The Vineyard Preservation Trust’s Carnegie Heritage Center presents “Leo Convery: A Lifetime of Carving,” a special exhibition celebrating the work and remarkable Island life of 93-year-old Edgartown resident, businessman, craftsman, and award-winning woodcarver Leo Convery.
On view in the Carnegie’s Dickinson Reading Room, the exhibition showcases Convery’s hand-carved birds and fish, award-winning Agricultural Fair entries, tools from his workshop, and personal stories that reveal the inspiration behind his work.
Convery has spent more than nine decades carving out a life on Martha’s Vineyard. Raised in Edgartown, he grew up working at his family’s Harborside Inn, and went on to a career in hospitality, real estate, development, and community service. But it was later in life that he found what became a true artistic calling: woodcarving. Today his snug workshop, tucked just off the kitchen of the Down Harbor home he shares with his wife, Alison, is filled with the tools and works of a craftsman who still delights in the process of making something with his hands.
“Do you see how much fun I’m having?!” Convery says.
Convery’s carvings have earned numerous blue ribbons and first-place honors at the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Fair. And he is still winning. In August 2026, at age 93, he brought home two first-place prizes.
“Winning a blue ribbon at the fair just adds to the fun of creating a carving and knowing it is appreciated by others,” Convery says. “How would I know if what I am creating is giving others some fun, too?”
The exhibition coincides with “Bass in the Grass,” presented at the Carnegie with the Edgartown Board of Trade, in conjunction with the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby. Convery’s 2026 contribution, “Bass N’ Blue,” brings together two enduring parts of his Vineyard life, carving and fishing. The piece is included in the “Bass in the Grass” online auction, with proceeds supporting the Derby’s scholarship program.
Through Oct. 17, “Leo Convery: A Lifetime of Carving” is on view in the Dickinson Reading Room at the Carnegie Heritage Center, 58 North Water St., Edgartown.
