Here Come the Bears
Depending on your source, Bear Week in Provincetown — Saturday, July 8 to Saturday, July 15 this year — is either the largest event in the world for gay bears and their admirers or merely one of the largest: only Bear Week in Sitges, near Barcelona, approaches its estimated attendance of 10,000 or more. Either way, it’s a big deal.
Started in 2001 by historian and Provincetown Bears founder John Burrows, the event has grown over the last two decades from an informal weekend of pool parties and picnics to a seven-day program of live entertainment and club nights, with a boat cruise and dune tour. While high-profile shows by RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Eureka O’Hara and “terrorist drag” performance artist Christeene and the dozen or so dance parties at venues around town are the most popular and visible events on the schedule, several more low-key social and cultural offerings will also be taking place.
A daily Bear Market at the Crown & Anchor (247 Commercial St.) from Sunday, July 9 to Thursday, July 13 will feature handmade goods — including art, clothing, jewelry, haircare products, and food — by more than a dozen makers from around the country, with a portion of sales each day benefitting local charities. Street art by San Francisco-based artist Jeremy Novy will be on view at the Provincetown Pride Center (115 Bradford St.) daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. King Hiram’s Lodge (2 Masonic Place), chartered by Paul Revere in 1775 and one of the oldest Masonic lodges in the U.S., will host an open house on Monday, July 10, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. In conjunction with the Provincetown Conservation Trust, herpetologist Scott Smyers will lead an evening nature walk along the Old Colony Nature Pathway in Provincetown’s far East End on Sunday, July 9 at 8 p.m. And Burrows, who died in May, will be honored at a memorial cookout at the Provincetown Inn (1 Commercial St.) on Sunday, July 9 at 11 a.m. (See Burrows’s obituary in this week’s Independent.)
See ptown.org/calendars/bears and ptownbears.events for a complete schedule and more information. —John D’Addario
Three Artists at Castle Hill
A new show at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill (10 Meetinghouse Road) brings together three artists with diverging styles. Susan Bernstein’s oyster-inspired sculptures, Daphne Confar’s evocative landscapes, and Ying Li’s thickly layered works in paint play off each other, complementary despite their different approaches. All three artists are leading workshops at Castle Hill this month.
The pieces by Bernstein draw on her experience living on the Cape, most directly in her series of oyster platters. While allergic to oysters herself, she is interested in how seafood allows those who enjoy it to get closer to the ocean by letting them “drink the sea.” In one platter, oysters rest on a double-walled circular form indented with half-moon wells, as if an ice cream scoop has been meticulously taken to the surface. A line divides a silvery, metallic sliver from the rest of the work, which is glazed in white. A luster created by a third firing provides the shimmery effect, which mirrors the reflective inside of an oyster.
Working in oil on panels, Confar sometimes sands down her surfaces between layers of paint. Her work looks of the past: not old-fashioned, but lived in. In Milton Landing, wavy trees reflect across a body of water as puffy white clouds drift above. There’s a storybook look to the painting, which seems pulled out of time.
Li’s paintings are drawn from a series she created during a residency at the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Jacksonville, Fla. Her richly layered abstract landscapes feature thick paint and bright color. In Fort George River #3, large patches of blue and lavender stick out against a multicolored, energetic background.
The show runs from Wednesday, July 5 to Friday, July 14, with an opening reception on Thursday, July 6 at 4 p.m. See castlehill.org for information on the exhibition and artist workshops. —Sophie Griffin
Cidny Bullens’s Next Chapter
For a stretch of time in the 1970s, it seemed as if musician Cidny Bullens was going to be the Next Big Thing, with career highlights that included a critically acclaimed debut album (1978’s Desire Wire), recording three songs for the Grease soundtrack (which remains the second best-selling movie soundtrack album of all time), and a Grammy award nomination for Best Female Rock Vocalist (which Bullens lost to Donna Summer in 1980). But it wasn’t until 2020 that Bullens released what was perhaps the most significant album of his career, Walkin’ Through the World, which was the first record he released as a man after transitioning nine years before.
Bullens will be discussing and signing copies of his new autobiography, TransElectric: My Life as a Cosmic Rock Star, published last month, at East End Books (389 Commercial St., Provincetown) on Thursday, July 13, at 6 p.m. Written during the pandemic, the book, which journalist Carl Bernstein says “belongs on the small shelf of great rock ’n’ roll memoirs,” shares Bullens’s stories of touring with Sir Elton John (who wrote the book’s introduction) and Bob Dylan in the 1970s; his voyage through addiction and recovery; starting a family and losing his younger daughter to cancer; relaunching his career at age 59 with his album Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth in 1999; and coming out as a transgender man in 2012. “I went through a dark night of the soul in writing this book,” said Bullens in an interview reported by the music industry trade publication MusicRow earlier this year. “But the book brought me back to myself.”
Tickets for the reading are $5, or $32 including a copy of the book. See eastendbooksptown.com for information. —John D’Addario
MAN ON MAN’s Musical Tribute to Provincetown
There’s no lack of visual art and literature about Provincetown. But albums inspired by the town are harder to think of, if you can name any at all.
Boyfriends Roddy Bottum and Joey Holman, who perform as MAN ON MAN, have expanded that list with their new album — fittingly titled Provincetown — which was released last month. They will appear in concert at the Red Room (258 Commercial St., Provincetown) on Sunday, July 9 at 8 p.m.
The album is named for the place where they wrote many of its songs. “Besides being a stunning part of our country, from a social perspective, there’s a lot of history there that feeds into your confidence when you’re writing music,” Holman told Boston’s WBUR when the album was released last month. “That it’s a queer town makes it easier to write about what we wanted to write.”
The guitar-forward, pop-inflected sound of Provincetown follows the duo’s previous musical projects as individuals — Bottum is well known as the keyboardist for Faith No More and founder of the band Imperial Teen — and their 2020 debut release, which they recorded during pandemic lockdown. While some songs reference Provincetown explicitly (like the incandescent lead single “Showgirls,” named for the long-running Monday night local talent review), others explore more universal themes like the tension between online personas and real-world identities, the exploitation of queer culture by nonqueer society, and growing older (but wiser) in a world that emphasizes youth and newness — in addition to songs celebrating the simple joys of “sex and summertime fun,” according to the album’s liner notes.
Provincetown is available for streaming and download at manonman.bandcamp.com. Tickets for the July 9 concert are $25 at redroom.club. —John D’Addario
Manuel Pardo, Inspired by Bouffant Hair
As a child growing up in Cuba in the 1950s, Manuel Pardo accompanied his mother to beauty parlors, where he became fascinated by the elaborate bouffant hairstyles he saw advertised on shop posters and worn by the fashionable clientele. The fanciful, almost abstract shapes of the styles — which he later said reminded him of cardboard cutouts and conch shells — would become a recurring motif in the whimsical female portraits he created throughout his adult career as an artist.
A selection of drawings by Pardo, who achieved international renown for his work before his death at age 60 in 2012, is currently on view at Gary Marotta Fine Art (162 Commercial St., Provincetown). Titled “Frenesi” after the “frenetic” quality of the hairstyles, the series reflects many of the themes Pardo explored in his work, including his interest in fashion, pop culture, graphic design, and Latino traditions. Models with the same facial features and accoutrements are repeated in several of the images, with colors rendered differently in each one.
While not always explicitly identified in his drawings, Pardo’s mother, Gladys, was a constant presence in his work. During his lifetime, he became best known for his series “Mother and I,” in which Gladys — who was a doctor in Cuba and worked in a cannery when Pardo’s family moved to the U.S. — is depicted in various guises and settings as both his muse and “hero.” The exaggerated proportions of his models’ hair, makeup, and clothing in all of Pardo’s work, including the “Frenesi” series, further allude to Gladys’s heroic stature in her son’s eyes.
The drawings are on view through Aug. 10. See garymarottafineart.com for information. —John D’Addario
