LIBERTY — The women behind Liberty Head Arts & Found are related, but it took a family tragedy to unite them all in Maine where they have collaborated to create Liberty Head Arts & Found, which will open May 25.

Maggie McGaw, along with her grandmother, Marty Rowe, and aunt, Morgan Rowe, had been brainstorming. Marty Rowe moved to Camden in 2013, and Morgan joined her after the tragic death of Sandy McGaw in a motorcycle accident in 2016. Sandy was Maggie's father, Marty's son, and Morgan's brother.

Like the three women at the helm of Liberty Head, Sandy was a talented and resourceful artist who grew up hunting for barn finds and assorted antiques in rural Virginia. Marty had an antique shop and the two used to go on long drives scouting for locations where they might find forgotten treasures.

Sandy started making small, intricate heads out of clay. An undertaking that Maggie said began as a casual pass time when she was a child and evolved into the creation of a body of work. Each head is about the size of a silver dollar and three dimensional, intricate details give each face a unique expression and set of features. Some appear to be grimacing, some happy, some stoic. According to Maggie, there were "jars of heads" throughout Sandy's home.

"He really got into it," Maggie said.

Marty briefly recalled how Sandy would perform a ritual of placing his handmade heads in the trees on an island in Penobscot Bay where he had property.

"There was a whole cabin out there with all kinds of things, it would have been easy for someone to help themselves, but the only thing that ever went missing were the heads," she said.

Maggie, who is a realtor with Camden Real Estate Company, said she had casually been keeping an eye on spaces, and that the charming, historic shingled building in Liberty caught her eye. In addition to be an attractive canvas for an entrepreneurial venture, it is a building that all three women and Sandy knew, and felt a longtime fondness for. She invited Morgan and Marty to join her for a drink and discussed the idea of buying the building. By the end of that meeting, they had decided to purchase the building and they acquired the keys last August.

For various reasons, all three women feel a connection to Liberty. For Maggie, it was often the destination for motorcycle rides with her dad.

"We were all instantly on board," Morgan said. "There's a sympatico. Within about 40 minutes we knew what the business was going to be."

Marty quickly interjected: "Morgan is our business mind though," she said to a round of smiles from the other women.

It was decided that the business would serve as a tribute to Sandy, an unconventional way of honoring a special man and keeping his spirit and legacy alive. Maggie remarked that the opening of the gallery represents moving forward in their grieving process as well.

"We named it based on Sandy," Morgan explained. "We liked the idea that we could carry Liberty into it."

Marty made the sign which is handpainted and features a likeness of one of Sandy's head sculptures rendered to resemble a Liberty Head Coin, the 1957 date included on the logo represents Sandy's birth year.

"It's been a journey," Marty said. She added that the shop's tagline: "Something different than the others" is a carry over from the store she owned in Virginia.

Liberty Head will represent approximately a dozen artists — from local to far flung, including a number of artists the Rowes are familiar with from Virginia. The work of the artists will run the gamut from painting and photography to fiberart, metalwork, and sculpture. The works will be intermingled with found items and antiques, McGaw and the Rowes said.

By the time Maggie was in high school she began taking a jewelry class where she learned about making castings in bronze. Sandy began to create castings of his heads in both bronze and silver, and his work was featured as part of an art exhibition shortly before he passed away.

Maggie said she has incorporated the heads into assemblages of her own.

"It's almost as though we can still collaborate in the studio together," she said. She added that she had encouraged her dad to sculpt a life-sized version of one of the heads, even buying him the materials as a holiday gift, but Sandy never had the opportunity to finish the project.

Morgan said her artistic genre is reverse-glass painting.

"One of the things I admired about my brother was the bald-faced joy in his face when he was [making art]," she said.

In that spirit, the items displayed and sold in the store will be playful, eclectic and unique. The women explained that they are "working to do something unusual."

"There will definitely be a little bit of everything," Maggie said. "We're looking forward to being part of this little community,"

Maggie told the story of a shop she discovered while traveling in Greece.

"We sort of came upon this amazing little shop and then we could never find it again," she said, adding that the store has always stuck in her mind. "That's what I want us to be."

Located at 56 Main St. in Liberty, Liberty Head Arts and Found is scheduled to open on May 25. There will be a reception that evening from 5 to 7 p.m.

The three women will run the shop, and they will be open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. as well as on Sundays from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit the Liberty Head Arts and Found website for additional information about the store and artists.

"This store is a labor of love for my brother," Morgan said. "It's a labor of love for each other."

 Jenna Lookner can be reached at jlooknercopy@gmail.com