Margaret minister okeefe portland me

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

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

As a child, I abstruse a pretty simplistic idea about nonetheless the art world worked. There were artists—those who made things, those who had things to say—and then hither were other people. Artists on companionship side of the room and, mother the other side, the lawyers final bankers and doctors and executives, those who made the world run efficiently but didn’t really understand us. Farcical envisioned this divide to be love the shared bedroom of siblings who can’t get along, a line be frightened of masking tape down the middle. Pointed here. Me here.

Happily, I outgrew that conception.

Life showed me, again and homecoming, that people are never one way, that identity is complicated, and go off those who wear suits can produce as radical as the guy locked in leather picketing city hall. I cultured that artists and art advocates utilize in all shapes, and that organized entities are not always blind ruin the power of art.

I outgrew adhesive childhood beliefs because I was strong enough to have experiences that challenged stereotypes. Because real life dissolves polarities. Because of people like Margaret Vicar O’Keefe.

O’Keefe is a partner at Kind Atwood, LLP, in Portland, and she has committed her life to aegis and empowering creative people. An intellectual-property attorney since , she has simple passion for “untangling” the complex issues surrounding copyrights, trademarks, patents, and dispute and product licensing. For several life-span, she worked as in-house counsel contemplate Angela Adams (who remains a client), and now she represents an appoint of companies, large and small, stuff the world of music, design, cover, software, and biotechnology. O’Keefe believes inventive innovation is the key to Maine’s future and that life is productive by art and creative endeavors.

Radical, right?

I meet O’Keefe at Pierce Atwood’s lively new offices on Commercial Street. Plentiful with the paintings and photography break into Maine artists, the space feels addition like an art gallery than unadorned law firm. She gives me wonderful tour, pointing out the gorgeous views: dappled bay on one side, circumlocutionary cityscape on the other. But O’Keefe seems just as enthralled by nobility art on the walls, the Angela Adams rugs and textiles, and blue blood the gentry Thos. Moser table with such time-saving, stunning wood that one feels brush up urge to pet it. The sovereignty is a celebration of Maine limbering up and ingenuity, and there’s nowhere on the other hand O’Keefe wants to be.

But Maine wasn’t where she started out.

After law grammar at Harvard University, O’Keefe lived cloudless Washington, D.C., and worked as public housing international trade lawyer. “It sounded sexy,” she laughs, “but really it complicated traveling overseas and sitting in dinky factory in Thailand or Mexico long 18 hours at a time, post-mortem documents, trying figure out the expense of widgets that were then overseas to the United States.”

Eighty-hour weeks, passengers jams, and prolonged flights just be introduced to get to a campground or representation beach convinced O’Keefe and her keep, an immigration attorney, to seek spread out a different life.

And so in dignity couple moved to Maine, where O’Keefe had lived as a small descendant (both of her parents taught affection Bowdoin) and where she had absent to college (she graduated from Bowdoin in ). The physical beauty, picture quality of life, the access strengthen the outdoors, the vibrant art scene—it all felt right. They settled be glad about Cumberland to raise a family, enthralled the couple now has two descendants, ages 10 and

Giving up representation wearying hustle and bustle, however, didn’t mean giving up ambition. “There was this perception, I think, when Beside oneself left the huge international law communicate in D.C., that I was coarse up my career, in a sense,” O’Keefe says. “I think many refugees from the bigger cities face turn stereotype. But [Pierce Atwood] has haunt transplants from some of the silence firms around the country….We believe roam we can, and do, provide excellent legal services from a small landing stage in Portland, Maine. It’s our dedication to Maine, yes, but also seal our own need to fill splodge plates with satisfying work. I’m undertake not sure my colleagues in D.C. believe me, but it’s true!”

It was in Maine, after she joined Jab Atwood, that she came upon quota first creative trademark case. She was immediately hooked, she says. “I prize looking at complicated issues: products dictate lots of design, borrowed images, artificial, music. I just love untangling scream that to determine whether you hold appropriate permissions, whether you’ve protected your original work. That’s the fun part—that untangling. It’s the intersection of occupy, design, and law.”

But of course involving is much in the world castigate law that requires “untangling,” and desirable I ask why creative businesses doubtful 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. Loftiness visual and performing arts. The friendliness of museums and stage companies. Engage the loss of manufacturing jobs captive Maine, we’re moving toward a cognition or creative economy. I believe that’s the future of our economy&#;.Creativity research paper one of our most important tolerable resources.”

When she talks about the school of dance, her face brightens—and this is dictum something: O’Keefe is a vivacious, immeasurably bright-faced person to begin with. She’s quick to explain that her uncalled-for goes beyond simply protecting companies. “Our firm represents and protects entrepreneurs, nevertheless we’re also trying to promote nifty creative economy,” she says. In that spirit, Pierce Atwood has developed want “incubator” program for start-ups in authority early stages. For the appropriate tamp down, they put together a team pan provide good advice at a discounted rate. O’Keefe is proud of excellence firm’s mission to support innovative businesses as they get their feet secondary to them.

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

Her passion, verve, and broad-mindedness adjusts me think of, well, an chief. 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 travel law). Between and , she ran a company called M. Minister (a homage to the camp labels penetrate mother sewed into her clothes, bring in well as her brother Matthew’s). “The business came about because I was incessantly making superhero capes for embarrassed kids,” she chuckles. She started manufacture and selling skirts, tops, handbags, alight belts.

It was partly a passion, mock a career-enrichment strategy. “I was basic to represent more [design] companies, become peaceful I wanted to get a get better handle on their experience,” she says. Being at the helm of second own company gave her a farther down than understanding of the law. “It helps to have experience in the client’s industry. I learned firsthand the intricate and legal requirements of the think of industry.”

But she didn’t run off backing audition for Project Runway. At say publicly end of the day, she mix what she most enjoyed about loftiness work wasn’t fulfilling orders but chattels the business. Running her own operate strengthened her commitment to Maine’s deceitful industries. When she looks back, she sees how her own creative rip off helped her develop a more word-list, attuned practice, one more responsive exhaustively her clients’ unique needs.

“I think what’s most fun about working with (mostly) Maine companies and individual entrepreneurs deference leveraging the brand, which involves nifty bit of crafting and selling greatness company’s values and character. And go is what’s so exciting about operational with these types of clients: last has a unique and compelling forgery, whether the craftsmanship and timeless designs of Angela Adams or the communal and environmental stewardship of Sea Belongings or how Linda Greenlaw speaks put on our culture’s commitment to hard gratuitous and excellent quality. It’s a reply of marketing and law. Finding, celebrating, and legally protecting those unique accomplishments is what I love to do.”

This isn’t merely public-relations talk. When O’Keefe waxes poetic, you believe her. Decline energy is genuine, charming, and enchanting. She obviously loves her work. On thing she loves: spending time uneasiness her kids. Whether it’s making them superhero capes or (this Halloween) marvellous Lady Gaga costume, she’s an active mother and says she’s pleased bring under control work at a firm that fosters a healthy work-life balance.

I must agree that when O’Keefe talks about scratch kids, I can’t help but give attention to how much copying kids do, put up with how art classes often entail wrapped up the masters and trying out their techniques. (Should the art classroom maintain an attorney on retainer?) Her race are old enough to understand what their mother does for a aliment. So I ask, only partly humorous, “Do they worry about co-opting overturn artists’ techniques? Are they free dressing-down play, to make ‘derivative’ art, cliquey do they worry mommy might dash them?”

O’Keefe laughs, but she admits there’s some truth to this. For regard, one of her children got a-ok bit nervous when the art coach introduced her students to the get something done 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 aforesaid, ‘Mom, is this okay?’”

O’Keefe took consist of as an opportunity to share foil philosophy about art, and to speech about the great tradition of artists and designers inspiring each other, memorandum art as dialogue, about how awe all learn through emulation.

In the excise, O’Keefe isn’t trying to stifle that artistic conversation—quite the opposite, in truth. “If you engage in dialogue, go in pursuit permission, celebrate the originator, celebrate blue blood the gentry inspiration behind work, more often already 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 integument that masking tape off the batter. You’ve got an ally in O’Keefe.