Minutes away from the main retail drag of Circuit avenue, in the arts district of Oak Bluffs, reads a sign: “PikNik: Art & Apparel. Expect anything.” The “expect anything” line encourages visions of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain or other more radical, conceptual art pieces. In fact, PikNik is currently showing an abstract exhibit, which seems to fit “expect anything” expectations.

It was a sensual delight and a writer’s demise, a step into a clichéd “different world.” Hypnotic trance reggae beats were clearly amplified from a Macintosh laptop computer. The transition was complete with a climate change, from the cool breeze off of Oak Bluffs’ Sunset Lake to the protected cove of Suesan Stovall’s garage. But this is not merely a garage, and this is not, in fact, a different world. It is a familiar and proximate one, only a few minutes from the main drag and harbor in Oak Bluffs.

Elena De La Ville has just arrived home after a class at Featherstone Center for the Arts, still seemingly abuzz. You can hear the artist’s passion for teaching instantly as she describes the beeswax collage class as a complete success: “It was incredible!”

For those unfamiliar with the artistic capabilities of beeswax, she explains, “It sort of is using beeswax as glue, to be the medium for what you do, and using whatever people had to make a new piece in collage.”

“Art is a way of life in many ways for the family,” Michele Ortlip says. “My generation, the generation before me, the generation before them my grandfather’s father was an artist, my great uncle, my two aunts everybody.” It goes without saying that, included in the generation before her is Michele’s father, Paul Ortlip, the shining star of the family’s serious crop of artistic talent. The fourth generation of Ortlips, under custody of their father, grew up in a Fort Lee, N.J., home overlooking the Manhattan skyline.