Empty vessels, empty homes

Editor’s note: In collaboration with the artist putting on this show, the MV Times will be releasing a series of articles that profile Islanders who have experienced housing insecurity. The series will also be featured in full at the art exhibit. 

The concept of an empty vessel has been a significant part of Victoria Wolf’s life and career. The potter described the metaphor as a simple one — making a cup gives the clay form, but doesn’t fill it. 

A house is a container, too — it holds only what someone puts in it. On an Island that has more than 10,500 houses that have been categorized as vacant by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission — meaning they’re only occupied two months or less out of every year and the homeowners have a permanent residence elsewhere — Wolf chose an empty vessel of clay to illustrate that magnitude. 

“All I want to do with this piece is present the data in a tangible form,” she said. About 60 percent of Island homes are categorized by the Commission as vacant.

On a recent summer afternoon in her apartment in West Tisbury, which doubles as her pottery studio, clay cups of varying colors and sizes overflowed on shelves, tables, and the floor. She only has space for a few dozen at a time, and keeps the rest in storage. 

The cups are all part of an exhibit, “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” that depicts the housing shortage on the Island. In total, Wolf is crafting 1,057 cups that will be displayed at an art show that opens on Sept. 12 at the Workshop in Vineyard Haven. 

Wolf is making a number of clay cups that correspond to the number of vacant homes in each town in a 10:1 ratio — one cup represents 10 houses. The glazes for the cups are connected to her own experience of each town, a process that’s taken significant testing, time, and effort to get right. From brass shavings to represent the carousel in Oak Bluffs to scallop shells sourced from Vineyard Haven beaches, the glazes make each cup have its own unique marker, process, and story. 

“One cup equals 10 houses. I can give you a list of 10 people who are a part of this community, who contribute to this community, [and] who have more than housing insecurity … It’s housing fear. It’s a housing nightmare,” Wolf said. 

Fifty percent of all proceeds from the show will go to Harbor Homes to support the estimated more than 340 locals who are without a home. Thirteen other Island artists, including Colin Ruel, Rob Chaunce, Jack Sipperly, Emma Young, Micah Thanhauser, and more, will be featured alongside Wolf’s pottery — all of whom will be introducing new pieces. Wolf’s prompt for them was simply “home,” and what that feels like and looks like to them. 

Before settling on the Vineyard, Wolf lived in New York City, and had a career as a real estate agent. She said she witnessed the other side of a countrywide housing crisis. But the drive to make a profit from something that people need in order to survive started to feel like a burden. 

So she started working with people who had Section 8 housing vouchers (a federal subsidy program that helps low-income families afford housing). She worked most closely with single mothers and their children to help them find accommodations. But she said the process was nearly impossible. Landlords would find any reason not to rent to a person without a home, she explained. 

“All I did was open doors to empty homes,” she said. “[But] I couldn’t get a single person into an apartment. It was heartbreaking.”

Disillusioned with her real estate career, Wolf visited the Vineyard in 2018 with her then partner, who was a born and raised Islander. Having grown up on the Cape, Wolf connected immediately to the ocean and agricultural roots she found here. 

“I realized how much I had been missing the flora and the fauna of coastal Massachusetts,” she said as she recalled the memory. 

She remembered going to an up-Island beach on one of her first days. “He took me to the ‘I know a spot,’ and we drove down Gosnold to get to the Brickyard — before they had the Sandbank Trail. The path when you’re in the woods slowly starts to turn to sand, and you know the ocean is right there,” Wolf said. She knew if she kept walking straight, she’d hit the ocean. That knowing feeling stuck with her: “It was so profound for me.”

When she stepped into the waves, she felt clay beneath her feet. She reached down to pick it up, and said in that moment, something changed. 

“I realized I had forgotten that clay came from the earth,” she said with a laugh. “I really had this brain-altering moment handling that clay.”

Soon after, she felt pulled to begin creating. She bought a pottery wheel on Craigslist for $750, then taught herself how to throw from YouTube videos.

It took years to master her craft, but Wolf has had her work featured in multiple shows, and now spends her time as a gardener and a potter. But she wanted to make art with a message, and housing was one subject she felt needed more awareness. 

Wolf started her project by collecting the data from the Martha’s Vineyard Commission on the number of homes that lie empty for most of each year. She talked to friends and community members about their experiences with housing, and found that many people had a similar story: It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford rent, they simply couldn’t find anywhere to live. 

For the 254 cups she’s making to represent more than 2,500 vacation homes in Oak Bluffs, Wolf used brass shavings she got from local machinist Carter Payne. 

“I used to come out here on my parents’ boat when I was a kid, and we would drop an anchor in the harbor in Oak Bluffs,” Wolf said as she turned one of the cups over in her hands. The brass had turned a deep green color in the firing process, due to oxidation. “My dad had a brass ring (from the Flying Horses) in his storage box of treasures … My relationship with Oak Bluffs has been that carousel. O.B. has a lot of other stories to tell, [they] just weren’t mine.”

In Tisbury, Wolf chose scallop shells to illustrate her relationship with the town, and zinc in the glaze, which is used in sunscreen and on boats to protect metal components from corrosion, to further hammer in the metaphor. To her, Tisbury is shellfishing, sailing, and deep, resonant blues. 

“The Tisbury beaches are covered in shells,” Wolf said. She explained the tradition of wood firing with scallop shells — the process leaves flashing marks on the cups, due to the shells’ calcium carbonate concentration. The 146 cups for Tisbury’s nearly 1,500 short-term rental and vacation homes all have the imprint of a shell inside them, and a dark blue glaze of cobalt and zinc to make it pop. 

Wolf did glaze tests to get the perfect green color for West Tisbury’s 150 cups for more than 1,500 vacant homes. She made an ash out of cedar to represent the trees, and settled on a glaze that said “forest” to her. 

For Chilmark, Wolf said, she had to go with clay for the 108 cups that represent over a thousand vacant homes in the town. After severe storms in early 2024 hit Lucy Vincent Beach, she found clay — about the size of a grapefruit — that had washed up into the parking lot of the beloved beach, and has been keeping it ever since. This project felt like the right time to use it. “Chilmark is clay for me,” Wolf said. 

Edgartown was the toughest to decide on. “I don’t have a great relationship with Edgartown to begin with,” she explained. She said she toyed with a lot of ideas, but nothing felt right. To her, the town, which is notably busier in the summer months, represents the epitome of some of the disparities she’s experienced on the Island as a year-round resident. She clarified there’s a lot to love, but she steers clear during the warmer months of the year. 

Eventually, Wolf decided to make a glaze with bone ash. She was inspired by the many widows’ walks on Edgartown homes, where women would wait for their husbands to return from sea — or watch the waves crash years after their presumed deaths, still hoping they would find their way home — and the Native American burial grounds that have been found in the town’s suburban areas. She wanted to symbolize death, and honor it. 

“For me, Edgartown dies in the summer, but I think it’s one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on the Island,” she said. Wolf sourced bovine bone ash commercially, which was a nod to her time working around cows on Herring Creek Farm last year, then created a glaze that she painted on 367 cups — for the more than 3,500 vacant homes in Edgartown. 

The clay that Wolf slipped on at a beach in Aquinnah didn’t make it into the cups due to the sacred nature of the clay Cliffs up-Island — they are federally and tribally protected from public use. Some members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) use the colored clay to craft traditional and contemporary pottery, which can be found at Gay Head Pottery, various artisans’ festivals, and even in the bricks that built the Aquinnah Cultural Center. 

So instead of using clay from Aquinnah, Wolf tested 19 different glazes to create the effect of wampum on the 32 cups that represent the 316 vacant homes in the up-Island town. 

“[It’s] an homage to a material that has been a part of my life since I was a kid,” Wolf said as she laid out the test cups she’s finished in an attempt to get the perfect wampum look. Some of the cups glistened with bright purple and white, while others were softer, in touch and look — matte to the touch, and more subtle. 

When she reflected on her career in the arts and the path that’s brought her to this upcoming show, Wolf remembered being a gardener in 2019 before officially settling on the Island. She said the type of gardening she was doing in the city was nothing like the agricultural practices she saw here. 

“Pots were replaced by what was flowering,” she clarified. “There was not the nurturing of a plant throughout the season.”

The year-round residents and farmers on the Vineyard know very well — working with the soil and the history of the land they’re growing on is the path to longevity for produce and flowers. Ripping up plants that aren’t growing well, under- and overwatering, and refusing to protect them from the elements or pests, all threaten an ecosystem, garden, and home. A lack of housing for the year-round community has a similar effect. 

Wolf described stories she’s heard of more and more Islanders moving away after not being able to find a home here. The fear of losing the community that makes the Island a breathtaking place to live — and vacation — fueled her to bring the housing struggles to light. 

“It’s hard for me to admit that, but the idea of losing summer people here really is my fear too,” Wolf said. “[But] we’re going to lose the summer people because we’re going to lose the doctors and the firefighters and the plumbers; the electricians, the gardeners, the farmers, the chefs, and the dishwashers. The lines are going to get longer, and the quality of things is going to go down … I don’t think that people shouldn’t have short-term rentals. Who am I to say that other people don’t get to enjoy this space that’s so special? If we lost summer people, every year-round person here would be affected. [But] if we lose the artists, why are you coming to Martha’s Vineyard?”

“Show Me the Way to Go Home” will begin with an opening reception at the Workshop from 5 pm to 9 pm on Friday, Sept. 12, and will be exhibited until Sept. 30.