The relationship among the island, the artists who live here, and the art they produce is one where each one feeds the others in a unique and vital ecosphere.
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
There is public art in New York City that came from artists with studios on the islands. There are books read all over the world that come from island writers. Galleries are filled with paintings and kitchens proudly using art that doubles as cookware and a certain brass pig that stands watch at Pike Place Market that came from an island artist.
Art students and art teachers from all over the world come to learn and to teach at island art schools.Artists and photographers dot the landscape. Is that a tripod or an easel? Does it matter?
Women writers, both the famous and those hoping to be, gather to these islands to share what is usually a craft borne in isolation.
Musicians, dancers, actors and technical people practice their tradecraft, expand their talents, and refine their style.
From small stages to big tents, from Shakespeare to stories precisely 100 words long, stories rise.
Furnaces and kilns glow, starting an ages-old reaction that turns sand into glass, glass that when cools, may have light to warm the senses or a room, but even unlit has light to warm the senses.
Teachers challenge, and students challenge, art grows, and the islands are better for it.