PREVIOUS SHOWS

with Guest Curators: Elizabeth Whelan and Stina Sayre

Island and seasonal artists and artisans works are inspired by the Periodic Table of Elements.
Each participating artist/artisan has selected a single element (Carbon, Zinc, Krypton, etc.)
as a jumping-off point for their own creation, which is adventurous!

Show will continue through September 15 with the
Francine Kelly Gallery open each day from 12 - 4PM

CONVERSATIONS IN ART | July 28 - August 18 | Opening Reception: Sunday, July 28 from 4-6PM
CONVERSATIONS IN ART presents three visual dialogs by three pairs of artists in painting,
photography and mixed media installation.

Read about Louisa Hufstader's article Teaming Up for Artistic Conversations in the Vineyard Gazette here.

Leslie Baker

Anne Besse-Shepherd

Michael Rottman

Gavin Smith

Justen Ahren

Mila Lowe

2019

Augmented Reality Art - June 30 through July 14 (Closed July 4th)

Augmented Reality Art: Hollow Point by Nancy Baker Cahill and Incoming Tide: Edgartown Light by John Craig Freeman with Guest Curator George Fifield, Director of Boston Cyberarts. Also part of the exhibit, AUTHOR by a canary torsi, presented in collaboration with The Yard.

Featherstone and Boston Cyberarts are excited to present HOLLOW POINT: NANCY BAKER CAHILL. Los Angeles artist, Nancy Baker Cahill is a visual artist whose works encompass drawing, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR.) She is the creator of 4th Wall, a free app available for Android and iOS that allows viewers to scale, rotate, move through, place and record her VR drawings-translated-into-AR drawings & hologram, and to walk or teleport through her LA studio in 360º.
Nancy says about her work, "My move to digital drawing in three dimensions is a natural extension of what began (and continues) on paper. It allows for an empathic and immersive expansion of my ideas as well as the ability to introduce traditional drawing into an uncharted technological arena. This juxtaposition of analog and digital technology in a shared space underscores the idea of tension within

one body and the conflict this provokes both formally and emotionally." Baker Cahill was born and raised in Boston and is a graduate of Brookline High School and Williams College. Solo exhibition highlights include the Pasadena Museum of California Art, her Virtual Reality (VR) public art project on the IF (Innovation Foundation) sponsored Sunset Digital Billboards, and a VR/AR event at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) in April 2018. She has been profiled by Forbes Magazine, ARTnews, Fast Company, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Art Newspaper, ZDNet, and The Los Angeles Times. She was a speaker at TEDx Pasadena, discussing AR art as a tool to create equity and access. She has recently become the subject of a Bloomberg Media series Art + Technology video.

JOHN CRAIG FREEMAN is an artist with over two decades of experience using emergent technologies to produce large-scale public work at sites where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. With his work, Freeman seeks to expand the notion of public by exploring how digital networked technology is transforming our sense of place.In the late 1980s, Freeman moved to Colorado to pursue an MFA at the University of Colorado. Before he arrived, a group of

environmentalists known as Citizens Against Billboards on Highway 93 had organized a successful boycott against a group of billboard that were lined up in a row, just outside the front gates of the Rocky Flats plant. The ads, located along one of the most scenic parts of the drive along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, were considered an eyesore. Plutonium contamination is, of course, invisible.
Unable to convince local businesses to advertise on the billboards, the owner was driven out of business and the billboard structures stood empty for several years. Freeman recognized the billboards potential for public art and began making proposals using early Macintosh desktop computing technology. After convincing the owner to loan the structures for the project, Greenpeace got wind of the project and offered to fund it.

AUTHOR is a participatory video installation by the New York City interdisciplinary collaborative, a canary torsi. It is part of a trilogy of works - CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR - that draws from a collection of audio and video recordings generated with fifteen accomplished NYC performing artists speaking honestly and intimately about casting and the complexities of representation. Featherstone Center for the Arts and The Yard are partnering to bring two pieces of the trilogy to audiences at Martha's Vineyard this summer.
AUTHOR invites each visitor to the gallery to interact with the 15 performers through a text-based computer game. Forming a poetically mediated stream-of-conscious between visitors and the text and video recordings generated by the project’s 15 performers, visitors navigate their relationship to the performers' language and images. Resulting in strangely on-point, absurd surprising exchanges, the algorithm of the game invites the author to discover their own voice inside the machine, while in "conversation" with the personal material of 15 performers.
AUTHOR originally premiered at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn, NY in September 2017.
More information can be found at this link.
CAST is a performance by four of the 15 performers that created the trilogy. At each performance, a new, computer-generated script is culled from transcripts of the audio recordings that also make up AUTHOR. The performers receive the never-before-seen script in front of the audience and perform it for the first time in their presence. Upcoming performances of CAST at The Yard will take place July 18 and 20, 2019.

A CANARY TORSI
In 2009, choreographer Yanira Castro formed the interdisciplinary collaborative a canary torsi, an anagram of her name.
a canary torsi's work examines the moment of encounter between public bodies: performer and audience. We investigate issues at the foundation of performance: what brings us together, the nature of the space we inhabit, and how every aspect of our convergence is loaded with cultural, social, historical and personal choices that inform who we are, how we form meaning and how power is structured. The indeterminate performative systems we develop often utilize technology as a catalyst of spontaneous structures, patterns, and instructions to complicate authorship, ensure multiplicity and to impart the work with unpredictability.
Ranging from immersive dance environments to responsive video installations and online archives, a canary torsi explores the relationship between spectator and event, developing scenarios where the audience’s presence dramatically impacts the outcome of the work.

BIOGRAPHY
Yanira Castro is a Puerto Rican born, interdisciplinary artist making work in New York. Castro’s work borrows from dance, performance, theater, and visual art often utilizing interactive technology to form hybrid projects. The work takes different forms — performances, installations, online and site-based projects — developing scenarios that places the public in unique relationships to the work.
Her work has been commissioned and presented in New York City by The Chocolate Factory Theater, Abrons Arts Center, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Danspace Project and Dance Theater Workshop. Her work has toured nationally and internationally including to the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Vermont Performance Lab, The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), The Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, SPACE Gallery and the Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College. She is a 2018-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Resident Artist, 2018 Yaddo Fellow and Marble House Project AIR, 2017 Gibney DiP Resident Artist, 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellow, and a 2017-2015 participant of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life program. She received a 2009 "Bessie" award for Dark Horse/Black Forest presented by Performance Space 122 in the lobby restroom of The Gershwin Hotel. The archive for her participatory performance project, The People to Come (thepeopletocome.org), was featured in The New Museum’s exhibit, Performance Archiving Performance, in 2013. In 2018, she collaborated with choreographer Melinda Ring on a version of Simone Forti’s Dance Construction, See Saw, for the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit, Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done.
In June 2019, she premiered a new, public art work, now.here.this, for the Prague Quadrennial alongside longtime collaborator Kathy Couch. Her next evening-length work, Last Audience, a work made with the audience, will premiere in October 2019 at New York Live Arts.

Website: acanarytorsi.org
Instagram: @acanarytorsi
Facebook: @acanarytorsi

COMMUNITY YOUTH ART SHOW | June 2 - 23
Join us as we celebrate the creativity of our young people! Featuring art work from the students and alumni of Garden Gate Child Development Center, the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School and the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School.

THE ART OF FLOWERS May 12 - May 22
Our annual Art of Flowers Show was colorful and a welcome way to celebrate spring. Our guest curator, Holly Alaimo, always puts together a fun, delightful and very inspiring collection of artists in various media.

SILVER AND GOLD April 7- May 5
Gold leaf, silver gelatin prints, metal art, gold pendants, silver bracelets and more - the "ores of the earth" serve as inspiration. Show us what you can do with the magical elements of Ag and Au. All media was showcased.

FEATHER AND STONE March 10 - March 31
In honor of our great name, we sought art that included feathers and/or stones. From birds to rock walls, stone towers to feather charms, their artistic interpretation of these images in any art discipline were welcome.

MY ONE AND ONLY FEBRUARY 11 - March 3
Original works of art, not previously exhibited at Featherstone. Artwork in all forms from paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculpture, photography, ceramics, jewelry to fiber arts, one of a kind pieces fill the Francine Kelly Gallery. Read more: Martha's Vineyard Times and Vineyard Gazette

2018

HOLIDAY GIFT SHOW November 17 - December 16
The ever popular Holiday Gift Show returns for its 16th year in the Art Barn! An array of handmade gifts by local artists fill the gallery... ceramics, knitwear, gift cards, paintings, photography, jewelry, pillows, dog treats and more! Take care of holiday shopping while supporting local artists and Featherstone (participating artists donate 50% of sales to Featherstone!).

THE ART OF BOAT BUILDING October 14 - November 11
This unique show about the beauty and art of boat building is co-curated by Nat Benjamin co-owner of Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway and photographer Alison Shaw and Tom Dunlop, co-creators of the book Schooner, with contributions from boat builders Phil Hale (MV Shipyard) and Rick Brown (Far Cry Boats). Visitors to the exhibit will follow the process of building a wooden boat from design to launch. In the course of their journey they will learn some of the history of boat building on Martha’s Vineyard, gain an understanding of the engineering that goes into creating these magnificent vessels, and get to know some of the unique personalities who helped make boat building the iconic Vineyard industry it has become.
Read more: Martha's Vineyard Times and Vineyard Gazette

FEATHERSTONE ARTIST TEACHERS' SHOW September 9 - October 7
View the creations of Featherstone's instructors - paintings, photography, ceramics, jewelry and more highlight the work of our dedicated teachers. Read more: Martha's Vineyard Times

THE BEAUTIFUL DIFFERENCE August 12 - September 3
with Guest Curator Sandra Grymes
Guest Curator Sandra Grymes is compiling a fantastic body of work from 25 nationally recognized artists of African decent, representing a broad spectrum of artistic practice. Read more: Martha's Vineyard Times

ABBE, LOWE, PRIZER July 22 - August 8
This show will highlight artists of the Hart Haven neighborhood, featuring the artwork of William Abbe, Sanford Low and Douglas Prizer. Guest Curators, Caryl Dearing and Sam Low.

THE COLOR PURPLE June 24 - July 15
Celebrate the Pantone Color of the Year!

EXPLORING THE VINEYARD June 2* - June 17
Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation will launch the TRAILSMV App this June and will celebrate with a public photography show, entitled “Exploring the Vineyard: 22 island photographers introduce TRAILSMV.” The show will debut on Saturday, June 2nd, National Trails Day, in the new Art Barn's Francine Kelly Gallery. Guest Curator, Sheriff's Meadow Foundation.

THE ART OF FLOWERS May 13 - 28
Featherstone's annual Art of Flowers show proves to be a popular exhibit for both artists and visitors. 70 artists participated in 2017, which undoubtably will grow this year with the new Francine Kelly Gallery as the backdrop. An open community art show with novice to professional artists submitting work, it is a lovely way to ring in spring with the opening reception on Mother's Day. Guest Curator, Holly Alaimo.

RELICS AND RARITIES // POP UP SHOW // April 27 - April 29
A special weekend long pop up show featuring antiques, jewelry, furniture, art, estate finds and more!

BIRDS AND BIRDHOUSES April 8- April 25
ART IS FOR THE BIRDS! and BIRDHOUSES!
So let’s give Alfred Hitchcock a run for his money and fill the Francine Kelly Gallery with birds of all different feathers! Paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture, collage, prints, clothing, jewelry, etc! The possibilities are as endless as the plumage... Birdhouses rustic to regal. A cottage for a Carolina wren, a McMansion for a Martin.

BACKWARDS AND IN HIGH HEELS March 11 - April 1
In celebration of all things female and women-oriented! The show will include images of the female figure, female portraits, photographs of women and a host of other images and media that celebrate woman.

DOG WILD February 11 - March 4
A fun community art show to start the year off, observing the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dog. Artwork in all mediums, including painting, drawing, photography, mixed media, ceramics and sculpture.

2018 Special Shows in the Farmhouse Gallery

ANONYMOUS ART August 25
Small Art Big Fun. A special one night fundraising event involving 6"x6" anonymous artwork.

DIALOGS: COMMUNICATION THROUGH CREATIVITY, A CONVERSATION WITH MATERIALS June 8 - 24
A collaborative art show with students from Garden Gate Child Development Center and Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School.

MVRHS PHOTOGRAPHER'S SOCIETY DEBUT May 13 - May 20
Photography show featuring the work of high school students Tyla Packish, Daniel Rivard and Davin Tackabury.