Andrea Sulzer - June 2021

From my studio overlooking the Androscoggin River in Maine, I make drawings, prints, and paintings. Sometimes these morph into three-dimensional objects. 

A desire to build a history with material, form, and ideas, alongside a determination to maintain an openness and freedom within this search, drives my work. It’s a constant pull between building a foundation and dismantling it, always trying to get closer to the underlying rhythm of and motivation for making things. 

I received my Master of Fine Arts from the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. I also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. I have had solo museum exhibitions at the Portland Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, and the University of Maine Museum of Art. I exhibited at ICON Gallery, Brunswick Maine over a span of about 20 years. My most recent solo gallery exhibition, once removed, took place at Maurer Zilioli Contemporary Arts in Munich, Germany. I also recently completed two large-scale public art projects for Maine schools through the Maine Percent for Art program. 

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Photo by Heather Henriksen

See more of Andrea’s work here.

Farewell to May Sarton's "House by the Sea" - Downeast Magazine

Bridget M. Burns for Downeast Magazine. February ‘21.

Photo by Rich Beauchesne | courtesy of Seacoastonline.com

In her 1977 memoir The House by the Sea, May Sarton described her first visit to the 1916 Colonial Revival in York that she would call home for the last 22 years of her life. “Once I stood on that wide flagstone terrace,” she wrote, “and looked out over that immensely gentle field to a shining, still blue expanse, the decision was out of my hands.”

The house she called Wild Knoll was demolished this winter, dismantled over three days in November, to the disappointment of some of Sarton’s readers and admirers. The author of 16 books of poetry, 19 novels, and 12 memoirs and published journals, Sarton, who died in 1995, was one of Maine’s most prolific literary figures. She rented Wild Knoll from friend and arts patron Mary-Leigh Smart, who lived next door and died in 2017, willing that her 47-acre property, called Surf Point, be converted to an artist colony after her death. The Surf Point Foundation, which began offering residencies to artists in 2019, met pushback from those who hoped to see Sarton’s home preserved, but executive director Yael Reinharz says the costs of repairing and maintaining the aging house were insurmountable.

“I think the initial feelings of many people were feelings of distress,” Reinharz says. But the modestly endowed foundation faced costs for structural repairs, a new septic system, and the replacement of windows, siding, insulation, and more. Reinharz is confident the loss of Wild Knoll won’t affect the public’s remembrance of Sarton. “I think the people who know the most about her work are very well prepared to continue to foster that legacy,” she says. Meanwhile, the flagstone terrace remains, a spot where resident artists can look out over the blue expanse, as Sarton once did.

Danielle Mysliwiec - May 2021

My creative and intellectual interests as an artist center around the durational and tactile possibilities of process-based painting. By extruding thick oil paint in small systematic marks, I slowly build highly textured surfaces that appear to be woven. Daylight is an essential component for viewing the work as the light’s constantly shifting direction, color, and quality activates the textured surfaces and colors of my paintings and brings movement and change into the viewing experience. It is important to me that my paintings resist being comprehended as static images. I want to assert paintings’ ability to offer a moment to moment unfolding. Thinking about painting as a mode of experiencing “slow time” within a digital age of instant images interests me. In this “slow time” of looking, a space of contemplative, free-associative thinking is opened, a kind of visual and intellectual infinity loop between myself and the painting. To me this is analogous to that same space I enter into when in the natural world. It can be walking through geometric patterns in the sand, watching the wavering reflections of light on a wall, seeing mica shimmer. It is in these very spaces both with my work and in nature that my work comes to me in my mind. I often think of how the paintings relate to other natural events that take place incrementally, seemingly imperceptibly, and then all at once – an earthquake, a gradient of color, a wave. I know that Surf Point will give me a unique opportunity to work with light, time, and contemplation and an expansive natural space and studio space that I do not have in my daily life.

William Marcellus Armstrong - May 2021

Marcellus is an interdisciplinary media-maker, media programmer and educator. He is invested in archives of Blackness, queerness, and their relationship to materials. Marcellus received his MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2017. In 2018, he created "The 48203 Dance Show," a community based dance show project which reflected on the legacy and archive of WGPR-TV33's public access program, The New Dance Show. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at The Sculpture Center (Cleveland), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Vernon Gardens (Los Angeles), Oolite Arts (Miami) and with Good Weather at SUNDAY Art Fair (London). He has realized projects with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Red Bull House of Art Detroit, and has been featured in the online publications of Arts.Black and Vice's The Creator’s Project. In 2019, his first solo show, "Smoke Garments" was exhibited at Reyes Finn gallery in Detroit, Michigan. Marcellus is originally from the suburbs of Baltimore and currently resides in Philadelphia where he is a Program Manager for Scribe Video Center.

See more of William’s work here.

Carly Glovinski - April 2021

Carly Glovinski received her BFA from Boston University in 2003 and is represented by Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York. She has been awarded residencies at the Studios at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, Teton ArtLab, Jackson, Wyoming, and the Vermont Studio Center, and has received grants from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and the Blanche Colman Trust. She has had solo exhibitions at Colby Museum of Art, Maine; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York; Indianapolis Contemporary; and Carroll and Sons, Boston. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Boston Center for the Arts, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. Her work has been published or reviewed in major publications such as New American Paintings, ArtMaze Magazine, Hyperallergic, Vice, and Maake Magazine. Carly currently lives and works in New Hampshire.

More of Carly’s work can be found here.

Crystalle Lacouture - April 2021

Crystalle Lacouture is an artist based in Boston and North Adams, MA. She received her BFA in Painting/Printmaking from Skidmore College in 2000. During the decade she lived in NYC, Crystalle was a longtime assistant to activist artists Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, a printmaker at the Lower East Side Printshop, and worked at the Academic Arts Agency, College Art Association. In addition to her full-time studio practice and other curatorial projects Crystalle is a curator at TOURISTS, a hotel near Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA. She exhibits her work throughout New England and New York and is represented by Beth Kantrowitz from BK Projects and Drive-By Gallery.

More of Crystalle’s work can be found here.

Mary Mattingly - March 2021

“The Surf Point residency has been an unforgettable experience. I can't do justice to how much appreciation I feel for this time at Surf Point. Waking up to the ocean, being able to spread out in a large studio space and make new work for three weeks has been transformative.”

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Mary Mattingly is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work explores issues of sustainability, climate change and displacement. Mattingly combines photography, performance, portable architecture and sculptural ecosystems into poetic visions of adaptation and survival. In her work, we encounter nomads laboring under the weight of their possessions. We witness their pilgrimage over parched lands and swollen bodies of water. We see refugees of a tainted past seeking out a sustainable future in the natural world. We watch as they carve out an itinerant existence, embracing simple and adaptable strategies for survival. And we see the artist sifting through the particles of her own life in search of a sustainable footprint. In her ambitious multi-media projects, Mary Mattingly aspires to do more than issue a warning about environmental neglect and its aftermath. She offers specific solutions and architectural prototypes that we can build upon in our pursuit of a better life. She inspires hope that we can prepare for a changing world through innovative design and a restorative relationship with nature. Are we ready to embark upon the great migration of our time, from the shortsighted habits of the past to the nimble and sustainable ways of the future?

More of Mary’s work can be found here.

Baxter Koziol - March 2021

“I know I will feel the ramifications of my time at Surf Point every time I'm in the studio. It’s one of those places.”

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Baxter Koziol studied painting at Maine College of Art (BFA 2017) and has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Monson Arts, Hewnoaks, and the Ellis Beauregard Foundation. He lives and works in Portland, ME.

More of Baxter’s work can be found here.

Sascha Braunig - February 2021

“Each day at Surf Point, I woke up to the bright daylight and a feeling of possibility and excitement. After a year of collective grief, I thought a lot about geologic time versus human lifespans, i.e. creativity and mortality, thoughts that were sometimes mournful but other times liberatory. Whether or not I acted on these potentialities, I experienced a creative opening that was completely distinct from my usual studio routine. I believe the combination of the location of the building on the Atlantic coast and the benevolent spirit of its designers and former occupants, Beverly and Mary-Leigh, form a heightened receptivity to creative thought. I took the glow of this feeling back to normal life and it continues to infuse my activities.”

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Like many painters before me, I’m interested in the confines of the canvas, a necessarily restraining space. I ask questions of this historically masculine rectangle: in what ways can the femme figure occupy the frame? Is this relationship inevitably a sadomasochistic one, with its preconditions of boundaries and control? Within the shallow boxes or voided theatrical backdrops of my work, my subject’s relationship to the frame that tightly confines her has grown from the pessimistic immobility of "Hide" or "Tenterhooks" to the fledgling boundary-testing of "Unseen Forces". Although these issues of framing and figuration, based in art history, still fascinate me, over the last three years I’ve introduced the image of the witch and gestures derived from ancient Near Eastern fertility goddesses ("The Offering") in order to propose these questions in an explicitly feminist way. I feel urgently compelled to make images of powerful female figures that simultaneously acknowledge the unstable conditions under which that power can exist. Their postures are strong, sometimes menacing ("The Witch") and sometimes playful ("The Curtain") but they also appear to be made of provisional materials such as paper, fabric, and plastic - or neon, the ultimate shortcut lure to pleasure. As I navigate these shifts in subject matter, I’m also tackling larger-scale paintings with more complex compositions. It’s exciting and challenging to take on more ambitious elements, but it’s also a learning process and I’m still a student of my expanded scale.

More of Sascha’s work can be found here.

Erin Johnson - January 2021

“My time at Surf Point was invaluable. The rhythm created by the view of the ocean, and architectural layout of the house itself, moved me and my work - gently, but with persistence.”

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Erin Johnson's video installations blend documentary, experimental, and narrative filmmaking devices, and foreground the ways in which individual lives and sociopolitical realities merge. Comprised of footage of site-specific performances, the films explore how power structures are communicated through relationships, focusing on the complexity of collectivity, the wide-ranging consequences of scientific research, as well as resistance, desire, and the queer body. While at Surf Point, Erin filmed a new chapter of her ongoing video project surrounding Rachel Carson's letters to her friend and lover Dorothy Freeman. Set in Surf Point's building, the completed film will shift between the interior and exterior of the modernist duplex as it moves between the past and present, exploring the urgency and loss Carson felt in both her environmental research and romance. In addition, Erin edited and scored a new body of work for an installation in Times Square, and worked on the sound design for a piece shot in 2020.

More of Erin’s work can be found here.

Wild Knoll

Image by Greta Rybus

Surf Point Foundation invests in visual artists and those who amplify their work through a diverse, inclusive and accessible residency program on the coast of York, Maine. Our mission realizes the vision of our founders, the late arts patron Mary-Leigh Smart and artist Beverly Hallam.

The Foundation has reached a difficult decision, and we want our neighbors, the town of York, and those in the broader arts, cultural and historic preservation communities to understand the circumstances and reasoning behind it.

Over the last four years, the Foundation has invested in preserving and renovating “Surf Point,” built and lived in by Mary-Leigh and Beverly for nearly 50 years. This 6,000sf home, transformed into a cultural facility, now offers four live-work spaces to artists and arts professionals for three-week-long sessions year-round.

We have been guided by a commitment to honor the spirit of our founders, who contributed their home, land, art and legacy to Surf Point, and who wanted to build a retreat for artistic creation and connection with nature.

Integrated with the Foundation’s mission, our conservation easement, managed by the York Land Trust, ensures a minimal human footprint on our 47 acres of land.

A second building, known as “Wild Knoll,” also sits on the Foundation’s property. Esteemed writer and poet May Sarton rented, lived and worked at Wild Knoll from 1973-1995. When the Foundation assumed ownership of the building in 2017, it found the building in disrepair, and invested significant time and resources to determine the feasibility and cost of renovations.

Among the many obstacles: mitigation of hazardous materials; replacement and updating of windows, siding, insulation, electrical, HVAC, and septic systems; structural repairs; and reconfiguration for safety, accessibility and privacy.

The cost of such a renovation - combined with the continuing costs of maintaining, managing and programming the building - far exceed the Foundation’s capacity, which has one staff person and a commitment to its primary mission to serve artists and art professionals through the residency program. The Foundation is not equipped to raise the significant sums needed for such an undertaking. We must be organizationally, financially, and ecologically sustainable in order to fulfill the mission envisioned by our founders.

Given all of these factors, the Foundation board made the decision to take the building down, with no proposed future use for the site.

This decision was difficult, knowing that both historic preservation and the life and work of May Sarton are important to the Foundation and members of the community.

We are committed to continuing conversations about our mission and common interests with one and all, including organizations such as the York Land Trust, Old York Historical Society, the York Historic District Commission, Maine Preservation, the York Community Services Association, the George Marshall Store Gallery, and with town residents.

We value our role as a participant in the cultural community, and hope we have provided context for our decision.

Sincerely,

Executive Director Yael Reinharz and the Surf Point Foundation Board

Dennis RedMoon Darkeem - December 2020

“In a moment of chaos & uncertainty, I received a phone call that I was accepted for the SPF residency. I was ecstatic for the good news. Overwhelmed with curiosity and joy for this new experience. Arriving at the home feeling overwhelmed with honor, joy and freedom. During my time at the residency I was able to photograph, hike, paint, collect shells off the beach, play loud music, dance around, jump, listen to the night winds, play with stones, see places I would never have seen, meet amazing individuals, have great talks with fellow artists, made a basket or two, make collages, learn how to make rope from plants, do some reading, think about the future of my artworks, create sculptures that turn into a performance art piece, made a video...I was able to teach from my studio, create curriculum and lessons for my students involving nature, meditation and transformation. I had seafood, ordered food, had great studio visits, met other arts organizations, made a snowman, experienced a Maine snowstorm and hours of no Wi-Fi. Being able to wake up to amazing sunrises and walk along the ocean front has given me a new body of work, a deeper love of nature, water, and a transformation that was needed for me to create and learn.”

Image by Heather Henriksen

I am inspired to create artwork based on the familiar objects that I view through my daily travels. I discover elements in existing architecture and among everyday items found within the home. I ultimately set out to express a meaningful story about events in my life and those found with the communities I work. I utilize different media in the creation of my work. This allows for great versatility and a rich viewer experience as the eye uncovers the multiple layers that often characterize mixed media art. Since my work as a professional artist commenced in the early 2000s, it has evolved into critiquing social and political issues affecting US and indigenous Native American culture. Much of my art has focused on issues like institutionalized racism and classism, jarring stereotypes, and displacement of people of color. As a multimedia artist, I express these motifs through fine art, drawings, paintings, collages, photography, sculpture, and installations. Incorporating a craftwork aesthetic has connected tradition with the contemporary. This is prevalent in many of my pieces. I seek to create a discussion through color, texture, symbolism, and geometric designs. This Residency will allow me to explore the historic value of the community and begin to build visual symbolism of cultures that have migrated and left cultural icons through the environment. The benefit of taking part of the residency will allow me the time and space to focus on creating work that I can exhibit. My goal for this residency is to create a small body of work that consists of transforming everyday items into my narrative of Afro- Indigenous expressions. Incorporating a mix of elements from shells , beads, leather, Crystal's, feathers, natural elements wood, branches, Vines Stones along with traditional materials like watercolors, pencils,cray. These artifacts will have dual use cross between body adornment and sculpture work. This work will give honor to communities that have been lost but not forgotten. My goal is to give life to these artifacts that they may empower and create questions on one's connection to their own history.

More of Dennis’ work can be found here

Yevgeniya Baras - December 2020

“Surf Point is a place that links the resident artist to a number of histories: the biography of the studio and building where art has been made and ideas have been exchanged for decades, to Maine where so many artist colonies have thrived throughout time. This is very palpable and special to experience, that lineage. And in addition to history there is the austere and powerful nature that seeps into the studio. Its sounds and geometry are inescapable. The residency is a fantastic place to reflect and make work, near the rugged and timeless coastline, in the presence of remarkable histories.”

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In researching Surf Point residency, I found myself interested specifically in the landscape. I am inspired by the coast, the rocky textures, the openness and vastness of this land. Also the light really left an impression on me. I am excited at the potential of being immersed in this environment. One of the main themes in my paintings is landscape. Nature is often edited, simplified: sky ground, moon, sun. Landscapes are not typically done from observation. The result is a kind of symbol of a landscape. I also assign pictorial emblems to individual elements of nature. Over and over do I find so much mystery and awe in the landscape. I recall the feeling of smallness as a human in the desert of Sahara, in the mountains in Greece but these journeys are infrequent. In actuality I am so rarely outdoors. I live in Queens where the environment is industrial. I do not have time to observe slowly because of the speed of everyday existence in New York.

Yevgeniya Baras is an artist living and working in New York City. She is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in NY and the Landing Gallery in LA. Yevgeniya is a 2019 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner grant and the Chinati Foundation Residency in 2018, and the Yaddo Residency in 2017. She received the Artadia Prize and was selected for the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program and the MacDowell Colony residency in 2015. In 2014 she was named the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Prize. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, LA Times, ArtForum, and Art in America. Yevgeniya's current solo exhibition is  in LA at the Landing Gallery. Her next exhibitions are at Inman gallery in Houston and Station gallery in Sydney. Yevgeniya co-founded and co-curated Regina Rex Gallery on the Lower East Side of NY (2010-2018). Yevgeniya  has curated and co-curated over twenty exhibitions at Regina Rex and other galleries in NY, Chicago, and Philadelphia. She has a BA and MS from the University of Pennsylvania (2003) and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). Yevgeniya teaches at RISD and Sarah Lawrence College.

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More of Yevgeniya’s work can be found here

Suzy Delvalle - October 2020

“The SPF residency was just what I needed to recover, refocus and REGENERATE! Muchas gracias por esta oportunidad!”

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Susan (Suzy) Delvalle is a fierce advocate for art and artists. With over 20 years of leadership experience in the cultural sector, she has committed her career to enhancing the impact of mission-based organizations and building opportunity and equity in the arts. She most recently served as President and Executive Director of Creative Capital, an innovative arts nonprofit that adapts venture philanthropy concepts to support individual artists. Only the second Director in Creative Capital’s history, Suzy oversaw some of the most dramatic changes in the organization’s two-decade history. Under her leadership, Creative Capital increased its annual operating budget 20 percent by instituting a three-year fundraising cycle, further developed the board with ten new active members while also establishing a National Advisory Council, and expanded services to artists by instituting regular, annual Creative Capital Awards and retreats.

Suzy formerly served as the founding Director of the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling, where she oversaw all aspects of the development and opening of the museum. She previously served as Director of External Affairs and Development at El Museo Del Barrio, where she dramatically increased the museum’s budget and attendance over her eleven-year tenure. Before joining El Museo, she worked for American Composers Orchestra following a career in consumer banking and advertising. Suzy has served as adjunct faculty at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and is a guest lecturer at several universities. She serves on the Board of ArtTable, New Yorkers for Culture & Arts, The Laundromat Project and is a member of The Metropolitan Museum’s Advisory Committee in Culture Engagement. She was born and raised in Curaçao and speaks Spanish, Dutch, and Papiamento.

While at Surf Point, Suzy plans to work on an initiative on US-Latinx art and artists to address their lack of representation in US scholarship, galleries, museums, institutions, and the sector at large. The voice and perspectives of artists from Latinx and Caribbean communities have long been marginalized, while demographically they represent the second largest majority in the US. They provide alternative, nuanced representations of the many facets of their communities and contributions to the fabric of this country, and the range of issues that Latinxs face today. While there are a few actively working groups addressing certain components, there is a need to gain a larger-picture understanding of the major gaps in the field, and determine a multi-prong, proactive agenda to leverage efforts. Suzy will focus her time on research, coordination and navigation of a more expansive and inclusive plan to proactively bridge gaps and address these needs both short- and long-term.

photo credit: Ariana Lindquist

Meghan Brady - October 2020

“Surf Point was more than I had allowed myself to hope for. The absolute beauty and otherness of its location and story was not clear to me until I relaxed into my residency. And I think that's what I got most from it - a kind of permission to let myself be and do what I needed to do. In other words, to relax! To relax back into my mind and spirit. I felt no exterior pressure to perform, achieve, reach and that was an unexpected gift. I had time to paint and work but also to write, read, think, and wander around in the woods and daydream.”

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Meghan Brady, a painter, is based in Midcoast Maine.  Through painting, printmaking, and drawing-installations, Brady explores the possibilities of a wide-ranging practice.  Recent shows include ‘Said + Done’ at Mrs. Gallery in NYC, ‘Reversible Roles’ at University of Maine Museum of Art, ‘Take Five’ at SUNY Buffalo Anderson Gallery, NADA House Governors Island NYC and ‘Second Hand’ at Space Gallery in Portland, Maine. She’s recently been in residence at MacDowell and Tiger Strikes Asteroid NYC. Brady is a graduate of Smith College and Boston University. 

“Recently I’ve been mulling over questions of how to incorporate human form into an otherwise abstract image. Can I use compositions and arrangements of these forms that are based on outsider sources (early New England gravestone patterns, Shaker Gift Drawings, traditional women’s handiwork and textiles)? And in spite of my assumptions against it, can I create a body of work that holds the balance between abstraction and representation? In the last two years, I've been making wall-scaled paper paintings as a way to work through a backlog of painting ideas. From here, I’ve opened up my process by making cut and collaged canvas pieces on the floor. They are painted, rearranged, and glued and then painted again. There is an ongoing sense of discovery and freedom in this method. But I am ready to bring the project back to oil paintings on stretched canvas.”

More of her work can be found at MeghanBrady.com.

Shannon Finnegan - September 2020

“I am grateful for places like Surf Point that give artists space and resources with the trust that they will use that support in the ways that best suit their needs. Artists need project-based support but we also need support to research, rest, dream, and plan. These things are vital to the sustainability of our practices.”

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Shannon Finnegan is a multidisciplinary artist making work about accessibility and disability culture. They have done projects with Banff Centre, the High Line, MCA Denver, Tallinn Art Hall, and Nook Gallery. They have spoken about their work at the Brooklyn Museum, School for Poetic Computation, The 8th Floor, and The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. In 2018, they received a Wynn Newhouse Award and participated in Art Beyond Sight’s Art + Disability Residency. In 2019, they were an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam. Their work has been written about in Art in America, Hyperallergic, and the New York Times. They live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

Julia Rommel - September 2020

“I was comfortable doing less at Surf Point, waking to sit on the craggy shore and watch the sunrise, letting hours go by. I started noticing the variety of life on the property- each tidal pool hosting its own unique world, so many different plants and animals, shifts in the smells as the tides change. It reset my senses, inspired me, and allowed me to approach my work in a new way.”

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Julia Rommel (b. 1980 in Salisbury, MD) received her MFA from American University in Washington D.C. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include: Fall Guy, Standard (Oslo), Oslo; Candy Jail, Bureau, New York; Twin Bed, Bureau at Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Stay-at-Home Dad with Mathew Cerletty, Standard (Oslo), Oslo; A Cheesecake With Your Name On It, Overduin & Co., Los Angeles; Two Italians, Six Lifeguards, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

The Work Ahead.

"Again We Rise," a mural on the Aura Concert Venue and Nightclub building in Portland, Maine, painted by local artists Ryan Adams, Mike Rich and Jason McDonald. The mural features a portrait of George Floyd and some of the names of victims of police brutality.

So much has recently happened in support of the nationwide demand for racial and economic justice, police accountability and meaningful and lasting societal change. Surf Point Foundation honors this historic moment and pledges to do our part in the struggle to dismantle systemic racism so that people of color can finally be safe, free, and fully enfranchised by the social contract that has been too long denied. We face a pivotal moment of reckoning in which no one can remain passive or silent.

Details from message board on Free Street, Portland, Maine (above and below).

As an organization in its growth phase, Surf Point has the opportunity to reaffirm core commitments, ideals and values - and to articulate new ones. We hold ourselves accountable to listen, learn, change, and devote ourselves to the challenging work ahead:

1. We will continue to reaffirm our responsibility to diversity and inclusion and to prioritize recruiting people of color, LGBTQI, women, and those with a connection to Maine as residents. We will do everything possible to make Surf Point a positive, welcoming and empowering space for every resident and visitor, with special sensitivity to the historical, cultural and economic history of our location in York, Maine. Community building is among our top priorities through sustained and anchored relationships.

2. As a primarily White governing body, the Surf Point Board of Directors will create a diversity committee whose mission will be to translate our ideals into meaningful actions and structures. Actions include: prioritizing meaningful diversity on our Board of Directors; mandatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training for our Board and staff; and identifying and supporting through grants Maine-based arts entities that fight for racial justice, judicial reform, and economic equality.

3. We will pursue partnerships with institutions that reciprocally share our values and can enhance our sense of intersectional networks, including creating opportunities for internships and hiring.

4. We will correctively expand our founders’ art library to include monographs, exhibition catalogues and historical and critical works by and about Black and Brown artists and scholars, cultures and creative movements, both historical and contemporary. In addition to serving our residents, we will explore how this library can become a resource for the larger community.

5. We will seek to learn what we do not understand. We will listen. We will see and remember. We will speak out.

In response to the many pressing concerns in our society, and in solidarity with the local and broader community, we have donated to organizations we respect and admire in Maine and New Hampshire that address hunger relief, community building, and celebrate BIPOC artists, art workers, and history: the Abbe Museum, Abyssinian Meeting House, Curtis Memorial Library; Gather, Indigo Arts Alliance, Mayo Street Arts, Ogunquit Museum of Art; Space Gallery, and York Community Services Association.

I look forward to your participation in this discussion long into the future and, as always, welcome your thoughts.

Yours,
Yael Reinharz,
Executive Director & the Surf Point Foundation Board

Floriography: The Language of Flowers - Beverly Hallam Exhibited at Cove Street Arts

Originally conceived as an early April show, as both an antidote to the cruelest month’s lingering gloom, and a reminder that spring, with its florid proliferation of life, was on the horizon, Floriography feels even more timely in its new slot as our first post-lockdown exhibition.

Its message more immediate, urgent, and life-affirming… This exhibition presents a conversation between the work of four talented and stylistically diverse female artists, each in dialogue with her subject matter, with her media and the act of mark-making, and with floral painting as historical genre.

The exhibition also includes a selection of works on paper from the estate of Maine Master and nationally known pioneering postwar female artist, Beverly Hallam. These works span from 1961 to 2007, and media include pastel, acrylic, ink, oil monotype and charcoal.  They beautifully display the artist’s verve and virtuosity as well as her enduring fascination for floral still lifes.

BEVERLY LINNEY HALLAM

November 22, 1923 - February 21, 2013

Beverly Hallam was born in Lynn, Mass. on Nov. 22, 1923, the daughter of Alice Linney Murphy and Edwin Francis Hallam. She graduated from Lynn English High School. During her early years, she studied clarinet and saxophone. In 1945, Hallam received a B.S. Ed. from the Massachusetts College of Art and in that year she received a position at Lasell Junior College (Auburndale, MA) where she was Chairman of the Art Department until 1949. Following coursework at Cranbrook Academy in 1948, she received her M.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1953.

From 1949-1962, Hallam was professor at the Massachusetts College of Art where she taught Painting, Drawing and Design. There, she taught the first courses in Photography and Theater Arts, and led students to experiment with avant-garde effects in set painting, costume design, lighting, projection, and taped electronic music. She supervised the Saturday Morning High School Art Classes.

An avid photographer, Ms. Hallam travelled to Europe and compiled many illustrated lectures on art subjects which she gave throughout the country. From the early 1950s, Hallam was one of the earliest artist-adopters in the U.S. of Polyvinyl Acetate—or Acrylic—now ubiquitously recognized as a fine art medium. Known for her large airbrushed flower canvases and for experimental printmaking, Hallam had 45 solo exhibitions in museums and galleries and participated in 280 group shows. Her work is in the permanent collections of many museums and corporations and in private collections in the U.S., Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland—including those of the Harvard Art Museums, Farnsworth Art Museum, Ogunquit Museum of American Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Although she taught full time, Hallam never gave up painting. Over the course of a practice that spanned 56 years, she experimented with media and approaches, ever open to new ideas and technical approaches to making. In 1963, Hallam resigned from teaching to live and work full time in Maine, first in Ogunquit and then in York. 

Hallam had gallery affiliations in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Florida, and Maine. Her exhibition history included retrospectives at the Addison Gallery of American Art (1971) and at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland (1998). In that same year, Midtown Galleries in New York mounted a large traveling exhibition focused on Hallam’s innovative use of airbrush, and Carl Little’s monograph Beverly Hallam: An Odyssey in Art was published. In 1990, the Evansville Museum of Arts and Science compiled an exhibition in Indiana that toured to five other states. Her work was recognized with several awards, including "Distinguished Alumni Award, Massachusetts College of Art" and "Maine College of Art Award for Achievement as a Visual Artist." The Union of Maine Visual Artists, as part of the Maine Masters Project featured her brilliant career on film in Beverly Hallam: Artist as Innovator in 2011, directed by Richard Kane.

Hallam maintained an active studio at Surf Point until her death on February 21, 2013. Her papers are held in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Her legacy includes the conception, with friend and patron Mary-Leigh Smart, of Surf Point Foundation, whose mission is to be an inclusive residency program in their former home on the York coast.

Community Outreach

In response to the many pressing concerns in our society, and in solidarity with the local and broader community, Surf Point Foundation donated to organizations we respect and admire in Southern Maine and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We invite you to explore these remarkable organizations whose work address hunger relief, community building, and celebrates BIPOC artists, art workers, and history: the Abbe Museum, Abyssinian Meeting House, Gather, Indigo Arts Alliance, Mayo Street Arts and York Community Services Association.