When a group show opens at Featherstone Center for the Arts, it’s always a party. When 22 photographers and a dozen Island conservation agencies team up for an opening, it becomes a major community event.
Hundreds of people came through Featherstone’s Francine E. Kelly Gallery Saturday evening to celebrate the introduction of a new smartphone application for hikers on Martha’s Vineyard, illustrated with a trove of landscape photographs donated by nearly two dozen artists including Alison Shaw, Barbara Reynolds, Jeanna Shepard, Alice June Thompson and Max Skjöldebrand.
Many of the images from the app are both on display and for sale at the new Featherstone show, titled Explore the Vineyard: 22 Island Photographers Introduce TrailsMV. The exhibition is on display daily through June 17, from noon to 4 p.m.
With interactive maps for more than 100 conservation properties around the Island, the TrailsMV app was released on Saturday, which was both the American Hiking Society’s National Trails Day and the day of the Vineyard’s annual cross-Island hike.
Jennifer and Jonathan Blum, seasonal Edgartown residents who helped fund the development of TrailsMV, tried the new app for the first time as they set out on the guided hike Saturday morning.
“We had the paper map, but we couldn’t zoom in on it,” Ms. Blum said at the Featherstone reception. The app made it possible for the couple to zoom in closely on their immediate area, then zoom back out to see an overview, she said.
The Blums’ favorite feature of the app, they both said, is that it works without cell phone reception or Wi-Fi.
“I wanted to be able to take lots of pictures on the hike, so I put my phone in airplane mode. It really saves the battery,” Ms. Blum said.
“It’s a great feature,” her husband added.
Chilmark selectman Warren Doty also downloaded TrailsMV, but said at the reception that he didn’t need it on the cross-Island hike because, with some 120 people in the group, all he needed to do was follow the crowd.
A project of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, the new app represents a collaboration between all 12 of the organizations that conserve land on Martha’s Vineyard, including towns, Island-based agencies, the state of Massachusetts and regional and international groups such as Mass Audubon, the Trustees of Reservations and the Nature Conservancy. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission assisted with geographic information systems needed for the interactive maps.
At Saturday’s reception, guests who streamed through the doors of the Featherstone Art Barn were greeted by Sheriff’s Meadow executive director Adam Moore, who started working on the app in 2015, and project manager Kate Warner, who shepherded it through development to release.
Mr. Moore, Ms. Blum and James Lengyel, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, were among several people at the Featherstone opening who had come directly from that afternoon’s memorial service on Chappaquiddick for conservation icon Edith Welch “Edo” Potter. Mr. Lengyel had also led part of the cross-Island hike in the morning.
The TrailsMV app is currently available only for the iPhone, but a version for the Android operating system is expected later in the season. Anyone who spots errors in the app should contact Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, Mr. Moore said.
On June 12, Sheriff’s Meadow staff will conduct a guided walk in the Southern Woodlands Reservation, a land bank property adjacent to Featherstone Farm, to teach hikers how the new app works. The group will meet outside the Featherstone Art Barn at 10 a.m. For more information, call 508-693-5207.
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