 2025.

About the project:

These Wild Maybes are visitors from an ancient Earth, as remote and unknowable as the far future.  They are friendly monsters of the kind you might meet on incredible adventures.  They are wondrous beasts inspired by mysterious mammals that really did roam this very same Earth, just after the dinosaurs, fifty or sixty million years ago.  Now a few scattered fossils are all that remain of them.  No one can know much about them for sure.

Did they once roam this place where we’re standing right now?  Did they drink at the banks of the Kennebec?

Did they swim or climb or leap or dig or howl or moo or grunt or growl or hunt or fish or browse or graze?  Did they run like rabbits?  Did they spray like skunks?

In another sixty million years or more, in the vastness and richness of time beyond reckoning, could they roam here again someday?

Maybe.

In the meantime, they will be honorary crossing guards in Levine’s Park, where the past meets the future and time flows deep.  You can roam there among them if you like.  They can guide you through the kind of time that can never be tamed into seconds and minutes, but only runs wild through nights and days, into seasons, generations and eras.

About the artist:

Chris Miller is the founder of New Paradigm Design Workshop, a practice informed by his research, conscience, and persistent need to design and build lots of different things all at once. His work includes residences, furniture, public art and interactive exhibits, as well as technical illustration, graphics and web design for businesses that also build things. He holds a Master of Arts in Architecture from MIT, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago and an Associate’s degree from Central Lakes Community College. He and his wife Marine live in an old house in Maine with two kids and a dog. They grow a big garden every summer, have a lot of books and enjoy cooking for friends. They travel as much as they possibly can, though not nearly as much as they’d like…