09/23/2026
🎵 📸 Meet the Artists: Let's meet some of the talented women we'll be hosting at the HERitage Festival on October 2, in solidarity with Ladyfest MV! We'll continue these introductions up until the Fest. Please feel free to share and help spread the word. Tickets available on our site. Below are the bios for each, in order of the images.
(1) Ella Mahoney is a visual artist, illustrator, and educator, and a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah. Her art practice centers on storytelling, often drawing from Wampanoag creation stories, her personal experience of indigeneity, and tribal connections to land and water to create indigenous futurisms. Through engaging with stories through painting and installation– she offers different avenues to build deeper connections with the meaning and purpose of each story, building onto legends for the future. Working primarily in cyanotype, acrylic, and ink, Mahoney’s recent work focuses on large-scale silk installations that evoke the movement, memory, and atmosphere of north east coastal environments, and more specifically, Aquinnah.
(2) Tracy Leigh Devine is an Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribal member and a lifelong resident of Noepe. (Martha’s Vineyard) She creates authentic, handmade wampum jewelry that honors her ancestral heritage. The business she started in 2018, Martha’s Vineyard Native, is dedicated to preserving traditional Native American artistry while embracing contemporary design. Each piece is unique and meticulously crafted from local quahog clamshells and precious metals, serving as a wearable piece of Island history.
(3) Thistle Jemison's formal studies in South Indian, western classical, jazz, and folk led her to create a harp and voice centered music all her own, which Chamber Music America dubbed “angelic, beautiful, and hypnotic.” Her lyrics are inspired by Victorian poetry.
(4) Emily Kleinhenz was raised on the island and the Vineyard keeps drawing her back. She makes clay pieces by hand then hand paints with underglazes. Each piece is made with love and every one is unique and different.