About

3191 Miles Apart
3191 Miles Apart

Welcome

Welcome to 3191 Miles Apart! Here we post weekly thoughts and images about simple living and our current inspirations. You will find pieces on food and drink, our homes and everyday lives, our neighborhoods, our inspirations and our travels. We post on Fridays (or on the weekend if we’re running behind) and do not discuss our ideas at all beforehand. Happily, we will also be continuing our tradition, now in its fourth year, of diptychs. Each week we will take photographs on Sundays to be paired together here; as ever, MAV is always on the left, Stephanie on the right. We will title this new project, appropriately, A Year of Sundays.

Thanks so much for sharing this experience with us!

—Stephanie & MAV

History

We discovered each other online in 2005, and quickly developed a friendship based on a shared love of art and craft, simple things and a well-lived domestic life. On January 1, 2007, we began our first year-long project together, posting diptychs—a photo from each of our mornings—at our blog, 3191: A Year of Mornings. We enjoyed the experience so much that we followed that project with a year of evenings using the same format. We were thrilled when Princeton Architectural Press published our mornings project in book form in the fall of 2008. That book, titled A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, is now the only place you can view the mornings diptychs.

After nearly two years of working together remotely, we were finally able to spend two fun-filled weeks together in November, 2008, visiting each others homes and getting to know each others friends and families while we promoted the book and shared our work in gallery shows. In 2009 we launched this web project and published our newest book: 3191: Evenings, which is now completely sold out.

In 2010 we decided it was time to take our online project into print. We launched 3191 Quarterly with four issues in its first year. Those four issues, which had their base in the seasons, are now entirely sold out. Happily in early 2011 we were comissioned for two back-to-back projects in Savannah, GA and Austin, TX for BBDO / Starbucks. The days were long and the work was challenging but mostly it was just nice to see each other after 1-1/2 years.

Today we move forward with 3191 Miles Apart, 3191 Quarterly, our seasonal shop Collections and many new collaborations to come. As ever we remain two friends who get up early, don’t stay up too late and live 3191 miles apart.

Keep In Touch

We see this project as more of an online magazine than a traditional blog and have chosen to not include comments. We love the support and enthusiasm of the online community, but want to bring back the intimacy and quiet of reading and observing. We do encourage you, however, to send us a letter in the post (it’s a bit old-fashioned and we love that about it) and perhaps we will share some of the letters we receive.

You can also email us but we kindly ask that you please be patient for a response.

Thank you!

You can find us at both of these post boxes:

3191 Miles Apart East:
PO Box 5194
Portland, Maine 04101
USA

3191 Miles Apart West:
Address coming soon

MAV

MAV

Maria Alexandra Vettese is a Portland, Maine-based freelance art director who also works in the mediums of photography and design. She is a creative, collaborative thinker who arrives at her best ideas intuitively when she is completely in the moment or under the gun. MAV has a pure perspective and a commitment to noticing and capturing ordinary, understated moments. She collaborates on Lines & Shapes and More & Co. MAV lives in a flat that was built in 1891 with her sweetheart and two cats. See her work here and here.

SCB

SCB

Raised in a creative family in northern California, and based in Portland, Oregon for the last 12 years, Stephanie Congdon Barnes is a photographer and stylist who also works in the mediums of illustration, soft sculpture, and textiles. Stephanie has photographed for clients both big and small—from Starbucks to her daughter’s birthday party. She is always looking for new challenges and usually says yes to them. Stephanie lives with her husband, two children and one cat. You can take a look at her work here (soon!).