A new, upcoming exhibit by artist Lily Morris places the viewer in the middle of a storm, in the midst of the magnificence of sailing ships, stormy seas, sunlight bursting through the clouds, and gazing up at the ropes of a ship’s rigging. The ropes in these latest works are riveting on their own. They look like something only a nautical genius could manage, yet Morris renders them organized, chaotic, detailed, and explored from every conceivable angle.
And this extraordinary work has found a home in Thomas Bena’s newest venture, Stillpoint in West Tisbury, which will open its doors in a few weeks. If the exhibit is born from a metaphorical storm, its destination at Stillpoint is certainly a point of calm. The physical space includes a barn-like building featuring a great room, huge sliding doors, a ceiling that requires a heavy-duty extension ladder to reach, and a peaceful parcel of land with trails and an outdoor fire pit that’s just waiting for us to visit on a cool September evening around dusk.
As we walked through the barn with cathedral light cascading over the paintings, Morris explained, “I painted all of this this past winter.”
“I talked to Thomas last fall after hearing from my parents about this unique and beautiful space. I learned that it’s going to be a space where people come specifically to connect. I’ve longed to have some kind of a homecoming experience, reconnect with this phenomenal community, but I wasn’t sure how to do it so it’s been a long time coming. When my parents described Stillpoint, something told me, that’s the path.”
The paintings did look at home hanging on the wooden walls of the main building as Morris’ husband Gavriel Cohen worked to hang them properly for the exhibit. “I talked with Thomas and noticed that he had this incredible sense of surrender in regards to the space, not micromanaging it and its identity,” Morris said. “He’s really allowing Stillpoint to unfold naturally into the community and I thought that was really powerful.”
Lily Morris grew up on Martha’s Vineyard with her brother and her parents, Len and Georgia Morris, documentarians who head up Media Voices for Children, an organization that works to end child labor practices in poverty-stricken areas around the globe. Lily worked on the art for this exhibit throughout the winter months from her home in Chatham, N.Y., stating that it seemed like the perfect way to exhibit this group of nautical pieces.
Utilizing Stillpoint for an art exhibit is just one way Bena hopes to open the space up to the community. He says Stillpoint offers a place to come together for “classes, conversation, and contemplation.” It’s easy to imagine using the space for everything from building birdhouses to a tai chi class or a writing class open to the community.
Bena said he’s struck by the lack of real conversations that take place these days versus the need for all people to be present to each other and get back to personal relationships. He brought a group of Stillpoint supporters together to talk about why the space is important back in March, and they all found something positive from their connection to the project. Bill Russell is a longtime friend of Bena’s who has been there all along.
“Thomas and I have a long association based on mutual respect and love … and he’s very persuasive,” Russell said. “I told him I’d give him a year’s commitment and that was three years ago. I believe in the mission and I believe in Thomas, so without his bending my arm, I gave a financial contribution greater than I’ve ever given before.” What appeals to Russell is that Stillpoint is a gathering place for the community, especially when there may be conflict within it. “This is a place to come together and move forward as a community, rather than divided,” Russell said.
One of the more striking episodes that led to developing Stillpoint was Bena approaching a stranger in a grocery store parking lot because he was interested in speaking to the owner of a van with political stickers all over it. The stranger was Matt Larsen, who is now also a supporter of Stillpoint. Bena wants the space to be available for discussions around topics that can make us uncomfortable, like respecting the differing political views of the people within the community.
“He approached and seemed a little nervous,” Larsen said, “but he got us talking and due to my own personal family divisions over political issues, I wanted to get involved. I’m seeing in my own family that we just leave things out of certain conversations. There’s so much division in the world and the nation. If we don’t remember who’s really in charge then we’ll forget who has our own back and whose back we should be covering. It’s clear that those in power aren’t looking out for us and if we don’t look out for each other, we’re all going to lose.”
It is that kind of mindful reasoning that led to Morris feeling at home at Stillpoint. That and her belief in the community here. “It’s magical, it’s idealistic, it’s whimsical,” Morris said. “It’s a microcosm of different worlds and they’re always changing, but the bedrock is this intense faith in the community itself.” Morris’ family recently went through a crisis involving her dad’s health while he was thousands of miles away in Africa, she explained, and it was the way the Island came together to support them that also made her want to come home for this exhibit. The time feels right.
“I was deeply dyslexic growing up so I couldn’t read until I was in third grade and my parents, bless them, were like, OK, let’s see what she is good at,” Morris says. “I would stay up all night making a science poster and absolutely every single word on it would be hideously misspelled. It was a maximalist eruption of decoration with everything wrong. The art was what I had to bring to the table.”
But she and her brother, a poet and technology wiz living in Boston, grew up in an inspiring household.
“My childhood was very creative,” Morris says. “The interiority we all faced in the winter months were the perfect conditions for becoming a creative person. All of my friends that I grew up with, although they’re not artists, they have the impulsive creativity of an artist. Spending the day filling up a spoon with hundreds of drops of dew from honeysuckle, or rushing to South Beach during a storm so we could jump off the dunes and fly for a brief moment of ecstatic freedom, that is a form of performance art you know, and that’s the kind of thing Vineyard kids would spend their time doing.”
Morris said that she and her husband went to a Dock Dance when they visited one summer and were amazed by the uninhibited way the high school kids were dancing. “There was just this reckless abandon, this incredible whole. The kids were really inhabiting the moment in a way that lacked self-consciousness. And I was like, there it is, the magic that the Vineyard produces. It’s a kind of freedom, you’re trusting in your experience and you’re just right there, at the razor’s edge of the moment.” Morris explained that she was indeed a little lost when she left the Island after high school. She went to art school in Boston, followed by a move to Brooklyn where she worked at a company that manufactured art for businesses, which helped her develop some of the skills she uses today. She referred to that time as her chaotic 20s, when she had little understanding of her own inner feelings. “I hadn’t developed my relationship with myself,” she says.
Morris ended up in Hudson, N.Y., in 2015, which seemed to better suit her than the city life. She met her husband at the Hudson Sloop Club. “I just wandered down there one day and he was on a little boat. He had a deeply strange sense of humor and I loved it,” she said.
They had their son Zev during COVID, followed closely by health issues that deeply affected her work. Her son was two months premature and they were trapped in a NICU during the pandemic, a very surreal experience for Morris. She was in the middle of what she called “a cyclone of experiences.” This new exhibit at Stillpoint is a reflection of that journey.
“This immense lack of control in my personal life was certainly a theme for the show,” Morris says. “The works are a nautical journey through a storm.”
Matt Larsen described the concept of bringing the community together at Stillpoint to a T when he said, “There is no end, it goes as far as we’re brave enough to take it with each other. I’m all in. I love asking questions and I like being challenged by other people. … We all need to open up and experience what it feels like here. I don’t think people realize they crave it until they step inside. I can’t wait to see what happens.”
For now, part of the Stillpoint experience, besides the profound sense of peace the place radiates, is Lily Morris’ awe-inspiring homecoming exhibit, there for us all to enjoy and discover.
For more information about Stillpoint, visit stillpointmv.org, and to find out more about Lily Morris’ work, visit lily-morris.com or see her work at @lilyjmorris on Instagram.
