Kevin Cunningham, owner of Spirare Surfboards, builds boards on a custom basis in his Providence studio. He was recently awarded a $10,000 low-interest loan from the state Economic Development Corporation to expand his one-person business.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Nobody makes surfboards like Kevin Cunningham.

While others build boards from polyurethane foam, Cunningham works almost exclusively with wood, a throwback material that dates to the first half of the last century.

Surfers have always prized wood for its durability and beauty but frowned on it for its weight. Cunningham’s boards, however, are just as light and responsive as modern foam boards.

The secret is the patent-pending honeycomb made of wood veneer inside each of his boards. It provides all the stability they need, but none of the mass of a conventional wooden board.

Cunningham, 27, came up with the innovative structure by combining his training in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design with his passion for surfing. The honeycomb is what sets Cunningham apart from other so-called “shapers” who use wood.

Spirare surfboards are made of eco-friendly wood.

His approach is also eco-friendly: He uses only sustainable woods in his boards, and for a line of composite boards, he uses foam from discarded surfboards and recycled plastics.

Cunningham builds boards on a custom basis in his Providence studio. For now, he works alone, but he wants to expand his business and was recently awarded a $10,000 low-interest loan from the state Economic Development Corporation to make that happen.

Cunningham is tall and thin and wears designer eyeglasses befitting an architect. He started surfing during his childhood in Baltimore. On weekends, he’d go to Ocean City on the Maryland shore with friends to ride waves. But it wasn’t until college that he became more serious about surfing, frequenting beaches in South County.

While at RISD, he wanted a new surfboard, but he couldn’t afford the $600 price tag.

“But I could afford the materials,” he recalls. “So I decided to build my own board.”

RISD grad Kevin Cunningham looks for imperfections in the wood surfboard he is working on in his Providence workshop. He is currently negotiating to design boards for the Nike women’s surf team.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

That first board, made of foam, was “rideable,” says Cunningham, but a little rough. He tried building another board. And another. After awhile, he started taking his creations to David Levy, a longtime surfboard shaper in Narragansett who would critique Cunningham’s designs and offer suggestions to improve them.

In 2005, after graduating from RISD, Cunningham started experimenting with wooden boards when Clark Foam, the country’s leading manufacturer of foam “blanks” — the basis of most boards — was forced to close because of tightening environmental regulations. Foam boards are made of toxic, highly polluting materials. Cunningham says the closing was a chance for him and other shapers to explore the use of green materials.

In 2008, he was awarded a $5,000 fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to refine his methods. He formed his own company last year. It’s called Spirare Surfboards. Spirare (rhymes with Ferrari) is the Latin word for “breathe” and the root of the word “spirit.” Cunningham says the name fits his philosophy about surfing and shaping surfboards.

He believes his boards are works of art.

“I focus on the aesthetic form,” he says. “I want my boards to be functional pieces of fine art.”

One board, commissioned by beverage company Red Bull, is emblematic of that way of thinking. It is sleek with a V-shaped fishtail and is intricately inlaid with mother of pearl and abalone shell in the shape of the company’s logo.

His boards have been displayed at galleries throughout New England. Last July, he participated in an exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. This June, his boards will be part of a show at AS220 in Providence.

His work has gained attention on surfing blogs and was featured in a Japanese surfing magazine. He has also been filmed for a documentary about the new generation of surfboard shapers in the United States. He is in talks to supply boards to the Nike 6.0 women’s surfing team, which includes some of the top riders in the country.

The boards are not cheap. An all-wood board sells for $1,500 and his composite boards go for between $800 and $1,200. But, says Cunningham, the wooden boards, especially, will last a long time, up to 10 to 12 years compared with the 2-year lifespan of a foam board.

Scott Bass, director of Sacred Craft, a California trade show that displays some of the best boards in the country, says other shapers experimented with honeycombs in the 1970s but Cunningham has perfected the style. He describes Cunningham’s boards as “exquisite.”

“You can tell he’s really thought the whole thing through,” says Bass, who is also an editor at Surfer magazine.

Cunningham’s studio off Allens Avenue is tiny. Templates of different boards are propped in one corner. A pile of wood shavings is swept into another. Sawdust hangs in the air.

A shelf outside holds a dozen boards that Cunningham owns. Several more boards in various stages of construction rest on another shelf inside the studio. The walls are lined with carpentry tools: planes, sanders, scrapers, chisels and saws.

On a recent night, Cunningham sets to work on a board that rests bottom-up on a stand in the middle of the studio. The red-cedar honeycomb at its center is exposed inside a balsa frame with parabolic rails on the outside made of Paulownia wood.

Cunningham uses a customized planer to make a concave shape in the front section of the board. Located under the rider’s lead foot, it acts like a gas pedal, the more weight put on it, the faster the board goes. He makes a similar curve in the back side of the board, which allows the rider to shift weight onto the sturdy rails on either side to maximize control.

When Cunningham is finished shaping the board, he’ll glue poplar “skins” on top and bottom. He will finish the board with a fiberglass coating to seal it from saltwater. From start to finish, it will take 30 hours to make the board.

Cunningham planes the board’s rails, making sure they’re even. He has penciled marks to guide his work, but he judges his progress by looking down the length of the board for any imperfections.

“You’ve got to feel it as much as measure it,” he says.

akuffner@projo.com