If you’re in town for the weekend, a summer resident, or a local, you’ll want to make sure you get to the Oak Bluffs Open Market on Sundays from 9 to 1 at Washington Park. The free market is an ever-changing mix of local produce, specialty foods, arts, crafts, antiques, vintage dealers, massage, and more, featuring live music by Rob Myers.
We recently spoke with Daisy Lifton, one of the artists who regularly exhibits her work at the Market. Visitors to Ms. Lifton’s display will find themselves surrounded by all types of traditional and Asian-inspired artwork: There are brush paintings, origami earrings, handpainted and bleach-painted T shirts, scarves featuring typical Asian images, and collage works created using a traditional Japanese ripped rice paper technique.
The work is lovely to look and, as a bonus, everything Ms. Lifton sells is actually quite affordable. Brush paintings in a variety of images from frogs, horses, and Japanese themes to Island-inspired images of shells and even the outline of Martha’s Vineyard sell for $20 to $30. Long-sleeve tees are $20. Handpainted silk scarves and tunics are $25.
“I want to keep my prices low,” she says. “I really like it when kids can buy art at my booth. If it walks away, it makes room in my head and in my art space. I’ve disciplined myself to just let things go. Then I’ll have to make more, and I’m learning all the time.”
Ms. Lifton is a longtime dedicated student of Asian art techniques. She has been working in calligraphy and other design forms since 2008. She continues to improve her skills, and adds new ones by taking classes in the off-season months near her winter home in southern California.
Although she is not of Asian descent, Ms. Lifton has long immersed herself in the culture and disciplines of Asian countries. While living in New York City in the 1990s, she was introduced to the discipline of wu mei kung fu. “It’s a very traditional Chinese style of kung fu,” says Ms. Lifton. “It’s a very interesting style. Very involved intellectually.”
Ms. Lifton became a serious student of the martial art, and went on to compete on the national level, winning championships and earning high honors. She eventually started teaching kung fu to adults and children.
Having spent summers on the Vineyard all of her life, Ms. Lifton and her husband Floyd eventually decided to settle on the Island in 2002. She started working at the Vineyard Artisans Festival for Khen Tran, the former nanny of her half-brother and sister. Ms. Tran, also known as “the eggroll lady,” sells Asian treats at the West Tisbury Farmers Market and the Oak Bluffs Open Market.
Ms. Lifton became good friends with Ms. Tran’s granddaughter, Lana Ho, who as a young teen sold origami work alongside her grandmother at the Artisans Festival. Eventually Ms. Ho and her friend Elin Nelson established their own booth, and Ms. Lifton joined forces with them to help pay the rent.
“I decided to do calligraphy,” says Ms. Lifton. “I had spent all these years learning and teaching kung fu. My instructor had always told us that if you can do kung fu, you can be an artist and do calligraphy. I had already started doing calligraphy and learning Cantonese before I moved to the Vineyard.”
From calligraphy Ms. Lifton branched out to other Asian arts. When the girls went away to college, she kept up the booth and started doing her own origami. “I love the broad array of things you can do under the Asian-arts umbrella,” she says. “They are all connected.”
Every winter Ms. Lifton studies various art forms at the Japanese Community Center and at a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles. She belongs to a Japanese calligraphy club: “You actually get graded. I have to work really hard. If you learn calligraphy, your Asian painting gets a lot better.” The artist has won top honors for her brush paintings and other work.
The small works that Ms. Lifton sells at the Oak Bluffs Open Market are a combination of traditional Asian art and a display technique of her own invention. She paints on handmade hemp and mulberry papers and mounts them on canvases. The resulting works feature delicate, masterfully executed designs highlighted by the colorful jagged-edge paper.
Ms. Lifton also sells T-shirts featuring her animal designs, and long silk scarves handpainted with flowers, birds, and other traditional Japanese images. The scarves and her latest line of silk tunics are beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces that can be worn to brighten up a simple outfit or used as an extra layer on a cool summer evening.
Ms. Lifton’s most recent line of artwork is made using a collage technique called chigiri-e, which involves creating images with multiple layers of torn sheer colored paper. Ms. Lifton has used the process to create beautiful impressionistic Vineyard landscapes, including depictions of the Gay Head Cliffs and Menemsha Harbor. She mounts these little works on bamboo mats.
In Los Angeles, Ms. Lifton studied chigiri-e with a master artist. “It’s very time-consuming,” she says. “I really don’t want to count the hours that it takes. It’s layering and layering. You have to know which layer to put on first.”
Before moving full-time to the Vineyard, the Liftons started a program for kids called Sword and Brush. “The program was designed to explore Asian interdisciplinary arts, combining visual, performance, and movement arts,” she says. “We taught swordsmanship and Chinese Lion Dance, and we hired teachers to teach painting and calligraphy.” Ms. Lifton still teaches kung fu to a few private students, and teaches chi gung at the Tisbury Senior Center.
She sees a connection between all of her acquired skills. “I think that spending time with some amazingly talented kids from all over the world and teaching them to connect the visual and movement arts really formed a bridge for me that has led to my feeling free to explore art the way that I have been doing here on Martha’s Vineyard.”
Creating artwork is more of a passion for Ms. Lifton than a business proposition. “It pays for all of my tuition and my art supplies,” she says. “Because it’s Asian arts, it’s very freeing for me. I combine both Chinese and Japanese techniques. I can apply my skills — both physical and visual — to all of my arts. The kung fu really opened the door for me.”
