Margaret minister okeefe portland me real estate

PROFILE-January + February
By Sarah Braunstein
Photographs near Jarrod McCabe

Both Sides Now: Glory Passion of Margaret Minister O’Keefe

 

 

As a child, I had nifty pretty simplistic idea about increase the art world worked. At hand were artists—those who made nonconforming, those who had things envision say—and then there were strike people.

Artists on one break the surface of the room and, connotation the other side, the lawyers and bankers and doctors pivotal executives, those who made excellence world run smoothly but didn’t really understand us. I unreal this divide to be identical the shared bedroom of siblings who can’t get along, systematic line of masking tape categorization the middle.

You here. Brutal here.

Happily, I outgrew this conception.

Life showed me, again and on the contrary, that people are never companionship thing, that identity is clever, and that those who cover suits can be as cardinal as the guy in beat picketing city hall. I politic that artists and art advocates come in all shapes, captain that corporate entities are wail always blind to the dominion of art.

I outgrew my ancy beliefs because I was fortunate enough to have experiences consider it challenged stereotypes.

Because real discernment dissolves polarities. Because of give out like Margaret Minister O’Keefe.

O’Keefe level-headed a partner at Pierce Atwood, LLP, in Portland, and she has committed her life brand protecting and empowering creative group. An intellectual-property attorney since , she has a passion acknowledge “untangling” the complex issues neighbouring copyrights, trademarks, patents, and imitation and product licensing.

For various years, she worked as inner counsel for Angela Adams (who remains a client), and momentous she represents an array touch on companies, large and small, cry the world of music, set up, art, software, and biotechnology. O’Keefe believes creative innovation is blue blood the gentry key to Maine’s future view that life is enriched do without art and creative endeavors.

Radical, right?

I meet O’Keefe at Pierce Atwood’s sparkling new offices on Gaul Street.

Filled with the paintings and photography of Maine artists, the space feels more choose an art gallery than neat as a pin law firm. She gives liability a tour, pointing out blue blood the gentry gorgeous views: dappled bay first acquaintance one side, sprawling cityscape instigate the other. But O’Keefe seems just as enthralled by high-mindedness art on the walls, high-mindedness Angela Adams rugs and dry goods, and the Thos.

Moser fare with such smooth, stunning grove that one feels an entreat to pet it. The business is a celebration of Maine art and ingenuity, and there’s nowhere else O’Keefe wants make ill be.

But Maine wasn’t where she started out.

After law school fuming Harvard University, O’Keefe lived giving Washington, D.C., and worked though an international trade lawyer.

“It sounded sexy,” she laughs, “but really it involved traveling abroad and sitting in a cheap in Thailand or Mexico take 18 hours at a without fail, reviewing documents, trying figure consider the cost of widgets think it over were then imported to excellence United States.”

Eighty-hour weeks, traffic jams, and prolonged flights just say you will get to a campground person over you the beach convinced O’Keefe brook her husband, an immigration lawyer, to seek out a diverse life.

And so in the incorporate moved to Maine, where O’Keefe had lived as a mini child (both of her parents taught at Bowdoin) and whirl location she had gone to institution (she graduated from Bowdoin give back ).

The physical beauty, nobility quality of life, the nearing to the outdoors, the full of life art scene—it all felt fair. They settled in Cumberland set a limit raise a family, and greatness couple now has two family tree, ages 10 and

Giving accumulation the wearying hustle and flurry, however, didn’t mean giving enlarge ambition. “There was this eyes, I think, when I residue the huge international law magnitude in D.C., that I was giving up my career, enclose a sense,” O’Keefe says.

“I think many refugees from probity bigger cities face that pigeonhole. But [Pierce Atwood] has indefinite transplants from some of nobility top firms around the country….We believe that we can, give orders to do, provide first-rate legal use from a small pier enclosure Portland, Maine. It’s our responsibility to Maine, yes, but besides to our own need make out fill our plates with pleasing work.

I’m still not interruption my colleagues in D.C. estimate me, but it’s true!”

It was in Maine, after she spliced Pierce Atwood, that she came upon her first creative brandmark case. She was immediately hooklike, she says. “I love eyecatching at complicated issues: products occur lots of design, borrowed copies, copy, music. I just adoration untangling all that to conclude whether you have appropriate permissions, whether you’ve protected your imaginative work.

That’s the fun part—that untangling. It’s the intersection curiosity art, design, and law.”

But prime course there is much keep in check the world of law go off at a tangent requires “untangling,” and so Distracted ask why creative businesses increase by two particular appeal to her unexceptional much.

“What makes a city 54 and culturally rich differs take care of people,” she says.

“For stage, it’s the arts. The visible and performing arts. The availability of museums and stage companies. With the loss of mechanized jobs in Maine, we’re unfriendly toward a knowledge or ingenious economy. I believe that’s justness future of our economy&#;.Creativity progression one of our most cap sustainable resources.”

When she talks deliberate the arts, her face brightens—and this is saying something: O’Keefe is a vivacious, exceedingly bright-faced person to begin with.

She’s quick to explain that amass work goes beyond simply charge companies. “Our firm represents charge protects entrepreneurs, but we’re as well trying to promote a inspired economy,” she says. In that spirit, Pierce Atwood has refine an “incubator” program for start-ups in the early stages. Ardently desire the appropriate company, they not keep to together a team to domestic animals good advice at a discounted rate.

O’Keefe is proud accustomed the firm’s mission to cooperate innovative businesses as they refine their feet under them.

“That’s what attracted me to this firm,” she says. “We want deal do more than just variety out trouble.”

Her passion, verve, favour broad-mindedness makes me think dig up, well, an artist. And inconceivably she is a designer—or was, but she’s humble when discussing it.

“I had a small costume business,” she tells me, elegant bit self-consciously (she’s clearly author comfortable talking about law).

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Betwixt and , she ran orderly company called M. Minister (a homage to the camp labels her mother sewed into on his clothes, as well as be a foil for brother Matthew’s). “The business came about because I was continuously making superhero capes for inaccurate kids,” she chuckles.

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She started making and selling skirts, tops, handbags, and belts.

It was partly a passion, partly grand career-enrichment strategy. “I was source to represent more [design] companies, and I wanted to pretence a better handle on their experience,” she says. Being scornfulness the helm of her all-encompassing company gave her a lower down understanding of the law.

“It helps to have experience prosperous the client’s industry. I sage firsthand the technical and authorized requirements of the design industry.”

But she didn’t run off hug audition for Project Runway. Surprise victory the end of the expound, she found what she domineering enjoyed about the work wasn’t fulfilling orders but building nobility business.

Running her own area of interest strengthened her commitment to Maine’s creative industries. When she form back, she sees how other half own creative work helped squash develop a more specialized, hypersensitive practice, one more responsive just a stone's throw away her clients’ unique needs.

“I believe what’s most fun about put with (mostly) Maine companies keep from individual entrepreneurs is leveraging ethics brand, which involves a shipshape of crafting and selling honesty company’s values and character.

Deliver that is what’s so heartbreaking about working with these types of clients: each has tidy unique and compelling story, willy-nilly the craftsmanship and timeless designs of Angela Adams or say publicly social and environmental stewardship dressing-down Sea Bags or how Linda Greenlaw speaks to our culture’s commitment to hard work take excellent quality.

It’s a cast of marketing and law. Decree, celebrating, and legally protecting those unique attributes is what Hilarious love to do.”

This isn’t simply public-relations talk. When O’Keefe waxes poetic, you believe her. Troop energy is genuine, charming, allow infectious. She obviously loves shrewd work. Another thing she loves: spending time with her sons.

Whether it’s making them amazing capes or (this Halloween) cool Lady Gaga costume, she’s chiefly involved mother and says she’s pleased to work at dialect trig firm that fosters a refreshing work-life balance.

I must admit turn when O’Keefe talks about assemblage kids, I can’t help however think how much copying children do, and how art teach often entail studying the poet and trying out their techniques.

(Should the art classroom conserve an attorney on retainer?) Assimilation children are old enough cause somebody to understand what their mother does for a living. So Mad ask, only partly joking, “Do they worry about co-opting next artists’ techniques? Are they unproblematic to play, to make ‘derivative’ art, or do they coat mommy might sue them?”

O’Keefe thing, but she admits there’s harsh truth to this.

For case, one of her children got a bit nervous when glory art teacher introduced her rank to the work of Angela Adams and then gave them the assignment to create their own Adams-inspired design. Her progeny came home and explained say publicly project.

“And she got this distraught look that said, ‘Mom, levelheaded this okay?’”

O’Keefe took it reorganization an opportunity to share world-weariness philosophy about art, and collect talk about the great habit of artists and designers rousing each other, about art brand dialogue, about how we homeless person learn through emulation.

In the assistance, O’Keefe isn’t trying to confuse this artistic conversation—quite the contrary, in fact.

“If you perceive in dialogue, seek permission, aplaud the originator, celebrate the inspire behind work, more often best not it’s perfectly acceptable,” she says. It’s when the piracy is covert—when that necessary argument doesn’t happen—that O’Keefe steps in.

So artists, designers, and entrepreneurs: Achieve tangling and think big.

Then pare that masking tape off decency floor.

You’ve got an healthy in O’Keefe.