Tom DeMont, 68, has a quiet time in the morning when he sits and makes scrimshaw. It is a serene opening to the day. For 32 years, Mr. DeMont has sat in the quiet of the day to sketch scenes of the whaling era on a material similar to whale teeth. He is an Island-born artist, a craftsman, a folksinger, lyricist and gallery owner.

Mr. DeMont runs Edgartown Scrimshaw Gallery, a fine arts store filled with items made in a lifetime of creative pursuits.

The windows and display cases are full of nautical, Vineyard-themed artwork. On any day in the summer, the orderly store is full of shoppers. Customers prefer to purchase directly from Mr. DeMont, and the artist is often seen speaking one-on-one with his customers. His staff of two are either answering the phone or operating the cash register. “The store is the only part of my life that is really organized,” he says.

His home is entirely different. “It is my studio,” he explains, where he creates. “I don’t think of it as a house. I think of it entirely as a studio.”

“I have accumulated paintings, canvasses and still have some of my work of years ago. I have been very fortunate that I have sold almost everything I’ve done in my life,” he says.

Mr. DeMont drives an old 1996 Isuzu pickup truck with over 100,000 miles on the odometer. He lives in the old farmhouse in which he grew up. The living room of youth today is a studio. Some of the windows overlook Brush Pond, near Lagoon Pond in Oak Bluffs. His father, Thomas DeMont, was a house contractor.

“I am usually up at quarter to 5 a.m.,” the artist says. “I then head into my studio. A small television across from my workbench offers me company.”

He also gets company from his mixed-breed gray and white cat. There have been women in his life, but that would be another story. “My 13-year-old cat, Miss Scrimshaw, she always comes in. She has a bed right next to the workbench. She watches me do scrimshaw,” he says.

The creative Mr. DeMont has surrounded himself since youth with art. While you might think he is an expert on whaling and 19th century scrimshaw, the impetus behind his work is “art.”

Mr. DeMont has owned a number of different art galleries in different Island towns. He ran a coffee shop in Oak Bluffs, the kind that served not just coffee but live music, too, and for a time had a store near the Camp Ground where he did sign painting. He was also a bartender in Oak Bluffs and in Edgartown. Mr. DeMont has a hard time thinking of a time in his life when his hands weren’t into paint, music or writing.

He graduated in 1959 from the Oak Bluffs High School, the last class to graduate from the school before the regional high school opened. He played trumpet all through high school. Larry Benz and he had a band called The 18s, and they played pop music.

“When I was at Massachusetts College of Art, I took an interest in folk music. I started playing guitar in 1961. We used to hang out at the Unicorn Coffee House. I played at Turk’s Head Coffeehouse,” he says. It was there he met and befriended many top folk musicians.

Not much later, Mr. DeMont bought into ownership of the Unicorn Coffee House and opened a branch in Oak Bluffs, at the Tivoli building, where the Oak Bluffs police station now stands.

“First there was the Moon-Cusser,” he says, recalling another beloved Vineyard music venue. “They opened a year before we did. We opened right after them.

“Oddly we were there a year. They were going to tear the building down so we moved to Nick’s Lighthouse. I think we were in business for three years.”

After graduating from art school, Mr. DeMont taught art at a middle school in Walpole. He did it for four years.

“From there I decided to come back to the Vineyard. I quit the job. I really wanted to be an artist,” Mr. DeMont says. He moved back to the Island and opened a sign painting business in a little garage near the Camp Ground. “I did that for a while,” he says.

Mr. DeMont’s skills as an artist got him an invitation to be a designer for the newly formed Vineyard Players, a group of theatrical performers that included Duncan Ross, Jeffrey Kramer and Marty Nadler. The players formed in 1966 and lasted for nine years. “I knew nothing about set design. They liked what I did so much I became a set designer for a summer.” There is also a play.

“We started a corporation called Magic Island Productions and I co-authored a play with Michael West, Marty and Duncan. We got the darn thing off and running. It was my original idea. I co-authored about 50 per cent of the narrative. The play was called Tivoli. But we ran into a lot of crazy people along the way,” he recalls.

He worked as a house painter for Otis Burt.

“One of my roommates from Mass College of Art, Enrico Pinardi, got together with Bob Meade and Peter Martell and we bought the Lampost. I started tending bar there,” Mr. DeMont says. That was in 1969.

He also was a bartender at the Square Rigger, when it was a real bar at the Triangle in Edgartown. The bar was owned by the late John Donnelly.

In that stretch of time, Mr. DeMont opened art galleries in Vineyard Haven, one where Murray’s was and another at the original Mansion House. “I did a number of one-man art shows. I started representing other artists,” he says.

In 1977, his world of art shifted.

“I went into a gift shop in Oak Bluffs and a man was doing scrimshaw. He wasn’t a professional artist. I walked in and saw a couple of belt buckles he had done. I says, ‘I bet I can do that.’

“He says, ‘Take piece of ivory and try it,’” Mr. DeMont says.

“I did a ship on an oval piece of ivory and brought it back. He put it in a buckle and sold it right away,” Mr. DeMont says.

The Edgartown Scrimshaw Gallery has had four locations in town; now it’s a Main street, Edgartown fixture. Mr. DeMont says his gallery represents 175 artists; about half of them he knows personally and cultivates their talents.

The engine that drives his store is Mr. DeMont’s love for the Vineyard, and for the iconic views and items that say Martha’s Vineyard to him. It is something he shares not just with artists but with clients. Many of his customers are on a first-name basis with him.

For Mr. DeMont it is about seeking art that is authentic. In the retail businesses on the Island, many stores have products that come from afar. Mr. DeMont says he loves the Vineyard, and the gallery reflects that affection.

The gallery is driven by the relationships he has and has had. It is about connecting people to art.

“When I look at my entire life, I can’t sort it all out,” Mr. DeMont says. But the themes are always about the Vineyard, whether it is a play called Tivoli or a piece of scrimshaw that features the Edgartown Lighthouse.

“I have seen a great deal of this country. I have spent time on the West Coast. If I leave Martha’s Vineyard for more than two weeks, I get homesick. There is something here. Once it is in your blood you can’t get rid of it. It is there forever. I have this abiding love for this place and I am incredibly involved in this Island.

“I can’t separate myself from this Island. I can’t separate myself from the physical beauty, the plants, animals, the trees and the grass,” he says. “It is an integral part of my being.”