The Town of Wayland prides itself on fostering a community that supports its local artists. The W Gallery, sponsored by Arts Wayland, is providing artists a new place to show their artwork.

“The mission of Arts Wayland has always been the same,” said Peter Curran, Wayland Middle School art teacher and a director of Arts Wayland. “It’s really just to promote arts.”

The W Gallery is a 3,200 square-foot space located in the town center that hosts shows. The space is filled with furniture and art hung on the walls, but during shows, a collection of pieces from varying artists are displayed for as long as the show lasts.

“The gallery’s pretty amazing,” Curran said. “It’s a stunning development. I’m really excited. It’s really been a long time coming.”

Until now, Wayland has lacked such a permanent place for local artists to showcase their work and gain exposure. This has made it difficult for local artists to sell pieces in the past because the improvised locations used for displaying art did not attract any attention from potential buyers.

“People got really creative before. We had art hanging in the library, in the living area of Traditions, and even a dental office. But it was a tough sell for working artists to sign on because visibility was so low,” Curran said. “Now we have this amazing place where art is the main feature and not supplementary.”

Arts Wayland has big plans for their new space, including a proposal to construct a “teen section,” which would be an area of the gallery with sofas and desks. The idea behind it is to offer a place in town, other than the library, for students to unwind and get some work done.

“There’s a plan in the works to create a teen hangout space, which would be awesome,” Curran said. “It would give kids a place to go, because right now they don’t really have one.”

The gallery allows younger students’ interests in the arts to grow, with the ability to see the exhibited work of professional artists in the area.

“I think it’s really important to show kids the artwork of adults in their lives,” Curran said. “It’s kind of like when you see some of the music teachers like Dr. Murray, who is performing in all these shows and things of that sort. I just think it’s a good way to role model what we’re talking about in class.”

The W Gallery will hopefully also provide Arts Wayland with the opportunity to showcase more local artists who don’t specialize in the visual arts.

“We really turned into more [of a] visual arts focused group,” Curran said. “But again, I think with the new space now we can start to remember our roots. We did a lot more with performance groups before, so now that there’s a space that you can actually perform, we can start to connect with those folks again.”

The W Gallery epitomizes Arts Wayland’s goal of bringing all forms of art to every member of the Wayland community.

“Just the fact that [Arts Wayland] exists is really important,” Curran said. “It encourages kids to engage with art, and the fun part about the creative arts is that by putting something out into the world, you’ve actually created change in the world. There’s an empowerment piece to art. It’s really about embracing yourself as a person.”