THE ARTS
MARLI GUZZETTA
The Nantucket arts community has come quite a ways since the days when artists battled with the elements to plant their easels in the relatively undeveloped sands, and 2006 has been nothing but proof of this. So much so that the drum beat for a new arts center on Nantucket increased substantially in volume and tempo — beginning with a spring Town vote in favor of allowing an arts center to be built on the property at 2 Fairgrounds Road. It’s a project that could be assisted by new grant monies from the Massachusetts Cultural Council specifically for the construction of cultural facilities.

But let’s formally begin this year-end review where it all began, with the artists and the galleries, which are still very much at the heart of Nantucket’s draw.

“The openings this year had a spirit better than previous years, particularly South Wharf,” said Nantucket social documentarian Gene Mahon. “It seems like every year, the art has gotten better, and the clientele has increased. But it seemed this past year was a bigger leap.”

Galleries moved and grew and opened this year. Nantucket’s downtown saw the opening of Quidley & Co., while Old South Wharf welcomed the Field of Dreams Gallery, whose purpose was to represent artists from Nantucket and those pursuing subjects far-field from the island’s prevailing tastes. Cavalier Galleries moved to Main Street, while Robert Wilson re-located his galleries from one Main Street location to another. Meanwhile, a venerated anchor gallery on the wharf, South Wharf Galleries, finished what would be its last summer season at its old location and moved its operations to its new, downtown space. More downtown additions included the Meridien Galleries and the re-located Brigham Galleries, which served as a home-base for various community-oriented exhibits and events, in addition to its own shows — including a wine tasting with a fabulous live reading of Poe stories by costumed Nantucket actors on Halloween, hosted by the Nantucket Arts Council.

Another of these exhibits included a show of

original works inspired by the Loring property — 270 acres of undeveloped land owned by Linda Loring. The Nantucket Land Council hopes to purchase the conservation rights on this land in early 2007, and to this effect, the NLC hosted two projects in concert with local artists in an effort to raise awareness and money (over $12,500).

Top of page, from left: The Women’s Chorus of Nantucket, established in January and directed by Marcia Hempel; Rachel Dowling, Jeremy Pochman and Dwight Beman in TWN’s September show “The Graduate”; Jamie Cholaki and Adam Skogen rehearsing for “The Name of the Play is Talking Heads,” directed and produced on island by Kate Splaine in August. Above, from left: Claire Minihan as Snoopy in NHS’s March performance of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”; Alison Buchbinder, Chris Lind and Ciaran Byrne in TWN’s April staging of Christopher Durang’s “Beyond Therapy”; Jim Nettles, host of a retrospective show at the New School on his late wife, tapestry artist Margareta Nettles.

“We parented these two projects because we wanted to reach out to a community that we don’t currently have a relationship with and because there’s already a longstanding history of artists painting open spaces and being inspired by Nantucket’s natural environment,” explained Elisabeth Hazell, membership coordinator for the NLC. “So it was only natural to create a series of events around that connection.”

The aforementioned event at the Brigham Galleries, “The Loring Project,” invited Nantucket artists onto the pristine Loring property, where few are generally allowed, to create works inspired by the surroundings. The second, “From the Wetlands to the Wall” asked island artists to collect beach trash and use it as media for a recycled arts show, which exhibited at the Artists’ Association of Nantucket’s Joyce & Seward Johnson Gallery this fall.

The Artists Association reclaimed some ground of its own this year, bringing back its annual Sidewalk Sale at the gallery this spring with artists including Elle Foley, Gerry Scheide, Julia Mostykanova and Linda Zola. “Many of the artists and patrons who later formed the AAN began their friendships at the annual August sidewalk gathering, which was one of the first, if not the first, organized outdoor art events in the country,” said AAN Gallery Director Bobby Frazier of the event that began in the 1950s. The AAN also hosted another successful wet paint benefit with Rafael Osona and found a temporary home at the Cottage Hospital for pieces of its long-stored-away permanent collection. The AAN added a new computer lab, expanded its ceramics studio and created a new outdoor workshop at its main workshop at 1 Gardner Perry Lane.

The early summer festivals for wine and film enjoyed healthy turnouts. One of the highlights of The Nantucket Wine Festival was a barrel tasting of the imminent classic 2005 Bordeaux, with a half dozen French vintners in attendance. The 11th Annual Nantucket Film Festival, operated without the use of the Dreamland Theatre (which remained closed this year) and focused largely on documentaries. It also awarded screenwriting duo Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (“Election,” “About Schmidt,” “Sideways”) with the NBC Universal Screenwriter Tribute. The cast of the Oscar awardwinning film “Sideways” was on hand for the tribute.

Another successful Boston Pops beachside performance notwithstanding, the summer season on island offered a pretty impressive slate.

The Nantucket Atheneum’s Geschke Lecture Series brought in NPR president Kevin Klose, New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson, CBS news correspondent Leslie Stahl, NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert and rising CBS nightly news anchor Katie Couric to speak on the media’s role in society. Months before she became the first female nightly news anchor in American history, Couric spoke as the first annual Constance Laibe Hays Memorial Lecturer. The lecture honors deceased New York Times reporter and summer resident Connie Hays.

Circus Flora returned to Tom Nevers this summer, The Nantucket Musical Arts Society brought in The Brazilian Guitar Quartet and pianist Christopher Riley among others, and peace activist Cindy Sheehan highlighted the Unitarian Church’s summer speaker series.

The island’s Shakespeare by the Sea festival welcomed a revival of the “Wit and Wisdom of Will’s Women” (a show by island actors incorporating original female characters and dialogue from Shakespearean plays) as well as a performance of “As You Like It” by Shakespeare on the Cape — weeks before the company would receive a full- page feature in The New York Times. The festival happened under the aegis of the Nantucket Arts Council.

During the last days of september, the NAC also hosted its annual Nantucket Arts Festival at Preservation Institute: Nantucket. “For this year’s festival, we really had more activity within PI:N — with the Live and Local and Trunk Shows. We also updated the exhibit by opening it up to different media,” said NAC board member Sandy Walsh, who also hosted the last performance at theSpace, an artistic and community-minded studio formerly located on Amelia Drive. (A private business bought the unit.)

“I do believe this unique center, which offered a diverse program of classes and workshops, live musical events, local art exhibits and an affordable venue for meetings and lectures, will someday find a new space somewhere on the island, to once again inspire and educate the Nantucket community and its visitors,” Walsh said.Another high point of the summer was the 50th Anniversary Gala of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket, which enjoyed a particularly strong first year as the sole theatre organization on island. In addition to a successful Short Play Series (won by playwright John Bohane for “Interrupted Memories”) and standing-roomonly shows early in the summer, TWN made several milestones this year. TWN’s “Over the River,” a comedy about a young man trying to find independence from his Italian-American family, became the TWN’s highest grossing show of all time; while its production of the stage adaptation of “The Graduate” became the first show to sell out every single night of its run, including a night when the power went out.

The fall ushered in a few changes for the TWN. Artistic Director Jane Karakula announced that she would be concentrating on show selection, directing and management efforts for the summer season only, causing the TWN to begin a search for a Producing Director to help with administration, fundraising and organizing the many workshops they’d like to implement in 2007, including more

children’s theater and classes, a lighting workshop and intern and volunteer programs to facilitate more community involvement.

“I feel really good about all we’ve accomplished, the quality of the productions Jane selects and oversees, the volume and quality of our marketing efforts and the resulting increased attendance,” said TWN President Pam Murphy. “We’re ready to grow more and meet other needs of the community.

Some of the most memorable performances of the year didn’t happen in the summer, including the performance by Alvin Ailey II at the Nantucket High School Auditorium in October, and the rousing electric guitar piece that won Kerry Kathleen Fee the title of Nantucket’s Junior Miss in November.

And some great performances by Nantucketers didn’t occur on the stage at all.

Developer Mark Goldweitz worked with builder Chris Skehel, Gallery at Four India owner Kathleen Knight and Mary Beth Keane of Wayne Pratt Antiques to renovate and redecorate the historic East Brick, which was built by island whaleship merchant Joseph Starbuck for his son, William, in 1838. (While working with the home’s high-quality American art, Knight determined the identity of an unknown little girl in an Eastman Johnson painting to be the artist’s daughter.)

Several island authors, including Nancy Thayer and Elin Hildebrand, published new books this year. But the island writer garnering the most attention was National Book Award-winner Nat Philbrick, whose historical account of the heretofore overlooked violence and discord between pilgrims and Native Americans, entitled “Mayflower,” spent over 18 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and earned a spot on The New York Times Books Review’s Top 10 of 2006, as well as on nearly a dozen respected others. Philbrick is also the founding director of the Egan Foundation, whose Mill Hill Press re-published the second of belated island historian Edouard A. Stackpole’s children’s adventure novels, “You Fight For Treasure! The Egan Foundation also saw the realization of

its “Life on the Line” exhibit — based on thorough first-hand research of the island’s fishing community throughout the centuries.

The Nantucket Historical Association also revealed ‘new artifacts’ of Nantucket’s history with its ‘Signs of the Times’ exhibit: a collection of old Nantucket business signs that had been recently unearthed from a Nantucketer’s storage facility.

Top of page, from left: Speaker and peace activist Gary Hicks at an Martin Luther King, Jr. observance at the Summer Street Church in January; Mark Carapezza, Eric Schultz, Patricia Till and Jetti Ames in TWN’s “Over the River”; Cellist Mollie Glazer and a young artist. Above, from left: Egan Foundation Curator Jascin Leonardo Finger on a dory boat used in the exhibit “Life on the Line: Four Centuries of Fishing Nantucket”; Advocates for a new arts center — columnist and social documentarian Gene Mahon, NAC President Reggie Levine, ballet instructor Giovanna LaPaglia, TWN President Pam Murphy and AAN Gallery Director Bobby Frazier; Natives and sisters Bessie and Caitlin McDonough-Thayer on Children’s Beach, where they produced a September “guerilla dance” festival free to Nantucket families.

In the interest of making the old new, the NHA opened up its historic 1800 House this June for its new series of early American arts and crafts classes, and held a standing-room-only Gam with several members of the Gifford family, who were children on board the Italian luxury liner the Andrea Doria on the night of its collision with the Swedish ship Stockholm just off the Nantucket coast. The NHA held the Gam to commemorate the collision’s 50th anniversary.

But the NHA was making additions to its own (future) history this year with a series of promotions and hires: Peter J. Greenhalgh became the NHA’s new Public Relations, Publications and Membership Manager. Acting curator Ben Simons was named the new Robyn and John Davis Curator of Collections, beginning Jan. 1. Mark Wilson was named to a new position as Manager of Historic Resources, beginning on Jan. 1. Jeffery S. Bowen came on board as Assistant Membership Coordinator. And Connecticut native William J. Tramposch became the new Executive Director of the NHA.

As some doors are still left to open (or build) in the arts community, some have closed. Book store Brant Point Books and longstanding music store Musicall both turned in their keys this year, and their owners will be missed in the commercial bustle of town. But as the old tenet goes, when God closes a business, he opens another one — or at least that’s sure to be the case on Nantucket in 2007, when new and old generations of artists and art lovers will continue to ebb and flow on this little island 30 miles off of the Massachusetts coast.

Happy New Year, Nantucket, and thanks for welcoming this arts editor with open harbors since I washed ashore in April.

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