The Island’s principal ferry port and busiest year-round community is also home to a flourishing arts scene that’s once again gearing up for a lively summer.

Local artists, led by members of the Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District, are planning a Jaws-themed art show that will open at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum June 22 and then move to other locations in town.

First Friday Vineyard Haven, a free celebration for all ages with live music, food trucks and a street market, resumes June 6 and continues monthly through October 3.

The two-part First Friday festival begins with an outdoor art market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Beach street extension at Five Corners, then moves to Owen Park from 5 to 11 p.m. for live music, food, art vendors and a silent disco on the beach.

Island artist Althea Freeman-Miller, who owns Althea Gallery on Beach Road, and musician Andy Herr co-founded the First Friday series in 2016, inspired by similar events they’d each seen on the mainland.

During the pandemic, they kept the series going with socially-distanced gatherings, even putting musicians on a barge to entertain from offshore.

Post-Covid, First Friday has become a popular event that draws visitors from other Island towns as well as tourists. It’s co-sponsored by the Vineyard Haven Business Association, representing downtown retailers, and the Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District, which was established in 2014. “The cultural district is a designation created by the state [for] a specific geographic area,” Andy said during an interview with The Vine at his recording studio in the Stone Bank complex off Union street — more or less in the middle of the cultural district, which stretches north to include the Vineyard Haven library and Owen Park and west to encompass the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse and the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.

To the south and east, the district covers the cluster of art galleries on Beach Road; neighboring Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway, where wooden boats are built by hand with traditional tools and techniques; and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on Lagoon Pond Road.

Island fashion designer Angela Sison’s Conrado boutique, which just moved from the Stone Bank building to a more prominent Union street location, represents yet another aspect of Vineyard Haven creativity.

“It’s a cultural district with all of the culture included,” Andy said. “It’s pretty diverse.”

In late 2023, Andy and Althea joined forces with other working artists and volunteers to relaunch the Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District as a fully-fledged, tax-exempt nonprofit with the ability to both raise funds and distribute grants.

Althea now serves as president of the district board, with former Martha’s Vineyard Museum executive director Phil Wallis as vice president.

Like Althea, the other board members also are full-time artists: Elysha Roberts, a member of the Workshop Gallery collective on Beach Road, is treasurer and Taylor Stone, who works with cut paper, is clerk.

Taylor also handles the district’s public relations, speaking with town officials and networking with local business owners to plan events and activities.

This month, she’ll be looking for Vineyard Haven shops and galleries willing to show art from the Jaws exhibition after it appears at the museum.

“Our slogan is, ‘We’re going to need a bigger gallery,’” Taylor told The Vine. The Jaws show is the cultural district’s first-ever call for artworks, she said, and artists will have wide leeway to interpret the theme. “It’s ‘Jaws and the Artist’s Perspective,’” Taylor said.

Vineyard Haven artists have their eye on other firsts as well: Andy said he hopes the cultural district will be able to take over the job of booking the Katharine Cornell Theatre, which is owned by the town of Tisbury.

“It doesn’t seem like an appropriate responsibility for the town, and they have an administrative bottleneck,” he said. The district similarly could take on the job of approving busker applications from street musicians, which currently falls to the select board, Andy said.

The Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District receives some funding from the state and also raises money through sponsorships and events like a recent First Friday fund-raiser at the Portuguese American Club in Oak Bluffs.

Tisbury voters recently approved taking $14,000 from the town’s open space reserve fund for the district to create “plein aire podiums,” a set of outdoor art-making stations where passers-by can get creative; the locations and logistics are still being finalized. And Andy told The Vine he hopes a future warrant article will lead to some Tisbury funding for First Friday, as well.

“We get no money from the town to put on a free event for the town, [while] there are other cultural districts in the state that get tens of thousands of dollars from their towns to put on events like this,” he said.

While the group works towards more integration with the town, in the meantime it’s full speed ahead for the summer of 2025.

 

For more about First Friday Vineyard Haven, visit firstfridayvh.com.

 

The Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District’s new website, with map and links, is at vhhcd.org.

 

Louisa Hufstader is senior writer for the Vineyard Gazette.