As the days begin to grow longer, with flicking flurries of snow that melt almost as soon as they’ve landed on roads and tree branches, we’re seeing the island’s art community heat up, too.

This week’s paper includes our regular drumbeat of recent news, but is also chock-full of arts coverage, including Mari Kanagy’s account of last weekend’s 14/48 theater festival — an idiosyncratic display of drama and humor with characters ranging from whale-watching-mermaid-lovers to themed restaurant waiters and genies on mini-golf courses.

We’ve also covered VCA’s upcoming luminous exhibition celebrating Black History Month, and the bursts of color and light you’ll catch on First Friday.

The paper also includes our regular news about talented artists coming to perform across the island, and stories about all the local artists who live among us — a community that, no matter how long we’ve written this paper, always seems to surprise and impress us, such as through the incredibly life and photographic work of islander Piro Kramar.

That’s why we’re also so happy to introduce island artist Michelle Lassaline as our new cartoonist. We think Michelle’s whimsical, talented and warm art style — we’ve taken to calling it “Vashon’s New Yorker” — is a perfect fit for our newspaper and our island. Michelle expertly illustrates the quirks and charms of Vashon, which is something we can all celebrate right now.

Our island is filled with overlapping communities, and the arts provide a place of common ground.

At 14/48 Vashon, a school board member, Juniper Rogneby, was an actor in the company — and a fire commissioner, Amy Drayer, wrote two plays. Seasoned actors from Seattle blended in with locals sticking their toes into theater again after long absences. Ages in the ensemble spanned many decades.

And the audience, too, was filled with folks from all walks of life on Vashon, with the common denominator of being up for adventure and a willingness to go with the flow, whether that involves laughter or tears.

Artists, through music, poetry, plays, and portraits, create mini-worlds that are incomplete without viewers — the people who dare to fully observe and absorb the messages to be found in the works before them.

A community’s art scene is only as good as the people who comprise it. We think ours is in good hands, full of those who delight in worlds they conjure. They give us much to look forward to in 2025, no matter what else happens.