Featherstone Center for the Arts on Martha’s Vineyard has a new renovated space
The Art of Island Living
With a new creative space, Featherstone Center for the Arts continues to enrich the Martha’s Vineyard community
Photography courtesy of Featherstone center for the arts
Tucked among acres of preserved land, Featherstone Center for the Arts has served as an escape, artistic starting block and community unifier for the island of Martha’s Vineyard for almost a quarter century. The events, affordable classes and programs it consistently presents provide a creative setting for year-round islanders, seasonal residents and tourists alike to explore artistic expression, discover new passions and connect with the Vineyard’s artistic community.
Featherstone was born from the bones of Featherstone Farm, a 25-acre family-owned horse farm run by the Stevens family. Mary Stevens, an artist herself, helped establish Featherstone Center for the Arts on the land. In 1966, a small arts group, Meetinghouse Center for the Arts, became Featherstone Center for the Arts with the purchase of six acres of farm land, creating the space for the new art center campus. The original horse barns and farm buildings were repurposed as classroom and studio space; the old breeding mare barn became a pottery studio, the family farmhouse a gallery. “Our old printmaking studio was in the horse stalls,” recounts Ann Smith, executive director of Featherstone. “We still have the horse stall doors in the classrooms and the old horse barn was also part of our darkroom.”
However, as Featherstone continued to grow, their ability to serve an expanding client base grew strained due to the limited amount of space at their disposal—their 700-square-foot pottery studio could no longer effectively accommodate the ceramics program, the most popular medium on campus. As many non profits are forced to recognize, the demands to scale and the resources to accommodate rarely intersect neatly.
You might also like:

Collecting the Cape
“When you’re going to renovate a house, always hire an architect you’ve known for 50 years,” say the owners of…
Read More
Staying a Step Ahead
The future is now. Our homes have the ability to anticipate what we don’t know. Shelter. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines…
Read More
It’s Easy Being Green
From the cozy three-season porch of their charming Sandwich home, Judith and William Holt are saving money, energy and the…
Read More