Silver Linings is the theme for the next community art show at Featherstone Center for the Arts, opening April 5. The Art of Flowers follows in May.
The first Tisbury art stroll got off to a quiet start on Friday night, but no matter, the tide in this port town is changing. Dawn Braasch, owner of the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore and now president of the Tisbury Business Association, is on a mission to revitalize downtown Vineyard Haven.
And the art stroll was a good way to kick off her campaign. “It just felt like there was life again in Vineyard Haven. It was lovely,” she said.
It’s a 3-D world, and Vineyard artists are hip to that.
At artist Jeanne Staples’s upcoming exhibition at the Granary Gallery you will see Crick Hill at Menemsha, just as lovely as you know her work to be, but in addition to landscapes of Martha’s Vineyard, Staples may surprise you with some installation pieces, including a thrilling third dimension.
Look out for Eat Beets for Health and The Vodou King, a life-size double portrait of Haitian artist Wilfred Dantis. In these pieces, Ms. Staples explores her more modernist interests.
Each week of late there has been a gallery stroll at one of the down-Island towns. Excellent. Plenty of opportunity for an artist date, as Julie Cameron calls it in her book The Artist’s Way. The idea being that if you take the time out of your busy lives to experience art your own creativity will blossom.
The art is for sale, too, so if truly inspired bring the work home with you.
Don’t forget about Vineyard Haven. The town, hit by the one-two punch of the July 4, 2008 fire that destroyed Café Moxie and severely damaged the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, and the recession, has struggled to match the crowded, bustling streets of Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.
Tonight, July 15, from 5 to 8 p.m. local business leaders hope to turn things around with an event billed as an art stroll but that in fact includes a variety of businesses along Main street.
The sight of an old barn, a beacon of red in the midst of a green and yellow field, not unlike that of a lighthouse, often brings up visions of the past, and a more idyllic time when cows owned the earth and people, well, just milked them.
Artist Richard Dunbrack sees furniture.
Using recycled materials from old barns and antique oddities that have fallen from grace (he does not pillage), Mr. Dunbrack fashions whimsical yet functional furniture. Art you can take a nap in, if you will.
At the first of Edgartown’s gallery strolls this year, which will see the wine, cheese and music — oh, and don’t forget the art — spread out at four simultaneous gallery receptions on Thursday, Elizabeth Eisenhauer will be looking “to see what that little element’s going to be that’s different and unexpected.”
Each year, there’s a little bit of a difference in Edgartown’s Evening of Fine Art, according to Ms. Eisenhauer, who owns the Eisenhauer Gallery.
