An oil painting of an empty rowboat hangs on a wide column at A Gallery in Oak Bluffs. It’s missing its oars, and occupants too. A Gallery owner Tanya Augoustinos sees the painting by Carol Barsha as a metaphor for passage and transition.
“There are no oars, there is no direction. It is really vague as to where the boat is, and where it’s going,” she said. “It is almost like you get into this boat and you could just wander off to sea and never be seen again.”
Ms. Barsha is representative of the type of artist whose work Ms. Augoustinos shows in the space that was formerly the Nye Gallery located at 8 Uncas avenue in Oak Bluffs. She is drawn to artists who interpret traditional Vineyard subjects through an abstract or obscure lens, and in different media. But this doesn’t define or restrict her taste.
“I show work by artists who I am connected to and whose work appeals to me,” she said. “I don’t sell art that I think will just sell. I am not looking for commercial art in that sense.”
The result is a unique collection of contemporary art by artists who live on or have ties to the Vineyard. The artists she represents run the gamut from painters such as Rez Williams, well known for his detailed boat paintings, to Cuban painter Alejandro Carreño, who works with a knife rather than a brush. Ms. Augoustinos also features emerging artists such as Christopher Wright and Billy Hoff.
“I really believe in giving emerging artists that same shake and push as established artists, so I have them mixed in here,” she said.
Ms. Augoustinos was born in South Africa, and she lived in New York city for a number of years, where she worked as an art handler before relocating to Martha’s Vineyard in 1998.
“Summers in New York are crazy hot,” she said. “So in ’98 it seemed more attractive to me to get out of the city. It just so happened that I had friends with a little guesthouse who invited me to stay. So I moved here full time. I just took the plunge.”
She soon became involved in the local arts scene, and opened a pop-up gallery called e’kaya in a small shed behind the Scottish Bakehouse in Vineyard Haven. It was a seasonal operation that lasted three summers, and provided her with exposure and the opportunity to interact with Island artists.
“It was sort of an undercover, off the grid, low profile space and it wasn’t really viable for the longer picture,” she said. “But it gave me a little taste for Island art and I met some really cool people.”
In 2012, Ms. Augoustinos opened A Gallery as a pop-up in Vineyard Haven to test the Island’s appetite for contemporary art and the business’s viability as a permanent operation.
“From the time I decided to do it to opening the doors was like six weeks,” she said. Hence the gallery’s generic, utilitarian name. “The last thing I needed to think about at that moment was the name for a gallery, and I wanted it to be simple, so I called it A Gallery. A is for art, and it’s also the first letter of my surname, so it worked out.”
A Gallery has since relocated to its current home and is there to stay. “It’s on the only undeveloped street in town and it feels a little bit like a back street in New York,” said Ms. Augoustinos.
Ms. Augoustinos said she sees herself as an ally to her artists. “I am interested in exposure for the artists, interest in their work, and definitely sales, but most importantly I think that if the work is represented in a way that the artist feels good about, the way that I have curated it, that I haven’t misinterpreted their intention, then I feel good.”
The gallery’s most recent show featured work by Julia Mitchell, Leslie Baker, Rob Hauck and Donna Straw. Ms. Straw, whose Dreamscape series reinvents Vineyard landscapes unconventionally, with clean, crisp lines and geometric forms, opined on her relationship with the gallery.
“Tanya describes my work better than anybody has articulated ever,” said Ms. Straw. “She gets what I do.”
“Tanya is so eclectic,” Ms. Straw added. “She has a wide range of artists and what is exciting to me is I have my own voice that is distinctly different from everyone else’s.”
In May, Ms. Augoustinos showed an original photography series by custom kitchen and cabinetry designer Paul Lazes. He used his iPhone to shoot portraits of inspirational Island women, which were printed and enlarged on vinyl. His larger than life-size portrait subjects range from farmers to rabbis to cops. Among the 38 women he’s photographed so far are singer songwriter Kate Taylor, sustainable living advocate Anna Edey, and writer Nancy Aronie.
“It was just about celebrating the series he is creating and to show what he is doing to get people interested, so that when he approaches them and says can I photograph you, they know it is part of a much larger project,” said Ms. Augoustinos. “It was about supporting the project and not trying to sell things.”
A show of new paintings by Rez Williams opens on July 18, and will include new fishing vessels in pop art colors and scenes along New York city’s Hudson River. Christopher Wright’s galactic photographs and Peigi Cole-Jolliffe’s mixed media moonscapes will be shown together starting August 1.
“I come to work and enjoy being around it all,” said Ms. Augoustinos. “Sometimes if I work late at night and am here alone with my music on I look around at the show I have on and think I am just the luckiest person.”
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