Right around the time the lilacs on Old County Road in West Tisbury begin to bloom, my car starts behaving erratically. It wants to steer itself into the parking lot of the Granary Gallery when really it should be taking me to the grocery store. It happens every year after a long, gray winter – I need a boost of color, I need a fresh outlook, I need my brain to smile. I need to go grazing at the Granary.

Apparently, I’m not the only one.

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me when people come back for the summer and tell me the first thing they did when they got off the boat was head to the Granary,” Chris Morse, owner of the Granary Gallery said recently.

It didn’t surprise me to hear that. In a world that’s constantly shifting, there’s something solid and reassuring about the rustic red barn itself. Inside, the staff is always friendly – never intimidating; a welcoming vibe in an art gallery can never be underrated. Even kids with ice cream cones are welcome, Chris said.

But what I feel most when I walk in the gallery is joy. What I feel when I leave is enriched. It’s a bit like being on a childhood field trip to the cool museum, but nothing’s behind a wall of plate glass, and there’s no one dictating how you should think of a particular piece of art. What you experience is exciting layers of color and texture and shape – different mediums side by side, but always working in sync.

The careful curation that the Granary staff works hard to achieve is designed to suggest how the art might feel in your home – alongside a stack of books, on a pine table spread with African textiles, next to a leather chair, over a mantel piece, even hanging outside in a courtyard. There is a playful air to so many displays. In one, a Jay Lagemann sculpture of a speeding bicyclist stands in front of a large Steve Mills canvas of Mad Martha’s at night with two bicycles propped up on the street outside the store.

In another vignette, objects arranged on a table – a green necklace of large African trading beads made from recycled glass, an aged pair of binoculars with a subtle verdigris coloring, an old wooden vase and the lime green of a baseball cap draw out the many shades of green, umber and gold in Mary Sipp Green’s oil painting, Cattle Barn .

In a sense, the gallery is accessorizing the art for sale with objects that anchor them. Chris will occasionally go to the famous Brimfield Antique Flea Market, which takes place three times a year in Brimfield, Mass., to poke around for pieces that he might not necessarily sell in the gallery but that help to create an aesthetic. And, of course, some of those finds are for sale too; I have a small collection of old purple glass bottles thanks to the Granary.

While the gallery is well-known, not just on the Vineyard, but around the country and internationally, for representing distinguished painters, sculptors and photographers – and for connecting collectors to the works of famed deceased artists including Thomas Hart Benton and Alfred Eisenstaedt – it supports emerging artists as well, many of whom work in surprising mediums that add richness and occasional whimsy to the gallery’s rooms, inside and out.

The three artists who will be featured in the first show of the season (opening Friday, June 27, 4 to 6 p.m.) are wonderful examples of this. In addition to painting, Steve Datz creates sculptures from found objects, designed to lure the viewer into stories of their own making.

Equally stimulating are Nancy Slonim Aronie’s mixed media works that are almost like three-dimensional poems. Each features ephemera cleverly arranged in plexiglass with just enough (usually ironic) words to get you thinking.

And Marthe Rowen’s drawings in moleskin notebooks are truly captivating. One scene, sketched in archival ink while standing in one place and turning 360 degrees, can stretch over 128 pages.

And yet nothing is ever chaotic at the Granary. I can gaze at an 88” x 122” canvas – The Promised Land by Bo Bartlett – on a huge sliding barn door in one room and transition easily into a small room where the first thing that catches my eye is a tabletop recreation of the fishing vessel Orca (of Jaws fame) by Roger Sylva.

While they make it look easy, the Granary elves work hard to create this flow, and I don’t think they ever sleep. I know because I was at the gallery twice recently – once with my pal, photographer Jeanna Shepard, who teamed up with me to document a moment in time at the Granary – and again two days later, when artwork had already shifted around. No doubt there had been sales in the interim too. (I forgot this wasn’t my personal museum – ha!)

While Jeanna and I were there, artist and Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School art teacher Kenneth Vincent came in the front door carrying two new paintings – to replace two that had sold in the previous few weeks.

What I came back to look at again was the work of Daryl Royster Alexander, particularly an evocative painting of Nancy Michael, a Vineyarder born to an enslaved person in the 1700s who became well known for her blessings and curses upon sailors. As a bonus, I got a preview of some new work David Wallis is creating, inspired by his garden. From bold nasturtiums to effervescent echinacea, these are exciting paintings to look forward to seeing in person later in the summer.

Once again, I left the Granary feeling uplifted.

Or as Chris described it, “There’s a levity to this place. The people – the artists – to be surrounded by all their beautiful work…it’s a wonderful retreat of happiness.”

 

The Granary Gallery is open 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. daily and 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Sundays.

 

Susie Middleton is editor of The Vine and Cook the Vineyard.