Celeste Roberge was born in Biddeford, Maine. She maintains a studio in South Portland. Celeste taught for twenty-two years at the University of Florida where she was Head of the Sculpture Area. She received her MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, BFA from Maine College of Art & Design, and BA in sociology from the University of Maine. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1979. In 2008, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Maine.
Celeste Roberge has received numerous awards and fellowships. In June 2019, Celeste participated in an 18-day residency aboard the Antigua with The Arctic Circle on an expedition along the west coast of Svalbard, Norway. In Nov/Dec 2018, Celeste was an artist-in-residence at MonsonArts in Maine working on drawings, photos, and collages inspired by the slate quarries. In 2013 she was an artist-in-residence in the foundry at the Arts/Industry Program at Kohler, Inc. in Wisconsin. In summers 2010, 2011 and 2017, she continued her current research on seaweed as a resident artist at the Baie Ste.Marie-Jenny Family Compound in New Edinburgh, Nova Scotia sponsored by the Maine College of Art. In 2008, she held the William Randolph Hearst Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts where she conceptualized the “Granite Sofa” project. She was a resident artist at SIM in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2007. She has received two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She was awarded a Research Foundation Professorship from 2004-2007 by the University of Florida. She is the recipient of two Florida Individual Artist Fellowships. She was a Bunting Fellow in 1988/89 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. In 1979 she received the Bernard Langlais Fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. During her tenure at the University of Florida, she received numerous research grants from the College of the Arts.
Celeste’s sculptures are included in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Nevada Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, Harn Museum of Art, Jackson Laboratories, Runnymede Sculpture Farm, Emory University, Agnes Scott College, the University of New England, Kohler Inc., as well as the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI and in numerous private collections from Maine to California. She has received commissions for temporary outdoor sculpture installations at Expo2000 in Germany, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo, Florida, the City of Coral Springs in Florida, and the City of Chattanooga in Tennessee.
Celeste is a member of the Maine Seaweed Council. See: seaweedcouncil.org and click on Newsletter to read Celeste’s interviews with seven artists working with seaweed in Maine.
In addition to this solo exhibition at Moss Galleries, Celeste’s seaweed-based art is included in three other group exhibitions this year: Shifting Sands at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, April 29 to July 16, 2023; Sustenance at Portland Public Library from May 5 to July 15, 2023; The Cultures of Seaweed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, June 15 to December 3, 2023.