For half a century, the Common Ground Country Fair has been one of Maine's most beloved rituals, a three-day harvest gathering in the town of Unity that draws tens of thousands of people each September to celebrate organic farming, rural craft, and the stubborn, hopeful idea that communities can shape healthier futures together. But long before fairgoers ever set foot on the fairgrounds, they meet the fair through a single image: the year's official poster. Every autumn, that poster — a sunflower, a beet, a pair of barred rock chickens, a joyful border collie — becomes the face of the season, printed on organic cotton T-shirts worn from Portland to California. This year, as the fair turns 50, all of those posters are finally being gathered together in one place.
The result is "50 Years of Common Ground," a free public exhibition of every Common Ground Country Fair poster ever created, on view at Waterville Creates' Ticonic Gallery in the Paul J. Schupf Art Center at 93 Main Street from September 4 through 30. The exhibition opened earlier this summer at the Maine State House Gallery in Augusta, where it ran from June 1 through August 30, and it arrives in Waterville just in time for the fair itself, which takes place September 25 through 27 in Unity. The Waterville opening is being celebrated with a First Friday block party on Main Street, where the street will close to traffic from Temple to Spring streets for an evening of music, food, carriage rides, chalk art, and more than 50 vendors drawn from the fair's own community.
The exhibition is a partnership between MOFGA, the Maine Arts Commission, and Waterville Creates, and it arrives with a particular resonance: 2026 marks not only the fair's 50th anniversary but also the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. For Amy Haussman, the executive director of the Maine Arts Commission who helped champion the show, the two milestones belong together. "Common Ground Country Fair is about liberty and equality, and about sharing of resources, food, information and tradition," she said. "The posters that artists have created exemplify that. These are the ideals of the country. It's the perfect way to celebrate the fair's 50th anniversary and celebrate America's 250th. It's quintessentially American and it's quintessentially Maine."
The story of those posters begins with the story of the fair itself, which is really the story of a movement. MOFGA was born in 1971, when a Cooperative Extension agent named Charlie Gould invited the many Mainers who had been calling him with questions about organic gardening to gather in one place. The guest speakers at that founding meeting were Scott and Helen Nearing, authors of the 1970 back-to-the-land classic "Living the Good Life," and from that gathering the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association was established. Six years later, in 1977, the organization held its first Common Ground Country Fair at the Litchfield Fairgrounds, conceived as a harvest celebration and a fundraiser. It drew 10,000 people and raised $22,000.
The fair grew quickly, doubling its attendance the following year, and in 1981 it moved to Windsor, where it continued to swell past 50,000 visitors. In 1996, MOFGA purchased more than 200 acres of field and forest in Unity and Thorndike, and two years later opened the Common Ground Education Center, which has been the fair's permanent home ever since. Today the fair regularly hosts 50,000 to 60,000 people over its three days, and in 2024 it drew an all-time high of more than 70,000. It is a gathering unlike most county fairs: no cotton candy and carnival rides, but rather organic food courts, workshops on worm composting, sheepdog demonstrations, oxen pulls, and a farmers' market at each entrance. All food sold on the grounds must be organic.
The posters grew up alongside the fair. In the earliest years, they read more like handbills, dense with schedules, speakers, and announcements. Then, in 1981, the format began to settle, and the first graphic image appeared: a tall sunflower by Mark Hineline. That simple image set a tone that has endured for five decades. From there, artists began exploring the shared format in their own ways — some filling the entire picture plane, others creating frames within frames, a pair of turkeys, a curly cucumber vine, a bouquet of garlic tied like an offering. Haussman, who wrote an essay for the exhibition's companion catalog, describes a through line across all 50 works: an accessible illustrative style, earthy tonal palettes, and an earnest celebration of life lived with the land.
The artists themselves are part of the story. Many of them are farmers, activists, or craftspeople deeply connected to the MOFGA community, and each poster reflects both an individual artistic voice and a collective story. The roll call reads like a who's who of Maine's organic arts scene: Nikki Schumann's fantastical black-and-white barred rock chickens from 1984; Beverly Kocenko's delicate snap peas from 1985; Beth Pitcher's carrots from 1989, fuzzy roots still visible beneath feathery greens; Lisa Russell's humble beet from 1993, elevated like an exotic flower; Dianne Lewis's clean graphic vegetables from 1997; Christi Hadden's praying mantis against a full moon from 2007; Grace Keown's geese flying south from 2008; John Bunker's "The Apples of Maine" from 2009; Holly Meade's boisterous rooster from 2010; Lyndsey Marston's garlic scapes curling like green ribbons from 2012; Kate Seaver's medicinal herbs from 2014; Toki Oshima's Swiss chard from 2016; Dwight Gagnon's Columbian Wyandotte chickens from 2017; Joy Grannis's bee balm from 2020; and Rebekah Lowell's monarch and milkweed from 2023.
The selection process is as democratic as the fair itself. Each year, MOFGA puts out a call to Maine artists for submissions, and a jury of more than 200 volunteers chooses the winning image. The process unfolds in stages: first, roughly 240 people vote online in an initial round, and then 30 to 50 people gather in person for what April Boucher, the fair's director for more than a decade, describes as sometimes very animated conversations. "People definitely have favorites and when someone's passionate about a design it can be infectious," she said. "But everyone comes from a good place. And ultimately we always ask, 'Does this design say something about our agricultural values in our everyday lives?'"
That educational component is crucial, said Sarah Alexander, MOFGA's executive director for the last eight years. "We have so many talented artists in Maine," she said. "The submissions we get are beautiful and thoughtful, but at the end of the day, it's about the mission. So a work may not be selected because it may not be representative." This year's winning design, by artist Brenda McGuinness, depicts a beaming sheepdog surrounded by golden sunflowers — a nod to the sheepdog demonstrations that are a beloved part of the fair, and, as Boucher notes, a reminder of the relationship between farmers, animals, and stewardship of the land. It also echoes the very first graphic image in the series, the 1981 sunflower, bringing the tradition full circle.
For the people who love the fair, the posters carry an almost talismanic power. Alexander says that when people learn where she works, they always tell her the story of their first visit to the fair — and that almost everyone's favorite poster is from the year they first went. Reprints sell out quickly in MOFGA's online store, and the designs have become ambassadors for the back-to-the-land movement, printed on organic cotton T-shirts that turn up all over the country. "You'll see people all over wearing the T-shirts that the posters are made into," Haussman said. Mary Weitzman, MOFGA's director of membership and development, put it simply: the designs "are the ambassadors for our back-to-the-land movement, they're about passing along tradition. Organic sustainability. Caring for the land, and everybody coming together."
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog, "Fifty Years of Common Ground — The Posters of the Common Ground Country Fair," featuring all 50 posters along with essays by Haussman, Alexander, and others. A limited-edition commemorative poster arranging all 50 designs on a single sheet is also available. In Waterville, the posters are displayed in chronological order, from 1977 to 2026, offering visitors a chance to see a history that is usually experienced one fair at a time. "You really get a sense of what Maine is," said Serena Sanborn, manager of community partnerships for Waterville Creates. "A lot of the back-to-the-land movement is there at the Common Ground Country Fair. It's pretty cool."
The opening celebration on September 4 runs from 4 to 8 p.m., with the block party on Main Street from 4 to 7 p.m. and the exhibition reception at the Ticonic Gallery. Waterville Creates exhibition coordinator Marie Sugden estimates between 2,000 and 3,000 people will attend, a number that itself speaks to how much the fair has grown over five decades. The exhibition is free and open to the public, and the gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Tuesdays and federal holidays. For those who cannot make it to Waterville, the fair itself in Unity offers its own 50th-anniversary celebrations, including a daily T-shirt parade, a special display in the Exhibition Hall, and a memorial bulb planting.
As Haussman wrote in her essay for the catalog, the posters tell a true American story, one rooted in common ground. "They connect us to one another, to the land, and to a tradition of planning, dreaming, working hard, waiting patiently, harvesting, sharing, and gathering together," she wrote. For five decades, that tradition has been announced each year by a single image. Now, gathered together on the walls of a gallery in Waterville, all 50 of those images tell the story at once — a visual and cultural history of Maine's organic movement, and a reminder that lasting change is built through persistence, creativity, and care.