When an art gallery and a cultural salon stays in business for 30 years in a vacation resort that, for nine months of the year, is a hibernacula (a term used for colonies of torpid bats in winter caves), then there is every reason to expect that the proprietor, in this case, Zita Cousens of Cousen Rose Gallery at 71 Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs, knows what she’s doing.

Ms. Cousens explains her success by her single-minded focus on the art, books, jewelry, classes and special events she purveys. This focus divides into two seasons: In the fall, winter and spring months she prepares, lining up artists, author signings, children’s drawing workshops, and exhibitions of original jewelry and pottery. Then, from Memorial Day weekend to Tivoli Day in the second week of September, she executes her programs, pretty much nonstop. “On closing day, I have a sense of satisfaction as I check off everything I had hoped to accomplish and discover that, one way or another, it’s all been achieved.”

The gallery started up as a partnership between Ms. Cousens and painter Stephen Rose. Both recognized the early years as a fine collaboration, but Mr. Rose later decided to devote himself to his art full-time.

Ms. Cousens branched out into book signings 20 years ago with what, in hindsight, marked an historic event in literary history: she hosted a signing for Oak Bluffs author Dorothy West and her reissued edition of The Living Is Easy, written in the 1930s. Shortly thereafter, Ms. West, under the editorship of her new admirer, Jacqueline Kennedy of Random House, enjoyed another signing at the Cousen Rose, that of her late 20th century classic, The Wedding, set in Highland Heights above the Oak Bluffs harbor.

Ms. Cousens has no end of famous authors appearing at her gallery, a Victorian cottage with a wraparound courtyard which can be easily rendered into a clubby environment for the gallery’s bigger events with tents, tables, chairs and other party accoutrements. Such well-known writers as Lani Guinier, Jill Nelson, Stephen L. Carter and the late Bebe Moore Campbell have addressed crowds and signed books there. This Saturday, August 22 from 7 to 9 p.m., nationally-known journalist Gwen Ifill will be greeting admirers and signing her first book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

On the very next day, Sunday, August 23 from 3 to 5 p.m., another V.I.P. will grace the gallery: Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who will autograph her book, Renegade for Peace and Justice.

Zita Cousens was raised in Billerica. Her father was an aeronautical engineer at Raytheon Laboratories. She had a stay-at-home mom whose love of sewing helped young Zita discover at an early age her own creative side. “At first I wanted to go into fashion, but then my father’s science influence kicked in and I thought I’d be a chemist.” What she reveals to this reporter is that both hemispheres of her brain fire equally, which helps to explain her decades of rip-roaring business: not only has she a great eye for art, but she’s fully in charge of the bookkeeping and marketing sides of the business.

In the hour or so on a sunny afternoon that this reporter sat on the left-hand side of Ms. Cousens’ desk, a multitude of customers milled through the gallery’s rooms. A beautiful woman in platform sandals and fuchsia tank top dropped nine thousand dollars on a gorgeous oil painting of modern, Renoir-esque partyers by Robert Freeman. After the woman purchased the work of art, her lamb of a husband wanted to buy her the iconic Sisters on the Bluffs white tank-top.

In the course of the hour, a longtime customer bought a copy of Stephen Carter’s new book, Jericho’s Fall; a friendly and funny Australian family bought some of Ms. Cousens’ well-known post cards, called Z Cards, adorned with scenes of Oak Bluffs. Another customer was closing in on a green-beaded necklace while the slender Ms. Cousens, in a black tank top, white pants, her gleaming black hair pulled back, was a walking advertisement for the exquisite strands of lavender beads and oblong blue stones draped below her long neck.

So has the recession affected sales of art in America and specifically on Martha’s Vineyard? If you spend any time at the Cousen Rose Gallery you’d have to answer “No.” Had Zita Cousens owned a cash register (she writes purchases out on slips of paper), the machine would have been clanging like the D.C./Philadelphia express.

Is Zita Cousens ready for another 30 years in business? “You bet! The first 30 years went by so fast, the next 30 will probably feel like five minutes.”