Summerall Gallery
Jennie Summerall shows portraits, paintings, and collages from a historic storefront on Main Street in Deer Isle Village — including her collage series on octopuses, bowerbirds, and arctic animals made from torn handmade papers, alongside oil portraits with national museum placements.
Photos via Google Maps · Summerall Gallery
Jennie Summerall grew up in Charleston, SC, and lived for years in Belmont, MA, before establishing her Deer Isle studio. The gallery at 13 Main Street occupies a building that previously housed a men's clothing store and an electrical supply shop — the Deer Isle Village walking tour identifies it as one of the historic Main Street storefronts now repurposed as a gallery space.
Summerall's work spans oil portraiture and tactile paper collage. The collages are made from torn artisanal papers — wax-resist sheets, hand-burnished papers — built into dense images of animals and sometimes nudes. She's done series on animals facing climate change ("Où sont les neiges?" featuring arctic species), on octopuses and bowerbirds, and other subjects that combine close natural observation with direct emotional content. Her oil portrait of E.O. Wilson is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.
The gallery also shows work by artist Maureen Farr alongside Summerall's own paintings and collages. Hours are listed as 12–5pm most days, or by appointment. The gallery shares the broader Main Street arts cluster with several other Deer Isle Village gallery spaces.
Local Tips
- Hours: approximately 12–5pm; by appointment via (617) 484-5262.
- The Main Street location is walkable from DIAA, Devta Doolan Studio, and other village galleries.
- The collage work uses handmade papers with distinctive texture — worth seeing in person, where the material qualities read differently than in photos.
- The E.O. Wilson portrait connection (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian) is a useful biographical data point when talking with Summerall.
Connected To
- Deer Isle Artists Association — the member nonprofit gallery also on Main Street in the village
- Devta Doolan Studio — jewelry and craft studio also in the Main Street cluster
- Red Dot Gallery — artist collective on Main Street with Haystack-connected makers