Dianne Ballon is a sound artist from Portland, Maine. Her sound works have aired on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She has been editing sound for over thirty years—all the way back to cutting reel to reel tape with a razor blade. She was awarded a Maine Artist Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. Her coastal sound work was featured in the 2022 summer issue of Yankee magazine.

During her Artist-in-Residency at Shenandoah National Park, she created a sound portrait for the park. At the Goethe Institute, she presented her sound installation Musical Instrument Dreams. She produced audio for the national exhibition The Marines and Tet: The Battle That Changed the Vietnam War. For an international radio art competition, she was awarded for her field recording of boats creaking at a dock in Iceland. She produces audio for Tactile Images, a company that creates fine art for museums that is accessible to the blind through touch and sound.

For over ten years, she was a member of the teaching and production staff at the National Audio Theatre Festivals. At the University of Maine at Augusta, she taught audio production and radio theatre. She taught many workshops and classes to artists, producers and podcasters. This includes the Public Radio Exchange Podcast Garage, Harvard Music Department, and Harvard Sound Education conference. Currently, she teaches audio production through the SALT Institute for Documentary Studies at Maine College of Art & Design. In February of 2024, an exhibition of her Maine coastal sounds opens at the Maine Maritime Museum.  

For more about her work, visit: https://www.dianneballonsound.com/ The Listener: Maine Sound Artist Dianne Ballon