Providence’s Surfboard Designer Kevin Cunningham

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Tracey Minkin, Features Editor

spirare

Cunningham and his honeycombed surfboard. Photo by Meghan Sepe.

Kevin Cunningham already stands out among the artisans and designers at Conley's Wharf in Providence's port area off Allens Avenue. For one, he takes surfing breaks.

For two, he makes surfboards.

And as of September 20, he'll be in movies.

The soft-spoken 2009 RISD graduate has become a true innovator in designing and manufacturing surfboards that utilize environmentally conscious materials. His boards combine traditional synthetic materials (albeit repurposed) and woods into performance boards that carve as well off the break in Narragansett as the industry standards that have dominated the sport for half a century.

And it's Cunningham's innovations that brought him to the attention of filmmaker Jason Baffa , whose new documentary One Beach profiles six individuals who are using creative means to change our relationship with the oceans and beaches. (One Beach, sponsored by Barefoot Wine, will premiere on Facebook on Tuesday, September 20, at 6:30pm.)

Catching the wave

Cunningham, unlike many of his peers in the industry, did not grow up at the beach. He grew up in Baltimore, MD, but loved family trips to the Jersey Shore where he learned to body surf and surf. In 2000 he moved to Rhode Island to begin his studies in architecture at RISD and quickly discovered a remarkable fringe benefit. "I always loved the ocean," Cunningham says, "So once the weather got nice, I wanted to go to the beach. So I figured out where to go."

Cunningham discovered Narragansett, the Point Judith area, then Newport. His passion increased. "If there were good waves," he says, "I'd get up early in the morning before class."

Making his own boards

An artist by nature, Cunningham began shaping his own boards in 2003, but found the conventional materials toxic to himself as well as the environment. "I was thinking that there has to be a better way to make performance-based,

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Spirare fan (and world-class surfer) Tom Carroll mid-ride

functional boards that aren't toxic to the person making them," he says. "I wanted to make a board that was safe for the user, safe for the maker, safe for the environment."

Cunningham innovated and shaped boards in his spare time, and began utilizing woods for their entire structure, or the outer layers of innovative foam cores. He had the final iteration of a wood board right around graduation, in 2005.

For several years, Cunningham shaped these boards on the side while working full-time for an architectural firm. But by 2009, he decided to launch his surfboard company, Spirare, into the deeper waters of full-time work. "It was a daunting leap," he says, "but it's working pretty well so far."

Functional art

He likes to call them functional pieces of art, and this is not inaccurate. Cunningham's boards feel as organic to their purpose--to carve through the ocean's swells--as they could be. At the same time, they feel like works of art. Plus, he says, they last longer and ride beautifully.

Surfers are slow to change, he notes, and his hybrid foam/wood board is slowly changing minds to the possibilities of new materials. Meanwhile, Cunningham sells about 80% of his boards to New England surfers, with the rest coming from the West Coast. Although with the promotion of the film, that balance may soon change.

But meanwhile, he enjoys the surprise that his surfboard "shop" location engenders... particularly when he gives directions. "I say to them, 'You know where that giant pink strip club is?', he says. 'I'm right across from that.'"

And definitely on to his next wave.

Conventional PU foam boards begin at $580, wood with composite recycled EPS frame at $925, and all-wood honeycomb core (pictured above), at $1800. For more information on Spirare Surfboards, go here.

Photo/Cunningham: Meghan Sepe