In January of this year, the West Tisbury Library began accepting nominations for the town’s next Poet Laureate. In April, the library announced that Justen Ahren had been awarded the title of West Tisbury Poet Laureate. The position was the brainchild of longtime West Tisbury resident and author Cynthia Riggs whose mother, Dionis Coffin Riggs was a widely published poet, often referred to as the town's unofficial poet laureate. The Poet Laureate is a municipal appointment with a term of one year that is renewable for up to three years. Prior to Ahren’s appointment, poet Fan Ogilvie held the …

Whether you know it or not, DJing is an art. It may not be the same kind of art as painting or sculpture, but if you’ve ever tried to blend one song into another and keep an entire room full of people dancing, you know there is a real art to moving a crowd. Lucky for us, we’ve got a truly talented DJ here all year long. DJ Di, aka Diana Reilly, came to the Island by way of Boston and Mexico City where she grew up. She arrived on the Island in the mid-nineties, right around the time that she started to experiment with being a DJ, and has stuck around ever since. She is a standard face at any …

Artist Darcie Lee Hanaway has come to Martha’s Vineyard for summers since she was a kid. Five years ago, she came to the Island to work for the summer with plans to move after that. But car trouble got in her way and she’s been here year round ever sine. Hanaway studied painting at Rhode Island College and has found the Island a natural place, after a few false starts, to grow as an artist. This winter, her art has gotten smaller in size, but deeper in emotional process. She’s also fallen in love with a fire hydrant. What has it meant to your art to live here? I struggled for a while trying …

Lynn Christoffers first visit to the Island was as a student at the Chilmark Photography Workshop in 1985. As with many, Christoffers couldn’t help but return summer after summer. For years she rented a small camp in Aquinnah with no running water where she lived a very different life then the one she lived in New York City where she was an art advisor to JP Morgan Bank. Around 2005, Christoffers started renting the cottage at the Cleaveland House in West Tisbury and has slowly become a year round resident, though she continues to spend time in New York in the winter for art consulting …

While we usually profile artists living and working on the Island in this column, we’ve taken a detour this week to talk to a woman who, though she may not live here, or have been born here, carries the Island with her everywhere she goes. Lexie Roth calls herself a “washashore transplant.” Her family started coming to the Island because her father, Arlen Roth, was playing guitar with Kate Taylor in the 70's. The family fell in love with the Island and returned every summer to a rented house Aquinnah until they finally were able to buy a home of their own there. When she wasn’t on the Island…

Photographer Sam Hiser works in medium and large format film as much as possible and specializes in architecture, landscape, fine art reproduction and sport. He is a specialist in traditional darkroom photographic printing, which he teaches to high school students at Featherstone Center for the Arts throughout the year in a class called Holga Heaven. Hiser lives with his family in West Tisbury. In addition to being a photographer, he is also a web designer and a web project manager. He contributes to The Economist and The Financial Times on open source software and green IT. Hiser is also …

Nina Gomez Gordon has been living and painting on Martha’s Vineyard for 18 years. She has studied painting, sculpture and oceanography all over the world. She is a mother, an avid gardener, a portrait artist and a plein air painter. She curates shows, manages the Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown and publishes and edits the Vineyard Fine Art Directory, an annual publication for connecting with Martha's Vineyard artists and art galleries. In the midst of all of that, Gordon found time to talk to us about what she’s working on this winter. Why did you first come to Martha’s Vineyard?  I first …

The Dukes County Love Affair – also known as DCLA – is an Island band down to its very roots. Their website explains the coming together of the band members as “Born in a moment of serendipity when three high school friends ran into each other during a boat ride back home, the music began as a way to cure the boredom that can set in on the long harsh winters of the Vineyard.” The three boat riders were vocalist Mike Parker, guitarist John Ripley and drummer Jaime Greene. In true Island-band fashion they started out playing in a shack in the woods. They added Phil DaRosa on bass and then …

For many Islanders, Paul Karasik needs no introduction. They know him as the man whose clever cartoons grace the pages of "Edible Vineyard" and many other Island publications. However, many Islanders who know Karasik, may not know that he’s as acclaimed a cartoonist as he his. Not only has his work appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, his graphic novel Paul Auster’s City of Glass (with David Mazzuchelli), was named by The Comics Journal as one of the “Best Comics of the 20th Century” and The Ride Together, a Memoir of Autism in the Family, (written with his sister, Judy) was …