Behind the Creative World of Zoe Pancic

Music

Zoe Pancic began playing the violin when she was nine years old, eventually expanding to fiddle, piano, and harp and performing in award-winning ensemble groups for MICCA. Since then, she has performed in choral groups and musical theater before going on to be a part of the Tufts Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. As an undergraduate at the University of Vermont Symphony Orchestra, she continued her learning by focusing on conducting and music theory. She taught summer school classes for the Immigrant Family Services Institute of Boston.

After graduating in 2020, Zoe turned away from academics for a time to pursue her affinity for traditional Celtic music by performing on the schooners Liberty Clipper and for Portland Schooner Co in Portland, ME, while simultaneously working as a deckhand on the ships.

She has played for several contra dance groups and was featured in the most recent album of the band Headstay.

She currently teaches private lessons and works in arts administration for the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Portland Ovations.

Writing

Zoe has written numerous fiction and poetry pieces over the years, some becoming short films or magical realism stories inspired by her time in Ireland and sailing down the East Coast of the United States. Her experiences coming from a Greek-American family of artists and a queer woman in practices where that is not the dominant culture have shaped her voice and passion. She has several novels in the works at this time, of which she illustrates herself as well.

Prior to college, Zoe had been an avid political scholar of comparative politics and participated in Model United Nations. Her first major research paper was on the vertical interplay of environmental groups in Ireland, where she went to school for a semester at the University College Dublin. In 2022 she interned at Classical Uprising in Maine where the intersection of classical music and environmentalism and climate change activism meet.

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Art, Photography & Film

Zoe's first ever portfolio in high school covered themes of grief, childhood, and growth. This continued into college, where she honed in on her artistic process -- mostly a traditional artist, she excelled using graphite, charcoal, and oil pastels for a love of color and the dynamic nature of drawn lines. She won the UVM Pride of Place award and two silver medals from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She has worked at the Museum of Fine Arts and in various art galleries in Massachusetts. Recently, she has begun dabbling in digital art, where she focuses on character design and scene illustrations from collaborative fiction pieces.

Along with being an artist, Zoe had always been interested in film and photography. Over time she has developed her particular brand to be about the romantic and aesthetic parts of the life of a tall ship sailor. She now has an online shop for her art and ship/sailing-centric photography as a way to show her unique experiences.

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As for film, she collaborated often with Emma Whisler to make student films and assist with script writing. She is actively making a piece about the interweaving of music in natural spaces, and how it furthers human bonds.

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You may find examples of each of these art forms throughout the online portfolio and the links within them.

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