Creative Visioning

Down a dirt road and tucked into the woods, the Martha’s Vineyard home of Jane Dreeben ’79 holds hundreds of books and the inquisitive mind of a dreamer.

Down a dirt road and tucked into the woods, the Martha’s Vineyard home of Jane Dreeben ’79 holds hundreds of books and the inquisitive mind of a dreamer.

“I feel a sense of awe—emotional, intellectual, and spiritual—when I hear music or see a photograph,” the teacher and psychologist says. “Creativity moves us to transcendence.”

And so her book, The Urge to Create: Vineyard Portraits, is a gorgeous tribute to the creative lives of 50 artists on the island, including Jim Thomas, pictured above, who is director of the Martha’s Vineyard Spirituals Choir and the founder and president of the U.S. Slave Songs Project.

Dreeben hopes readers absorb the diversity of artists—from weavers to poets—in this tiny community where nature often nutures creativity. This journey, it turns out, was her own artistic calling.

“My Swarthmore experience imbued me with the confidence to follow my curiosity,” she says.