For Daniel Cooney, it began with Superperson. After spending his childhood doodling dinosaurs and imaginary creatures, Mr. Cooney took his first steps towards what would be his eventual career with the 120-issue comic featuring the “stick figure Superman.” He worked on the series from sixth grade right up through high school, penciling his friends and family into the action, and occasionally getting into trouble for drawing in class.

Today Mr. Cooney is still drawing in class, but as an instructor he’s no longer getting disapproving looks.

On the Vineyard where art galleries abound and artists abound even more, there is, it seems, art everywhere. But it’s not just traditional galleries that showcase art. Venturing off the tracks, one can encounter not only art that enchants but artists who do so as well.

This month the work of Chris Hughes is being highlighted at Mocha Mott’s in Vineyard Haven and the work of Edie Yoder at the Chilmark Library.

Artist Billy Hoff isn’t one to dissect his painting process. “I push around paint and see what happens,” he said.

This seems to be an oversimplification of his process, especially considering his painting of Bobby Driscoll, one of the pieces featured in his new show at the A Gallery in Vineyard Haven. Mr. Hoff is sharing the walls with fellow Vineyarder Lily Morris in their joint exhibit entitled Emergence which opened on Sunday.

Up the stairs to Barney Zeitz’s bedroom, light peeks in from the stained glass pieces on the wall, leaving purple and blue shadows on the wood. The railing on the right, welded by Mr. Zeitz, curves alongside the stairs until it meets his and his wife’s bedroom door.

“That’s one of the first windows I actually saved, it was a keeper,” Mr. Zeitz said of the leaded stained glass window in his room, depicting winter trees with a glowing red sun. He made it when he was 22 years old.

There’s no place like home.

Dorothy said it, and the world agreed. But the artwork of Peter Batchelder challenges the famous movie mantra. By ditching the details and accessing only the universal essence of a place, he presents “home” as somewhere that can be found almost anywhere if you know how to find what’s familiar.

Island artist Margot Datz and mermaids go hand-in-hand, or fin-in-fin, as it were.

Island artist Margot Datz and mermaids go hand-in-hand, or fin-in-fin, as it were.

Speaking before a gathering of 25 Vineyard women, most of them business owners or managers, at the Old Whaling Church on Tuesday night, the author of A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids, drew upon her metaphor of choice to bring attention to the challenges faced by the modern woman.

We often equate artists with one distinct style. But John Holladay, originally from the Midwest and for many years now a resident of Vineyard Haven, paints and illustrates with so much versatility, he’s impossible to pigeon- hole.

And yet one of his hugely successful, largely unknown artistic endeavors is now being celebrated at the Louisa Gould Gallery on Main street, Vineyard Haven. From 1980 to 2000 he was licensed to paint the official artwork for NBA, NFL and college sports teams, work that later appeared on posters, shirts and jigsaw puzzles.

A Sag Harbor landscape artist has turned her attention to making shark tournaments on Long Island and on the Vineyard more environmentally friendly.

April Gornik is raising money to pay for and provide free circle hooks to fishing captains who participate in this month’s 24th annual 2010 Monster Shark Tournament in Oak Bluffs. The tournament is July 22 through July 24.

The year is 1980. Two men meet from wildly different backgrounds. J.B. Riggs Parker is a Philadelphia lawyer and investment banker who has jumped out of the rat race to move to Martha’s Vineyard. Island native Donald Poole, closing in on his ninth decade, is continuing his lifelong pursuit of building the perfect round wooden lobster pot, in an age when plastic is taking over the industry.

War is a force that gives her meaning.