Aquinnah Unveils Artist’s Bus Shelter

It is believed that long ago, when Antonio Stradivari walked through the high-altitude forests of northern Italy and saw a tree he liked, he envisioned there was a violin waiting to be pulled from the wood. 

Centuries later, after Tim Laursen, an Island sculptor, received a call to construct a bus shelter at the Aquinnah Circle last fall, he took a similar approach to the 17th-century Italian luthier and craftsman.

“I love getting to know each shape as you take the bark off and the shapes of the tree underneath reveal themselves,” said Mr. Laursen. “I love working with the wood in its natural form.”

Mr. Laursen’s wooden bus stop was unveiled on Wednesday in a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Aquinnah. Town and VTA officials praised the custom work, and said it reflects the character of Aquinnah. 

“This is just the kind of beauty that we love to see here,” said Juli Vanderhoop, Aquinnah select board chair.

Like the pavilion he built behind the Aquinnah Gift Shop in 2023, Mr. Laursen wanted to use only materials gathered from across the Island. This past fall, Mr. Laursen sought help from the community to procure all the elements he hoped to use for this project.

“I wanted [the shelter] to be inviting and to coexist with all the natural beauty we have up here [in Aquinnah],” said Mr. Laursen.

The project took off with the help of the Martha’s Vineyard Transit Authority, which immediately supported the town’s effort to erect a new structure, said Jay MacLeod, the Aquinnah representative to the Vineyard Transit Authority.

“The thought process was to continue with the theme of the pavilion, because it’s got so much character and so much uniqueness to it,” said Mr. MacLeod, during the ceremony.

According to Angie Gompert, the VTA administrator, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation was responsible for helping fund the project, which cost just under $75,000.

“This is the definition of how Island towns can work together with your regional partners, and your regional partners work with state partners,” said Ms. Gompert. “If it weren’t for the MassDOT, we wouldn’t have had the funding for this.” 

At first glance, Mr. Laursen’s structure appears to have been wrangled straight from the forest and lashed together, but there are details hidden throughout the structure.

  Instead of wooden bungs, Mr. Laursen used white and purple discs made from quahaug shells to cover the screws used to construct the frame.

Using a makeshift system of ropes and pulleys, Mr. Laursen harvested black locust trees for the shelter’s frame. He used cedar for the shims and purlins and Alaskan yellow taper for the shingles. He acquired bricks left over from another project and relocated large stones from around the cliffs to construct the space below the shelter. He even managed to get a pink granite stone that is placed in the back right corner of the structure.

According to Mr. Laursen, the stone was taken from the same stone quarry used to build the foundation from the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island.

“I just felt invigorated every day I was  working on this,” Mr. Laursen said.

This article appears in May 29, 2026.