How about this for an odd economic twist: the NASDAQ is down, gas is five dollars a gallon, and no one is buying anything except . . . art! Could that be? “Yes!” Vineyard artist Peg Thayer said yesterday at the All Island Art Show at the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs. “We all enjoyed a brisk morning of sales. It was fantastic!”

Maybe business is good because the people running the show know what they’re doing. They’ve had 50 years to perfect the form. This year’s exhibit luxuriated in perfect weather — blue and gold skies and soft, relatively dry breezes. All around the perimeter of the Tabernacle’s wedding cake tiers of corrugated iron, 192 pieces of art from 95 artists faced the scintillating light and gorgeous grounds.

Artists are invited to hang up to five pieces on the long spool of metal webbing. Then in addition they’re welcome to showcase a portfolio of their work, most of it spilling from boxes set on folding tables. All you need to enter is to be 16 years or older, and to be situated at an Island address, even if it’s the home of a second cousin’s friend of a friend.

Artist Harman Bernstein of Manhattan, with a nephew on Martha’s Vineyard, sat on a lawn chair beside his box of brightly colored collage strips of boats and beach scenes. “I try to gear my art towards what a child might like,” he said. “A little boy asked his mother today if they could buy one of my pieces. I know I’m on the right track when kids respond.”

“The art show is a great way to discover new talent,” says Holly Alaimo, owner of the Dragonfly Gallery in Oak Bluffs. “I never miss an event.”

West Tisbury summer resident Rosemary Stimola (whose husband, photographer Michael Stimola was represented at the exhibit) concurred about finding new talent: “I bought Karen Larsen Turner here before she was Karen Larsen Turner.”

Strollers appeared taken with the high concentration of talent on display. Nadia Jones, 13, visiting from Rochester, N.Y., enthused, “These paintings are extravagant and colorful! I talked to an artist named Virginia [Gosselin, it turned out] because I could tell she put a lot of work into her art.”

The first place winners were as follows: for the category of watercolors, Paul Beebe won with Moonlight Departure, depicting a tall ship on a moody sea; for color photographs, Debra Gaines’s Pure Innocence of an orange and white kitty with celadon green eyes; for collage, Karen E. Dutton’s Sea of Stars with cloth strips, an ornamental button and a starfish pin; for alternative processes, Bob Rosenbaum won with Guaguanshe Utila, a work in giclée of a turquoise sea and a school of fish; for pastels, Sharon McCann Daly won with Shadow Dunes of powdery sand hills and orange grasses; for drawing, Sabrina Kuchta’s Father, of a young and serious bearded man; for mixed media, Nancy Blank; for sculpture, William O’Callaghan. The big winner was artist Laura Roberts who won first place in oil for Summer Pastoral, a blue and green landscape, plus a best in show award and a treasure award for another oil entitled Symphony in G, of sunset over a saltwater inlet.

Around noon the six judges (Elizabeth Eisenhauer, Karen Larsen Turner, John Breckenridge, Washington Ledesma, and Joyce and Alan Brigish) — all bearing clipboards and studiously conferring with one another — made their final determinations. Mr. Brigish said the judges worked in pairs, examining each piece of art, and talking their way to agreement. “I’ve never been on this side of the clipboard,” said Mr. Brigish who for many years has displayed his photographs at the event. “It’s exciting!”

Another thrilled artist was voted most popular, not by the official judges, but by the passing crowd of participants, and that was Ferd — who, like Cher and Madonna, prefers to go by a single name, although he signs his checks Ferd Sondern. His daughter, Susan Sondern, is the baker at the Black Dog and it’s her residence that provides Ferd with his art event credentials. The Pennsylvanian artist’s small canvasses are huge with color and striking daubs of boats and seaside shacks. During the exhibit, he was detained elsewhere, but the minute he got the call about his prize, he came running and couldn’t stop grinning until four o’clock came around and everyone had to pack up their art and go home.

As tradition dictates, the following day, today, ushers in the Junior All Island Art Show from 10 a.m. to noon, with registration from 9 a.m. for an all-new cast of artists aged 15 and under, and a new lineup of eager judges. With any luck the sudden bull market for art will continue.