Stone's Superstars
Being an islander is a special thing, and being a special islander - well, that's the stuff of which local celebrity is made. And local celebrities, people who make the social microcosm

Above: Hannah Stone on her Twister drop cloth, along with a portrait of decorative painter Audrey Sterk (top) and a self-portrait (below). Below: Stone's recent portrait of architect Joe Paul and retailer Sabina Liebmann includes an ink trail between her mind and his heart as a symbol of their connection. Liebmann commissioned the piece for Paul's birthday.

on island thrive, are the subjects

of Nantucket artist Hannah Stones' latest series, going up with a glitter-fueled bang at Cambridge Street on Tuesday night.

"Every artist paints Nantucket, and I've wanted to offer something as well. So I was thinking about it, and the thing that I love about Nantucket is the people," said Stone, 34. "Nantucket is so focused on the rich and the famous and the celebrity, but they're not the people who live here. ... So I thought I'd paint local celebs, the people you see here and there all the time and notice." The show will consist of 14 portraits of recognizable

Brace face: Stone captured Cambridge Street doorman and Nantucket Independent writer Peter Brace exactly as most of us see him.

island faces - including red afro-ed Cape Cod delivery agent Kennedy Richardson, talented American Seasons head chef Michael LaScola, giant Cambridge Street doorman (and Independent writer) Peter Brace and affable singer-songwriter Amy Hunt England.

England will be performing at Cambridge on the night of the opening, as will the island band The Undergraduates. To celebrate the show, Cambridge Street will also have a special $20 prix fixe menu, in addition to its normally operating cash bar.

After focusing on animals and inanimate objects, Stone painted her first Nantucket portrait of Cambridge Street chef Garfield Winters over one year ago. "That was the first one I did of a person. I'd been doing cats and dogs until then. And I realized that I enjoyed painting people," Stone said. This show marks her re-incarnation as a portrait artist accepting commissioned works (ranging in cost form $600- 1,000 and requiring three weeks for completion).

"Whenever I paint someone, I want them to look like a superstar or a superhero," she said. Fun and quirkiness are Stone's bacon and potatoes. Working with liquid acrylic ink, Stone creates portraits that bleed energy in excited neurons of bold colors, created by blowing out the ink. The glitter she uses to accent each portrait is like an exclamation point on the person's "recognizability." The result is punk rock on canvas - a celebrity makeover for every person, writ large and in saturated color.

The concept is best executed, Stone said, by using a photo of the person in an exuberant and unselfconscious display of their own personality: "I feel like my whole style is energetic, and if I can capture an energetic moment just right, it enhances the style of the painting."

As examples, she noted two portraits of close friends - decorative painter Audrey Sterk and musician Amy Hunt England - which Stone had hanging in her kitchen-cum-studio a week before the show.

"In Audrey's portrait, she had just fallen in love with this idea, and she was telling the story and coming alive, and I wanted to get a picture of that moment, when she was uninhibited," Stone said. "In Amy's portrait, she was onstage and she had just cracked the crowd up, so she was totally excited, and it was her third song, so she was totally relaxed."

For her portraits of couples, Stone said she likes to use photos of the pair interacting with one another, so that the physical affection resonates with each trajectory of ink.

Many of the subjects are people Stone knows well - including LaScola, whom Stone calls "a humble genius" (and also her boss - she waits tables at American Seasons). But some of them she knows only peripherally - as many of us on the island know them. Stone first spotted Kennedy Richardson playing pool at a local bar. "He's got a big red afro and beard, and now I see him all the time, hopping out of the van and doing a delivery with his crazy, wild hair."

Knowing them or not, Stone said she "definitely falls in love a little bit" with everyone she paints.

The colorful and glamorous renderings are sometimes a little bit shocking for the subjects to see unveiled. Stone's painting of Brace debuted at the ARTiculations exhibit during Arts Festival and has been hanging at Cambridge Street ever since - it has been remarkably well received, but the sight was initially a bit shocking to Brace.

"It's weird seeing a reflection of yourself in something other than a mirror," Brace said. "Everyone who had already seen it kept coming up to me and saying, 'You've got to see it. It's so cool.' I was very nervous when I first went up to the wall to see it, but I was really impressed. It's very complimentary, and I was quite pleased that she didn't show the jowls or the gray hair or the gut. She even did all the highlights up top in purple, which is my favorite color, and I didn't tell her that."

ARTiculations organizer Sandy Walsh was adjusting the labels on paintings when Brace came around the corner and saw himself for the first time. "It was amazing," Walsh said. "His face was priceless. I don't know how to explain it. ...It was like he was recognizing someone and then realizing it was himself."

Stone said that Brace's reaction was typical. "People are immediately excited and flattered, but then all of a sudden very self-conscious about it," Stone said. "When you see a photo of yourself or your own reflection, you interpret it the way you see yourself, but when you see your portrait, it's a completely different perspective. Most people are really excited about it, but also a little bit shocked."

The subject of local celebrities and Stone's technique are working in excellent synergy. This conflation of everyday people with celebrity stature is one that would lose its potency any place else in America, in a sense. A city like Manhattan would be too big, and a small town in the middle of the mainland still feeds into other communities. Maybe Stone picked up on this because she is quite intimate with island culture; she was born in New Zealand and lived for four years on St. John in the Virgin Islands before moving to Nantucket.

"There's something about being stuck 30 miles out that makes the community here different," Stone said. "When the planes stop flying and the food stops coming, we bond in a way that mainland small town people don't."

I

HANNAH STONE'S "LOCAL CELEBS" The full list of people on display during the exhibit will be couple Trish and Tim Collette (owners, Cambridge Street); couple Joe Paul and Sabina Liebmann (married 13 years); carpenter and musician Al Luterer; website designer and DJ Tony Camila; chef Michael LaScola; bartender and waitress Caty Vaneyck; arts editor Joel Silverstein; reporter Peter Brace; singersongwriter Amy England; chef Garfield Winters; retailer Clay Twombly; Real Estate agent Brian Sullivan; decorative painter Audrey Sterk; deliveryman Kennedy Richardson; writer and photographer Gene Mahon; guitarist Kevin Sutton; and Cambridge Street mascot (and dog) Maggie Collette.

When: Tuesday, Nov. 14, 6-9 p.m. Where: Cambridge Street, 12 Cambridge St. Cost: $20 prix fixe meal; cash bar For more information on the exhibit, call Cambridge Street at 228-7109. For more on Hannah Stone, call 774-236-9585 or go to www.gohannahstone.com.