Featherstone Celebrates Permanent Collection

Featherstone Center for the Arts kicks off its celebration of its 15th anniversary year by bringing together the works in its Permanent Collection for the first time. From now until February 23, the collection of 38 watercolors, giclées, acrylics, ceramics and stained glass—just to name a few—take center stage in the Virginia Besse Gallery.

The artists in the collection—David Wallis, Gretchen Feldman, John Holladay—read like a who’s who of the Island arts scene. But it is not due to their reputation that these artists are a part of the collection. Rather, it is because of their relationship to Featherstone.

Each of the artists in the collection has been either a teacher or a student at the arts center—and many still are, said Featherstone director Ann Smith. “There is nothing better than mentoring ones own,” she said. Featherstone “is not only a place where artists can show their work, but also a place that continues to nurture the next generation of Vineyard artists, while giving the established artists a way to work in their professions.”

Featherstone’s students start with three year olds, “and go all the way up to 93, or even 103, at this point,” joked Smith. The Teen Program offers free art classes to high school students, many of whom walk through the back pathways directly after school to take classes from such artists as Nancy Blank, whose “Grapes Bowl” is part of the collection. Even famed painter Allen Whiting can be found taking—yes that’s taking, not teaching—life-drawing classes at Featherstone on any given week. He is planning a retrospective of his work here this summer in celebration of Featherstone’s anniversary.

Featherstone and ceramics teacher Scott Campbell fired his pieces on display in Featherstone’s own brick-oven kiln, just on the other side of the Dawn Greeley Memorial Garden. Greeley’s “Landscape” hangs not far from Whiting’s “Sheep.”

The show is set up to convey a teacher-as-student and student-as-artist theme. Helen Browning took classes in pastels at Featherstone from John DiMestico. Her “Landscape” pastel now hangs next to his aptly named “Featherstone.”

Roberta Gross, who is currently teaching a class at Featherstone called “When Words are Not Enough: The Union of Writing and Painting in Abstract Painting,” has a collograph in the collection called “Carouse.l” It is a marked detour from soft Vineyard landscapes, and shows the wide variety of styles of the artists who are a part of this community.

“We like to think we turn the light bulb on for the arts here on the island,” said Smith. The Featherstone Center for the Arts Permanent Collection shows it’s burning bright, right here in our own dearly loved backyard.

The Featherstone Center for the Arts Permanent Collection is on display February 13-23. The Virginia Weston Besse Gallery is open daily, noon–4 p.m.