Check out the article “Artistic Stroke of Luck” written by Grant Welker of the Lowell Sun. The article discusses my new studio space at Chases Garage in York Beach, ME, and the happy coincidence of two artists from Chelmsford, MA finding each other there.
“YORK, Maine — Ashley Norman thought the name sounded familiar. Giunta. Didn’t she graduate from Chelmsford High School with a Giunta?
She did, and the woman she was talking to about a new art gallery in York was Kyle Giunta’s sister, Cait. The two Chelmsford High graduates — Norman graduated in 2003, when Giunta was a freshman — had connected by coincidence in southern Maine where each had ended up for their art career.
“Both of us were joking around about what a small world it is,” said Norman, who got an art education degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. She then taught art at Lowell High School until 2010, when she got a job at an elementary school in York.
She now lives in Portsmouth, N.H., where she used to enjoy taking day trips from Chelmsford when she was younger.
Giunta, a 2006 Chelmsford High graduate, went to the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, N.H., where she graduated in 2011 in illustration. That’s where she met Ned Roche, a friend whose family bought an old mechanic’s garage more than 10 years ago in the center of York, a few blocks from the shore.
The building has now been renovated into a 4,500 square-foot art gallery and studio space called Chases Garage after the family who ran the garage for decades and still lives nearby. It opened Memorial Day weekend after the completion of more than a year of renovations.
“It took a lot of work,” said Giunta, who lives in York and teaches children’s printmaking classes over the summer. “We really got a chance to configure it how we wanted to because there were no (interior) walls, but a lot went into it.”
Almost none of the interior doors or windows into each studio match because they were taken from salvage yards or fairs, which both gives the gallery a unique look and cut down on costs. Because the garage was built in the 1920s, it required new siding, insulation, plumbing, heat and sprinklers. The central garage is now divided into the nine studios, the back storage rooms have been converted into instructional space and the front rooms of the building are now the gallery.
The exterior, with the sign above the front door and the old-fashioned Mobil flying horse logo above that, remains nearly exactly as it was.
The Chase family has been enthusiastic about what the young artists have done with the building, Giunta said.
“They’re all supportive of what we’re doing,” said Giunta, 24, who grew up on Prancing Road in Chelmsford near the Westford line. She now spends her time managing the gallery and creating prints, ceramics and other mediums.
Of the eight artists who rent space at Chases, three are teachers, including Norman, 29, who plans to return to MassArt for her master’s. It was a teacher who Norman works with who mentioned Chases Gallery to her and brought the two Chelmsford natives together.
Roche, who grew up across Main Street, said his family wasn’t sure what they’d do with the property but always kicked around ideas. For most of the past decade, it was used as a furniture store. It was Giunta’s encouragement for an art gallery that really got the project moving.
“Why not?” said Roche, 25, who is also one of the gallery’s artists.
York, a seaside town of about 13,000, has embraced the gallery, the artists said. Eight of the nine studio spaces rented almost immediately, and classes will begin later this summer in ceramics and printmaking. Others who sign up as members can use the gallery’s equipment if they want to try something out without the investment.
“I think there’s a call for it” in the community, Giunta said of something like Chases Garage.
“There are more artists in the community than you realize until you open something like this,” said Norman, who lived in various places in Chelmsford while growing up, including Billerica Road and Pine Hill Road.”
Follow Grant Welker at Twitter.com/SunGrantWelker.
