Wet Paint Weekend runs October 9 to 11. Painters set up on the streets on Saturday, the Artists Association auctions the results at the Yacht Club on Sunday, and the long weekend around it is the fullest arts calendar the island will see until spring.
There is a particular quality to the light here in the second week of October. The sun sits lower, the air has lost its summer haze, and the shingles on a south-facing house go from gray to something closer to silver by late afternoon. Painters have been coming to Nantucket for that light for a century. Once a year, the Artists Association of Nantucket turns it into a weekend.
Wet Paint Weekend is exactly what the name promises. Over three days, the island’s working artists paint the island, and on Sunday evening the canvases go up for auction with the paint, in some cases, still soft. This year’s honoree is Illya Kagan, whose harbor and street scenes many owners here will recognize from their own walls. Proceeds support the Association’s arts education programs, its galleries and its year-round public programs, which is to say the part of the island’s cultural life that keeps going after the ferries thin out.
How the weekend runs
Friday, October 9, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The weekend opens with a gallery reception at the Cecelia Joyce & Seward Johnson Gallery, 8 Federal Street, which also serves as the opening of the Association’s fall exhibition, “Short Days, Long Nights.” The show hangs through November 17, so if you are on island later in the fall you can come back to it when the galleries are quieter.
Saturday, October 10, from 10:00 a.m. This is the day to walk downtown with no particular errand. The Art Hop puts artists at easels at locations around town, painting en plein air, and the whole point is that you are welcome to watch. You will see the same corner of Main Street rendered three different ways by three different hands. The published end time varies by source, from noon to 2:00 p.m., so go in the morning.
Sunday, October 11, doors at 3:30 p.m., live auction at 5:00 p.m. The silent and live auction at the Nantucket Yacht Club, 1 South Beach Street, is free and open to the public. The work you watched being made on Saturday is hung on Sunday. A ticketed dinner honoring Mr. Kagan follows at 6:30 p.m.
Why it matters to someone who owns here
I have walked through a great many Nantucket houses over the years, and the art on the walls tells you nearly as much as the floor plan. The families who have been here longest tend to own paintings of the island by people who live on it. Not prints. Not the reproduction of the lighthouse that came with the rental. A canvas of the particular stretch of Hummock Pond, or the back of the Pacific Club in winter, painted by someone who stood there.
Wet Paint is the easiest way I know to start that collection honestly. You see the work made. You can ask the painter where they stood. And the price is set by the room on Sunday rather than by a gallery in August, which cuts both ways, but tends to favor the buyer who has done the looking.
For a buyer still deciding between neighborhoods, the Art Hop is also an excellent excuse to spend a Saturday morning on the streets you are considering, at the time of year when the island is itself. Our downtown and Brant Point guides cover what the summer crowds hide; a painter’s easel on the corner shows you what October looks like.
The long weekend around it
Wet Paint anchors a holiday weekend that happens to be unusually full this year.
- Tuesday, October 6, 5:30 p.m. Nathaniel Philbrick launches his new book, The Rush, in conversation with Tim Ehrenberg at the Unitarian Meeting House, 11 Orange Street. Free, registration required, signing to follow.
- Through Sunday, October 11. John Shea and Lea Thompson are on stage at Bennett Hall in A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters, a Theatre Workshop of Nantucket production, with the closing performance at 5:00 p.m. on October 11.
- Friday through Monday, October 9 to 12. The Chamber’s Cobblestones & Commerce conference brings the island’s business community downtown, and The Nantucket Edit fills the shops with designer events across the same weekend.
- Saturday, October 10, 5:00 p.m. The Nantucket Shorts Festival, presented by NCTV, screens the year’s juried island-made short films on the Dreamland’s main screen. It has been running since 2013 and is as local as film gets.
- Sunday, October 11, 4:00 p.m. Island filmmaker John Stanton’s The Last Bay Scallop? and Last Call screen as a double feature in the Dreamland Studio Theatre, with a conversation afterward. Part of the proceeds go to The Warming Place, the island’s seasonal shelter.
The full week, with times and venues for everything above and sixty-odd other events, is on our What’s On page.
A practical note
The Friday-to-Monday holiday weekend is the last of the year when the boats fill in both directions. If you are coming for Wet Paint, book the car ferry early and plan to be downtown on foot. Our getting to Nantucket guide has the current logistics.
And if you are an owner who will not be here, consider having your caretaker check the house that weekend anyway. October is when the first real nor’easter of the season tends to arrive, and the guide to caretaking when you’re away explains what that visit should cover.
If you would like to talk about a house to hang the painting in, I am at 508-228-4578, or through the contact page.