The Oak Bluffs Arts District, a short and colorful stretch of businesses and homes along Dukes County avenue, was a lively scene Saturday afternoon as the summer’s first arts stroll got underway.
A three-hour, self-guided tour of galleries featuring Island artists and artisans, the stroll also gave both year-round and seasonal residents a chance to reconnect and catch up while sipping wine, nibbling snacks and ogling artworks at each stop.
At the Alison Shaw Gallery, a former one-engine firehouse, the Vineyard’s most renowned photographer who began her career at the Gazette was all smiles as she presided over a busy reception for her new show, Shoreline.
Ms. Shaw visited beaches and waterfront areas all over the Island to create the 18 images in this series, some of which are also on view at the Granary Gallery in West Tisbury.
At once arresting and contemplative, the photographs focus on both timeless and manmade elements of the Vineyard’s watery edges: a wave of rocks along Stonewall Beach, the Pay Beach jetty awash at high tide, a swirl of waves along the crumbling bluff at Lucy Vincent Beach.
A map locating where each image was captured is posted on the gallery’s website.
Outside the Shaw reception, a uniformed Oak Bluffs police officer ushered strollers across the street to Gallery Josephine, in the former Dragonfly Gallery at 91 Dukes County. Owner Nyama Wingood, who named her art space in honor of the ground-breaking Jazz Age star Josephine Baker, shows art and photography including laquered wood bowls and anatomical bronzes by Ivory Littlefield and oils by Jessica Pisano.
Adding textiles to the stroll mix, the owners of Vineyard boutiques Bananas and Once in a Blue Moon offered flowing women’s clothing and accessories at a pop-up shop outside a private home.
Across the street, where a sign over the door reads Periwinkle Gallery, longtime Island painter Judith Drew Schubert welcomed guests to her studio of 22 years.
“I like to sell paintings, but I really like people to see my paintings,” said Ms. Drew Schubert, whose current show is Coves and Cormorants. “It warms my heart.”
Pianist John Alaimo and bassist Michael Tinus performed live music outside the newest gallery on the block, the Martha’s Vineyard Center for the Visual Arts. An artist co-op with a sign outside that reads more simply Art Gallery, this rambling space presents work by 12 local artists who have received grants from the organization.
Nearly every medium is represented there, from elegant textiles and necklaces by Nancy Shaw Cramer to whimsical ceramics and driftwood furniture by Bill O’Callaghan. The gallery also invited additional artists and artisans, including the mother-daughter team behind the Kenworthy clothing line, to display their work in the shady courtyard.
The next stroll is set for August 5 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Several of the artists who took part in the July event also show their work at the Chilmark Flea Market on Saturdays and the Vineyard Artisans Festivals at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury on Sundays in July and Thursdays in August.
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