By NIS KILDEGAARD
The traffic jam outside was the first clue that Sunday's was no ordinary opening night at the Granary Gallery in West Tisbury. The second was the costuming of gallery owners Bruce Blackwell and Brandon Wight, and their staff, in commemorative T-shirts bearing photographs from Alison Shaw's new book, Vineyard Summer.
Yes, this was another three-artist, two-week show at the Granary, and as always with a plethora of other fine art on display and for sale. But Sunday's opening was also Alison Shaw's moment of arrival on the threshold of what, for her, is a new sort of celebrity Miss Shaw sat at a card table in the gallery's airy courtyard, and there she held court, at the head of a line much longer than the line for the gallery's open bar. Sometimes 20 and 30 people snaked back from her table, people with copies of Vineyard Summer under their arms, waiting patiently for the artist's signature.
But in fairness to the artists who were so nearly eclipsed by all the fuss over Miss Shaw, let's begin by turning to their work - for it is very good indeed.
In the long hallway space of the Granary Gallery hang the photo-realistic paintings of Steve Mills. All his works are oils on linens, but at first glance you might think they are printed on Kodak's Finest.
The paintings of Steve Mills owe their very existence to photography. Each of his images begins as a photograph, which is painstakingly transposed in oils. The attention to detail and the reproduction of light's every nuance are so perfect in his works that a photograph of any one of his paintings in this newspaper might easily be mistaken for the original photograph on which it is based.
But make no mistake: Steve Mills is no passionless copy-artist. His paintings are filled with amazing little accomplishments - the gleam of a studio lamp off the waxy sheen of a still life apple; the perfect recording of summer haze in the picture titled Islander, his painting of the favorite SSA vessel making its turn at West Chop; the illusion of depth that draws you into the woods in his painting of early sunlight pouring through trees around a fairway at Farm Neck.
Many of Mr. Mills' paintings for this show are of the Vineyard, depicting favorite places with a rich emotional resonance for folks who love them. But these paintings are also, always, about the light.........
