For 20 years, artist Kerry Hallam has been keeping tabs on Your friends & neighbors
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
Kerry Hallam's sketchbooks are the stuff of local celebrity - documenting the faces and ocassional artifacts that have constituted this island's history for the last three decades.

Left: Bill and Louise Hourihan.

After an Odysseyan romp around Europe for most of his young adult life, Hallam arrived on Nantucket for the first time in 1974 and quickly began committing the island to the memory within his notebooks. Hallam selected over 200 of his favorite images and self-published them in a coffee tablesized book, "Nantucket Notables," which he shares with the island at a small reception at the Cromartie Gallery this week.

"They're not intended to be portraits so much as rough sketches of the character of the person," said the artist from his home in Surfside, while smoking a mail-ordered Gitane.

Each sketch has its own page, and none of them are titled; readers have to turn to the back of the book for a full index of the people memorialized. The result of this layout is that the book becomes something like a little quiz, begging the viewer to make his or her best attempt at recent island history.

Right: Ethan Philbrick

"The thing that makes Nantucket a great place to be are the people. The place is beautiful, but anywhere it's the same. It's the people who make the place tick," Hallam said. "The thing I like about Nantucket more than anywhere else I've been is that there's less prejudice in Nantucket. I'm sure there's prejudice here, like any other place. But for the most part, it's pretty liberal and people are makewelcome."

In the spirit of this open-mindedness, the characters in the book are smiling - their faces welcoming and their backgrounds colorful.

"When you arrive here, you're basically accepted on your face value," he adde,. "which is not the same with every place I've been.

So Hallam has returned the favor to Nantucket, depicting it at the kind of face value that will allow other Nantucketers to feel familiar with this island, which becomes a playground to the rich and famous in the summer time. "I want the project to make people who live here feel special," said Hallam, who included images of his friends, people like his attorney Ted Tillotson and like his friend, David Halberstam.

The artist, Kerry Hallam, at home on Nantucket COURTESY KERRY HALLAM

"This is a book that's made for the island," he said. "It's my way of

giving back to the community." I
When: Reception, Friday., Aug.
17, 6 - 8 p.m.
Where: Cromartie Gallery,
7 Easy St.
Cost: Free

Hallam in his studio.