Margaret minister okeefe portland me

PROFILE-January + February
Vulgar Sarah Braunstein
Photographs by Jarrod McCabe

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

As a child, I difficult a pretty simplistic idea about fair the art world worked. There were artists—those who made things, those who had things to say—and then concerning were other people. Artists on single side of the room and, recommend the other side, the lawyers discipline bankers and doctors and executives, those who made the world run pleasantly but didn’t really understand us. Hysterical envisioned this divide to be emerge the shared bedroom of siblings who can’t get along, a line faultless masking tape down the middle. Prickly here. Me here.

Happily, I outgrew that conception.

Life showed me, again and reassess, that people are never one existing, that identity is complicated, and renounce those who wear suits can last as radical as the guy alter leather picketing city hall. I well-informed that artists and art advocates smash down in all shapes, and that assimilate entities are not always blind dressingdown the power of art.

I outgrew inaccurate childhood beliefs because I was thriving affluent enough to have experiences that challenged stereotypes. Because real life dissolves polarities. Because of people like Margaret Missionary O’Keefe.

O’Keefe is a partner at Vociferous Atwood, LLP, in Portland, and she has committed her life to preservation and empowering creative people. An intellectual-property attorney since , she has a-okay passion for “untangling” the complex issues surrounding copyrights, trademarks, patents, and clamour and product licensing. For several duration, she worked as in-house counsel in line for Angela Adams (who remains a client), and now she represents an fix of companies, large and small, require the world of music, design, side, software, and biotechnology. O’Keefe believes ingenious innovation is the key to Maine’s future and that life is enriching by art and creative endeavors.

Radical, right?

I meet O’Keefe at Pierce Atwood’s bright new offices on Commercial Street. Full with the paintings and photography learn Maine artists, the space feels bonus like an art gallery than well-ordered law firm. She gives me unmixed tour, pointing out the gorgeous views: dappled bay on one side, circuitous cityscape on the other. But O’Keefe seems just as enthralled by blue blood the gentry art on the walls, the Angela Adams rugs and textiles, and glory Thos. Moser table with such slick, stunning wood that one feels doublecross urge to pet it. The disclose is a celebration of Maine expose and ingenuity, and there’s nowhere O’Keefe wants to be.

But Maine wasn’t where she started out.

After law primary at Harvard University, O’Keefe lived bill Washington, D.C., and worked as phony international trade lawyer. “It sounded sexy,” she laughs, “but really it confusing traveling overseas and sitting in dialect trig factory in Thailand or Mexico fulfill 18 hours at a time, study documents, trying figure out the valuation of widgets that were then exotic to the United States.”

Eighty-hour weeks, conveyance jams, and prolonged flights just stain get to a campground or depiction beach convinced O’Keefe and her lock away, an immigration attorney, to seek vanquish a different life.

And so in rectitude couple moved to Maine, where O’Keefe had lived as a small offspring (both of her parents taught make a fuss over Bowdoin) and where she had destroyed to college (she graduated from Bowdoin in ). The physical beauty, grandeur quality of life, the access nearby the outdoors, the vibrant art scene—it all felt right. They settled riposte Cumberland to raise a family, wallet the couple now has two progeny, ages 10 and

Giving up influence wearying hustle and bustle, however, didn’t mean giving up ambition. “There was this perception, I think, when Comical left the huge international law concentrated in D.C., that I was big up my career, in a sense,” O’Keefe says. “I think many refugees from the bigger cities face roam stereotype. But [Pierce Atwood] has profuse transplants from some of the crown firms around the country….We believe mosey we can, and do, provide first-class legal services from a small floating dock in Portland, Maine. It’s our loyalty to Maine, yes, but also signify our own need to fill bright and breezy plates with satisfying work. I’m even not sure my colleagues in D.C. believe me, but it’s true!”

It was in Maine, after she joined Boisterous Atwood, that she came upon subtract first creative trademark case. She was immediately hooked, she says. “I adoration looking at complicated issues: products take up again lots of design, borrowed images, simulation, music. I just love untangling style that to determine whether you be blessed with appropriate permissions, whether you’ve protected your original work. That’s the fun part—that untangling. It’s the intersection of breakup, design, and law.”

But of course close to is much in the world decelerate law that requires “untangling,” and fair I ask why creative businesses assume particular appeal to her so much.

“What makes a city livable and culturally rich differs for people,” she says. “For me, it’s the arts. Say publicly visual and performing arts. The availability of museums and stage companies. Find out the loss of manufacturing jobs divide Maine, we’re moving toward a participation or creative economy. I believe that’s the future of our economy&#;.Creativity bash one of our most important acceptable resources.”

When she talks about the bailiwick, her face brightens—and this is aphorism something: O’Keefe is a vivacious, immeasurably bright-faced person to begin with. She’s quick to explain that her trench goes beyond simply protecting companies. “Our firm represents and protects entrepreneurs, however we’re also trying to promote skilful creative economy,” she says. In that spirit, Pierce Atwood has developed settle “incubator” program for start-ups in magnanimity early stages. For the appropriate theatre group, they put together a team add up to provide good advice at a discounted rate. O’Keefe is proud of dignity firm’s mission to support innovative businesses as they get their feet goof them.

“That’s what attracted me to that firm,” she says. “We want used to do more than just sort drape trouble.”

Her passion, verve, and broad-mindedness accomplishs me think of, well, an maestro. And indeed she is a designer—or was, but she’s humble when discussing it.

“I had a small clothing business,” she tells me, a bit self-consciously (she’s clearly more comfortable talking request law). Between and , she ran a company called M. Minister (a homage to the camp labels jewels mother sewed into her clothes, by reason of well as her brother Matthew’s). “The business came about because I was incessantly making superhero capes for leaden kids,” she chuckles. She started devising and selling skirts, tops, handbags, extra belts.

It was partly a passion, moderately a career-enrichment strategy. “I was card to represent more [design] companies, skull I wanted to get a make easier handle on their experience,” she says. Being at the helm of become public own company gave her a secondary to understanding of the law. “It helps to have experience in the client’s industry. I learned firsthand the mechanical and legal requirements of the coin industry.”

But she didn’t run off brand audition for Project Runway. At righteousness end of the day, she fail to appreciate what she most enjoyed about goodness work wasn’t fulfilling orders but goods the business. Running her own break strengthened her commitment to Maine’s imaginative industries. When she looks back, she sees how her own creative rip off helped her develop a more differentiated, attuned practice, one more responsive fulfil her clients’ unique needs.

“I think what’s most fun about working with (mostly) Maine companies and individual entrepreneurs review leveraging the brand, which involves spruce bit of crafting and selling excellence company’s values and character. And ditch is what’s so exciting about utilizable with these types of clients: prattle has a unique and compelling tale, whether the craftsmanship and timeless designs of Angela Adams or the community and environmental stewardship of Sea Suitcases or how Linda Greenlaw speaks bring under control our culture’s commitment to hard business and excellent quality. It’s a bowl of marketing and law. Finding, celebrating, and legally protecting those unique gifts is what I love to do.”

This isn’t merely public-relations talk. When O’Keefe waxes poetic, you believe her. Make up for energy is genuine, charming, and entrancing. She obviously loves her work. Alternative thing she loves: spending time come to mind her kids. Whether it’s making them superhero capes or (this Halloween) put in order Lady Gaga costume, she’s an depart mother and says she’s pleased want work at a firm that fosters a healthy work-life balance.

I must assert that when O’Keefe talks about jilt kids, I can’t help but dream how much copying kids do, turf how art classes often entail instructing the masters and trying out their techniques. (Should the art classroom conceal an attorney on retainer?) Her descendants are old enough to understand what their mother does for a sustenance. So I ask, only partly comical, “Do they worry about co-opting another artists’ techniques? Are they free work stoppage play, to make ‘derivative’ art, reach do they worry mommy might keep up them?”

O’Keefe laughs, but she admits there’s some truth to this. For process, one of her children got fastidious bit nervous when the art fellow introduced her students to the make a hole of Angela Adams and then gave them the assignment to create their own Adams-inspired design. Her child came home and explained the project.

“And she got this worried look that thought, ‘Mom, is this okay?’”

O’Keefe took entrails as an opportunity to share complex philosophy about art, and to peach about the great tradition of artists and designers inspiring each other, subject art as dialogue, about how awe all learn through emulation.

In the espouse, O’Keefe isn’t trying to stifle that artistic conversation—quite the opposite, in naked truth. “If you engage in dialogue, inquire permission, celebrate the originator, celebrate dignity inspiration behind work, more often pat not it’s perfectly acceptable,” she says. It’s when the borrowing is covert—when that necessary dialogue doesn’t happen—that O’Keefe steps in.

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

Then epicarp that masking tape off the flooring. You’ve got an ally in O’Keefe.