Celebrating Community at the Provincetown Commons
In the relatively short time since its opening in February 2019, the Provincetown Commons (46 Bradford St.) has become an integral part of the Outer Cape art scene and an important support for economic development, collaborations, and creative professionals in the community. The Commons will welcome and celebrate that community with its annual Supporter Soirée on Friday, June 23 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
In addition to providing an opportunity to meet Commons directors, staff, and studio artists, the event will also toast beloved activist, author, and Commons founding board member Urvashi Vaid, who died in 2022. There will be a screening of There Are Things to Do, a new documentary short about Vaid’s life and work in Provincetown, and a chance to learn more about the launch of the Urvashi Vaid Changemakers Fund and the Kate Clinton and Urvashi Vaid Community Room.
The gathering will also serve as a reception for and private viewing of concurrent exhibitions of work by Maura Cunningham (currently a studio artist at the Commons), Mark Del Franco, and Jessica Douglas. Cunningham’s “Doorway to the Mystery” show features paintings exploring the “dazzling impermanence” of the natural world. Del Franco draws upon diverse artistic traditions — including graffiti, Japanese woodcuts, and graphic novel inkwork — to create paintings that occupy a space between the representational and purely abstract. Douglas, a Boston-based geneticist and medical professional, experiments with different textures, materials, and painting techniques in her abstract work. The exhibitions are on view through Sunday, June 25.
The event is free. See provincetowncommons.org for information.
A Quarter Century of Great Music on Sundays
Since 1999, the Great Music on Sundays @5 concert series at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown (236 Commercial St.) has presented more than 350 concerts by hundreds of performers for thousands of audience members. This season, it celebrates its 25th anniversary with 11 concerts spanning a wide range of music — from 17th-century baroque to 20th-century Broadway classics — along with programs spotlighting compositions by modern and contemporary Arabic, Latino, and Black American composers.
Titled “Music Is Art” in celebration of Provincetown’s tradition of live musical performance and longtime support of visual and literary art, the series begins on Sunday, June 25 with “The Color of Music.” Featuring Craig Combs and John Thomas on piano, Ken Field on saxophone, Eric Maul on flute, and Frederick Jodry on organ, with vocals by Arian Carlos, Trish LaRose, and Pamela Murray, the program will explore music by composers who incorporate color into their music: from “bright melodies that educe orange and yellow to deeply resonant minor key pieces conjuring blue and violet,” according to a press release. It will be followed on Sunday, July 13 with the first of several concerts featuring selections from Broadway musicals through the decades.
Hyannis Sound, a men’s a cappella group composed of 10 college-age singers from around the country, will perform on Sunday, July 30. “Music Is Art,” the centerpiece concert of the series on Sunday, Aug. 20, is created and presented in association with Provincetown’s Berta Walker Gallery, which was the first business sponsor of the series. Two of the concerts (unspecified as of press time) will be livestreamed on the series’ YouTube channel and remain online for later viewing.
General admission tickets for each concert are $25 ($20 seniors; free for ages 12 and under). A limited number of $50 priority seating tickets are also available. All concerts are handicapped-accessible. See ptownmusic.com for a complete season schedule and more information.
Herman Maril at Bakker Gallery
“I want a stark statement, but a statement that is full of human feeling,” wrote Herman Maril about his paintings. One critic described his work as “reduced to the bare necessities of expression.” Although he’s not a household name, he was a part of the vanguard of American modernists reimagining landscape painting. A small exhibition of his works on paper at Bakker Gallery (359 Commercial St., Provincetown) provides a taste of the elegant austerity — and modern inventiveness — of his artwork.
Maril (1908-1986) split his time between Baltimore, Md. and Provincetown. He first visited the Cape on a trip with an artist friend in 1934. He was struck by the “openness, the sea” and the “nice light — like a Vermeer painting.” It took him a while before he established roots in Provincetown. A honeymoon trip in 1948 reignited his love for the town. Every summer from 1958 until his death, he painted in a house on Bradford Street where his son, David, now lives and where Maril’s studio is maintained as he left it.
The works on view at Bakker are landscapes of the Outer Cape. Its starkness was a good match for his creative interests. In Figures at the Sea, he depicts the sea in broad, washy swaths of delicate color. Three small figures at the water’s edge do a lot with a little: they establish the vast scale of the sea and provide emotional depth to the picture. In another piece, Head of the Meadow, Maril paints a single dune with water in the distance. Like some of his paintings of singular objects, the dune evokes solitude. A third picture, Gull on Red Boat, is a sharp composition of boats, pilings, and birds where no element is extraneous. Here, the mood is more playful: the pilings lean at various angles, a red boat juts into the scene, and a bird flaps its wings. Maril’s use of paint is economical and sparse, like his compositions, but he finds pleasure in color and its carefree application. His is a sunny and pleasant austerity.
The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, June 23 at 7 p.m. and runs through July 9. —Abraham Storer
João Santos Shares Something ‘Unholy’
Singer-songwriter João Santos says that his debut solo show in Provincetown last summer was all about him. “It was my first chance to introduce myself as an artist,” he says. “So, I chose to tell my own story as a queer illegal immigrant who moved to a different country looking for love, music, and acceptance.”
This year, Santos decided to create and share something more universal. “We all know the seven deadly sins,” says Santos, 26, who was raised in Curtiba, Brazil, and has lived in Provincetown since 2019. “We know we’re not supposed to touch them and yet we do.” His new show, “Unholy” — which he calls “a quest to find beauty in everything we once thought was wrong or shameful” — opens at the Crown & Anchor (247 Commercial St., Provincetown) on Sunday, June 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Santos describes the show as a journey through all seven sins “with the help of some of my favorite sinners and their music, including Madonna, Britney Spears, Johnny Cash, Radiohead, SZA, and Stephen Sondheim.” It’s an eclectic assortment — everything from wistful ballads to sexy pop — that showcases the range of Santos’s expressive vocals.
“I worked with producer Giuliano D’Orazio on the music for the show all winter,” he says. “Though it’s more covers than originals, we created all the tracks you hear in the show from scratch — breaking down chord structures and time signatures to really create our own versions of all these songs.” The show also features dancing and choreography by Evan Montgomery and Brad Landers.
“Unholy” runs weekly through Sept. 17. Tickets are $35 general admission ($45 for V.I.P. preferred seating). See onlyatthecrown.com for information. —John D’Addario
Mel Leipzig and Friends at PAAM
At the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (460 Commercial St.), Mel Leipzig’s portraits of local artists — at work, in their studios, and at home — are paired with pieces by the artists he depicts. In one painting, a bespectacled Selina Trieff is shown in a cluttered studio with her work Medieval Woman With Green, Red & Gold. Other artists among the baker’s dozen in the show include Lois Dodd, George Nick, and Carmen Cicero.
As curator Craig Bloodgood notes in the exhibition introduction, Leipzig’s pieces are done freehand. This makes the paintings somewhat uncanny in terms of perspective, more subjective than documentary. Leipzig renders backgrounds with the same definition as his subjects, creating portraits that capture not just people but the environments that surround them. Some of the best pieces develop the background even further: Leipzig’s 2014 portrait of Carmen Cicero removes the walls of the room Cicero sits in, revealing trees and a house behind it. But Leipzig leaves in the window, screen door, and a painting hung on the wall, which appear to float, suspended above the greenery. The result is a work harmoniously crowded with detail.
The “friends” bring diversity in style and content to the show, from Dan Finaldi’s verdant landscapes to Tom Smith’s energetic abstraction. Leipzig and his subjects make — and are in — good company.
The show, which is an expansion of an earlier exhibition from 2017, is on view until July 23. See paam.org for information. —Sophie Griffin
Jobi Pottery’s Old Traditions and New Ideas
Jobi Pottery and Gallery has been a familiar sight on Route 6 in Truro for decades. But its history goes back even further: started in 1953 by partners Joe Colliano and Bill Hastings (whose combined names gave the workshop its name), it has produced original, locally designed work for collectors for 70 years.
“It’s never left Truro,” says Susan Kurtzman, who bought the business in 2003 from former owners Lee and Elizabeth Locke and learned how to hand paint the 22 original designs from Colliano himself. Kurtzmann will be discussing Jobi’s long and colorful history and the local artists who have collaborated in its designs in a lecture at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum on Tuesday, June 27 at 6 p.m.
Jobi pottery is unique, says Kurtzman, for still using the slip casting method. “It’s a traditional form of pottery that’s practiced all over the world,” she says. “I was in Morocco this winter and saw it there, and it’s common in Mexico and Greece. But it’s almost been abandoned in the United States.” For the last 20 years, the production facility has been Kurtzman’s garage on Depot Road in Truro. More than 5,000 pieces each year are painted by Kurtzman, production manager Steven Locke, and part-time painters who are hired during the summer.
Kurtzman says the PAAM lecture will spotlight the many artistic collaborations that have always been central to Jobi’s practice. Some of its early designs featured work by artist Nancy Whorf, whose painting was influenced by the folk-art style of Peter Hunt (with whom Whorf was working at the time).
“And we still keep things fresh by continuing to work with local artists,” says Kurtzman. “I got Robert Callahan to upsize his miniature paintings onto Jobi pieces. They’re inspired by the time he spent in a dune shack, and each one is one of a kind. And Ed Christie came up with our Pride rainbow. So many friends and artists are constant inspirations. It’s a wonderful business to have.”
Tickets for the lecture are $20. See paam.org for information. —John D’Addario
