Show Me the Way to Go Home is a thought-provoking and poignant group exhibition at the Workshop Gallery in Vineyard Haven by 15 artists from on and off the Island who responded to curator Victoria Wolf’s call for artwork on the theme of home.

“A majority of them made works specifically for this show,” said Ms. Wolf, a potter who has lived and worked on the Vineyard since 2019.

The show highlights, among other issues, the tenuous nature of living on the Vineyard, where stable housing has become nearly unattainable for much of the population.

A painting by the late Laurie Miller sums up the Island shuffle in one image: A family in an old truck heads out of their driveway toward a camper and tee-pee in the distance, as another family arrives for the summer.

Gallery recently hosted an opening reception for the show.

Ray Ewing

Gallery recently hosted an opening reception for the show.

Ray Ewing

One of the gallery’s three small rooms is devoted to Olivia Becchio’s deeply nostalgic installation What is Keeping You Here?, which combines humble household objects from the 20th century — a clam basket, an old tube radio and the various mismatched side tables and lamps of a generational home — with Ms. Becchio’s own inkjet prints of Island people and scenes.

There’s even a 1977 pamphlet from the Steamship Authority, with detailed histories of the various ferries illustrated by line drawings and vintage photographs. All of the objects in the installation came from Ms. Becchio’s family’s house in Vineyard Haven, Ms. Wolf said.

“This is her childhood home, in this room,” she said.

Along with new ceramics, photography, paper art and a handmade guitar, Ms. Wolf also hung three pre-existing paintings of Island deer hunting scenes by Colin Ruel.

“I want to show people scenes of the Island that they don’t see,” Ms. Wolf said.

Show focuses on the theme of housing.

Ray Ewing

Show focuses on the theme of housing.

Ray Ewing

Jeweler Nettie Kent, who is married to Mr. Ruel, created a copper mobile with a house motif, titling the delicate work Out of Reach.

Tea sets by potters Micah Thanhauser and Gordon Moore evoke a sense of warmth and security, while Emma Young’s handmade paper prints — created with Island plants — emanate a gentle serenity.

Another artist, Maggie Craig, transformed found paper and wood into a series of house-shaped paper forms pierced with holes that spell out words in Braille when light shines through them.

Ms. Wolf’s own contribution to the Workshop show is an extension of the work she showed last fall in honor of her late father, a set of 72 wheel-formed cups representing the years of his life. This time, she aimed higher, making a total of 1,057 cups to illustrate the scope of the Vineyard’s housing exclusivity.

Each of the cups, Ms. Wolf said, represents 10 of the 10,570 homes that are categorized as vacant by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission because they are inhabited for no more than two months a year.

“That number didn’t compute in my head,” she said. “I don’t think anybody can [visualize it], so I thought if I made them and had people hold them, it would hit them a little bit harder.”

Ms. Wolf has arranged the cups in a rough map of Martha’s Vineyard, with the number of cups in each area corresponding to the vacant houses in those towns.

Each town’s cups were made with a different clay formula from the others and fired using a different kiln and glaze, she said.

The Oak Bluffs cups, for instance, have a bit of bronze in them, a tribute to the brass ring prize at the Flying Horses carousel, while the Vineyard Haven cups are marked by the fossil-like impressions of local scallop shells.

To avoid violating tribal rights, Ms. Wolf chose only imported materials for the Aquinnah cups, glazing them in blue and white colors that evoke wampum shells.

The show continues through Sept. 30. Ms. Wolf said she had planned to contribute half the proceeds from sales during the show to the Harbor Homes homelessness prevention nonprofit, but now needs the money to live on after an accident that left her unable to work her gardening job for most of the summer. Instead, she will offer Harbor Homes the equivalent amount in volunteer labor.

“I can’t donate the money, but I can donate my time,” she said.