From the Director’s Desk

Belle Carver Struck
News & Updates

Date: 11/20/25: Almost a Year @ 65 Water Street

It has almost been a year since my first day here at 65 Water street. And what a year it has been! We launched 20+ new workshops and classes, hung over 20+ exhibitions, gave out 3 scholarships, a travel grant and dozens of Juried awards. We added 30+ volunteers, added new corporate sponsors, and celebrated our enduring partnerships with our local charitable foundations. We fostered new collaborations with community organizations and non-profits and met our modest, but necessary fundraising goals (while having some major fun). We highlighted our member's studios and processes-going behind the canvas with our #membermonday profiles on Instagram. We sold over 500+ pieces of your artwork. We hosted professional development events, live musical performances, private parties, author events and member nights. We offered Sunday arts markets, a recycled arts market and soon a holiday arts market. We opened our doors on 25+ Wednesday evenings for Life Drawing. We hosted ‘Coombs & Blooms’, ‘Coming Home’, ‘The Art of Giving’ and upcoming on December 5th: ‘Voices of Newburyport.’

It has NOT been all hugs and kittens along the way. I have made many mistakes. There was the time I sent a commission check to the wrong member, the night I locked all of AJ’s possessions (and her keys) in the office and went home to Somerville while she was still upstairs. There was the time our bookkeeper forgot to sign all the checks before mailing them, and the time I fixed the back door with a bobby pin and some fun tack. There were leaky pipes and leaky eyes, grant refusals and anonymous donors. There were late nights, early mornings and last minute runs to Market Basket and Ace Hardware. The chairs came up from the basement and went back down more times than I can count. I left the upstairs freezer door ajar for 3 days and a week later AJ left the downstairs freezer door ajar for 2 days. Kelly has taken on coordinating all of our volunteers and is the one who drove all the way back here at 9pm to unlock the office for AJ, so I didn’t have to turn around on 95 in Waltham. We were short a plaque for the sculpture exhibit and Claudia saved the day by providing a perfectly shaped rock from her “car rock collection.” Our dedicated and passionate Board of Directors continues to go above and beyond in their showing-up as well. They have sponsored events and your exhibits, cooked food, moved tables, opened their networks and advocated tirelessly with our community partners to keep supporting the work we do here. The office where I sit writing this to you is littered with exquisite corpse drawings that Claudia, AJ and I do before each reception opening. There are postcards from our board, our members and friends from all over the world and tiny magic objects displayed (with care) in an old type setting drawer. 

The biggest gift we each have is that of our attention and intention. We are giving that attention in real time, and time is our only non-renewable resource. All of this messy, transcendent, creative, conscious, thought-provoking, community forward, educational, complex and forward momentum is made possible because of you. Our membership is our fellowship. You all have brought your friends, your creativity, your family, your checkbook, your presence, your artwork, your questions, your feedback and most importantly your stories. I am so proud and humbled by what we have accomplished together this year in a time of uncertainty and turmoil. We showed up. We danced. We made things. In all of these lists the most important thing I want to highlight is not measurable. It is the collective of care and creativity we are building together. That is an unseen vessel that holds us all. As we approach the holidays, a time that can be filled with contradictions of loneliness and family, despair and joy, want and generosity-I ask you to celebrate what we have accomplished. Thank you for helping to make this year a year of listening to one another and coming together. I continue to learn so much at 65 Water street. I never work the same day twice! I am full of gratitude for how we keep showing up for each other, I cannot wait for 2026!

December 5, 2024

Our town. Newburyport. What is it about this town that keeps pulling us back to it? Is it the cobblestones, the salt air, the pink houses and bed races? Is it the theater, the musicians, the artists and the chefs? Is it the piping plovers, the boat builders, the shipwrecks and the abolitionists? After forty years orbiting this place, I am still trying to put words to the magic of Newburyport. It is a kind of gravity that tugs at all of us in our solitary orbits. It has its own heavy weather. The Coast Guard is stationed here for a very good reason.

My suspicion is that the magnetic pull has something to do with you and me. Thornton Wilder wrote in Our Town, “We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.” 

As I write this, the sun is setting over the Merrimack River and, although my office window faces Water Street, the orange hues and purple wispy clouds are reflected in the windows of The Tannery.

Forty years ago I arrived from South Boston and stood on this very street, in this very town, in my tutu and pink ballet shoes, outside a black box theater waiting for my entrance in a production of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Shadow (some of you reading this were there).

Thirty years ago I returned from Oregon, got a job as a bookseller at the old Book Rack on State Street and began Muggle Midnight Madness and dressed up as “PIG” from If You Give a Pig a Pancake on Saturdays (the inside of that pig head had its own heavy weather) while my dad read stories to the children of our town.

Twenty years ago I began my career as an artist and educator working with teenagers and adults down the street from our town. Sitting here thinking of what I want to say to all of you members and subscribers…it is simply this: we are the lucky ones. We get to live and work here in this special place. 

I have ideas for raising money, serving our members, diversifying our classes, workshops and raising our community impact. I want to hear your ideas about these things too. I can, and will, talk about all of those things in the months to come. On this cold winter afternoon I would rather say something from the heart.

I want to say thank you for welcoming me home.

I feel so lucky to be able to get stuck in and create with all of you. I hope we can make the NAA a hub for fun, for art, for education, for all ages, and all experience levels. I hope we can make it a place to listen, to learn, to love and to care for one another. I want the NAA to be a reflection of our town. It is not just a building. It is the human beings that make it special.

One of my heroes, bell hooks, wrote, “When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.” I cannot wait to connect with all of you in this magical, crazy, beautiful, creative, gravitational anomaly called Newburyport, Massachusetts: our city and our town. -Belle.

*Belle will be posting open hours for visits and drop-in conversations in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more info!