RANGELEY — Diane Bellington has been surrounded by art and artists since she was a child, though she didn’t see herself as an artist until her senior year in high school.

Bellington was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, a first-generation American. Her parents were both born in the former Yugoslavia, now Serbia. She attended college in Salt Lake City in Utah. She has a fine arts degree in photography.

She lived in Hawaii for 10 years, married and had two sons before moving to New Hampshire to be closer to her extended family. She was assistant director/co-owner of My School, an arts-based pre-kindergarten through second-grade private school in New Hampshire for 10 years before moving to Maine.

Then she fell in love with Rangeley when she visited the area and kept coming back.

Why Maine? Why Rangeley? As you can see it’s been a long road to get to Rangeley, but it’s not the only beautiful place I have been lucky enough to live. I fell in love with Rangeley when I started to visit the area with my partner, who like so many have been coming here since he was born and grew up spending summers at his grandparents’ camp. I was making regular eight-hour round trips from Dover, New Hampshire. My car has over 268K miles on it! We started to build our own camp during COVID and when I had the opportunity to retire from running the school, I took it as a chance to move to Rangeley full time. I was lucky enough to find an old cottage downtown with some work to be done, a job at the theater, it was a big leap and things were lining up so nicely, there is no turning back now!

How did you get involved in the arts? I have been surrounded by art and artists my entire life. My uncle was a painter, his two daughters are artists as well. My great-uncle is the famous sculptor Miodrag Zivkovic. My grandmother (is) a poet, her mother a violinist. My brother is also an artist. I was lucky enough to travel regularly to Serbia, which further exposed me to traditional folk-art forms like folk dance. Despite all this exposure to art, I never really considered myself an artist until my senior year in high school. I was taking my first photography course, shooting film, and working in the darkroom. During this time, the L.A. riots of 1992 tore the city apart. The photography teacher encouraged us to use our projects as a way to bring light or understanding to the collective experience we were all having. It was at that moment that I realized the power of art and fell in love with photography. I went on to study fine arts at the University of Utah, which had a strong visual arts program as well as a theater and dance program. It was a rich experience in which I attended many student performances of all kinds while supporting my peers. My area of focus was photography and digital video and I did some post graduate studies at NYU before moving to Hawaii. Years later, when I returned from Hawaii and had two young sons with my partner, I became the assistant director at My School in Dover (New Hampshire), taught art studio, and that exposed me to the open-ended process-based art explorations with children. I spent 15 years there in total, working with children. I met many talented artists and musicians in Maine, which inspired me to pick up photography, video and dance again whenever I have the chance.

How long have you been the executive director of the nonprofit Rangeley Friends of the Arts? Although my career was not spent being an artist, I have managed to keep arts and creativity as the driving force behind my positions, so becoming the executive director at the Rangeley Friends of the Arts was a great step. I have been executive director … since December of 2022.

What do you like about it? I love that I get to work with passionate and creative individuals of all ages and abilities. This position is very multi-faceted and my years of experience working with and around artists of all genres, in addition to my previous leadership roles, have given me a varied set of skills suited to the demands of supporting and facilitating the year-round programming at the Rangeley Friends of the Arts. I especially love that this organization has a long and sustained history, nearly 60 years, of delivering high quality arts in the rural western Maine Mountains and that I can now call Rangeley home.

What are the goals for the center and how do you plan to achieve these goals? The goals for the Rangeley Friends of the Arts continue to be to bring the arts to life by providing high quality entertainment with an emphasis on the performing arts. One of the key ways in which we do this is through supporting the youth in our local and surrounding communities via stipends for lessons on the arts, scholarships, drama camps, visiting artist programs, access to the theater and all its numerous resources. The youth make up a large number of participants in our productions and their experiences at the theater throughout their youth make a long-lasting impact.

The plan is to continue to mix local community members and artists with professionals from outside the area to produce high quality programming to inspire our youth, families, seniors, and visitors to learn, to create, and to appreciate the arts. In addition, another goal is to make Rangeley a celebrated arts center through working with our community partners such as the Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce, business, schools, nearby towns and other nonprofits. They also plan to create a state-of-the-art fully accessible theater and obtain the volunteers and members required to operate it. For more information go to www.rangeleyarts.org.