Multimedia is the message

“Celebrating Featherstone’s Board and Instructor Show,” on view through Oct. 25, is an eclectic wonder of media, styles, and subject matter. The exhibition continues this year’s festivities honoring Featherstone Center for the Arts’ 30th anniversary with art by those who have helped the organization thrive.

As you look through the 78 pieces by 36 artists in the Francine Kelly Gallery, you will see every medium taught at Featherstone. 

The range of ceramic work reflects a diversity of approaches. Instructor Sabrina Kuchta’s enchanting “Tree Hollow” is mesmerizing in its detail. She has fashioned a fanciful tree stump outfitted for little gnomes or fairies. A bright, red-hatted toadstool bookstore sits atop, filled with tomes. Peek through the protruding windows to see tiny plants with leaves delineated in exacting detail. Large, curled leaves float on the water in front, carrying you to the gated doorway.

The handsome white scarified markings on the face of Washington Ledesma’s “Cazu, God of the Forest” recall indigenous non-Western vessels. The patterns against the black clay evoke a life force. And the mythical-looking big cat with unusual markings sits atop Cazu’s head like a living crown.

Sitting in stark contrast is Francis P. Creney’s “Cloud 9.” The white, bulbous abstract work bubbles out into the space with a wholly contemporary aesthetic. 

Operations manager and ceramics instructor Sarah Beth Belanger’s three “Unbelieafable Dishes” catch the season’s autumnal colors as the leaves burn in auburn and orange hues. Nearby, David Kuchta, who teaches enameling, carries on the botanical theme. He mixes his media, planting a shiny copper wire tree into his verdant green “Black-Eyed Susan” bas-relief vase. Nestled between the delicate silver leaves are apple blossom earrings made from silver and cubic zirconium and an exquisite blue cloisonné butterfly pin. 

Printmaking instructor Allison Doherty’s “Black with Red-Orange and Chine-Collé” defies the paper’s two-dimensionality. Imprints from and of leaves, ferns, and other botanicals layer one upon another and intertwine, carrying our gaze from one lacy form to the next.

Ivry Russillo, who teaches jewelrymaking and metalsmithing, has three eye-catching sterling silver pendants. The floral design on either side of a small, delicate rose rests horizontally along the collarbone. Two swords intersect a blossom in her heart pendant. The decorative magnifying-glass pendant, with a single flower on the handle, recalls an earlier era.

The wall hanging by Rory Valentine, who teaches fiber arts, dyeing, and youth art programs, also features fall colors. Her “Wall Panel No. 9,” made from wool and cotton muslin, carries an elegant design of tall branches and stalks that dance across the textile.

Current board member Kate Putnam’s needlepoint piano bench cushion is exquisite. Forest creatures frolic amid fantastical vegetation against a creamy white background. Look carefully to see where Putnam alters her stitches, adding complexity to an already intricate design. 

Collage and mixed-media instructor Bricque Garber uses a patchwork of color to carry our eye up, down, and about her large abstraction, “Holding Together.” Each shape has its own intriguing texture — held together, so to speak, by a tiny safety pin inconspicuously attached to corrugated paper in the lower right.

Board member and instructor Marston Clough’s triptych “Daydreaming” is transportive. His abstracted landscape captures the very essence of light — the way it illuminates the clouds with whiffs of white, sweeps over the rolling grass expanse, and hits the water in the distance so brightly that it draws our eye across all three canvases.

The colors and stylized, undulating shapes in board member Anne Grandin’s oil painting “Menemsha Fishing Shack” bring to mind the Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton, who spent 50 summers on the Vineyard. Grandin eschews photorealism, instead using color and shape to convey the essence of the fishing village’s charm.

Watercolor instructor Lynn Hoeft is a master of her medium. By varying the amount of water she uses in her gem “The Wind Comes and Goes,” Hoeft creates a landscape that shifts from translucency to opacity, poetically conveying the movement indicated in her title.

Current board member Michael Stimola’s title “Contemplation, Bologna, Italy” encourages us to create a narrative in his enigmatic black-and-white photograph. Three people rest on the steps of an old palazzo, with light pouring down upon them. A young woman sits, legs splayed, leaning back against the portico’s edge, eyes closed, soaking up the warmth, seemingly lost in the glory of the sunshine. A couple sits to her right, side by side. The woman reads from a book open on her lap. But the man, looking down, holds his head as if in agony. Could he simply be tired from a day of sightseeing, or is his companion reading some tragic story perhaps connected to the building, which sports a plaque relaying its historic importance? 

Like Stimola’s photograph, the entire exhibition invites us to linger over each work, marveling at the visual gifts Featherstone’s talented instructors and board members have given us.

“Celebrating Featherstone’s Board and Instructor Show” is on view through Oct. 25. Open daily from noon to 4 pm. 30 Featherstone Lane, Oak Bluffs.