A Double Dose of Drag Superstars
Drag fans know that Alaska Thunderfuck and Alyssa Edwards are among the most popular performers launched to fame by the juggernaut that is RuPaul’s Drag Race. In what can only be described as a gift from the drag gods, both will be appearing at Provincetown Town Hall in separate shows during Carnival Week.
Drag Race Season Five winner Alaska is the first to perform, on Sunday, Aug. 13. With her husky Valley Girl drawl and rock ’n’ roll glamour, Alaska — the drag persona of Erie, Pa.’s Justin Andrew Honard, 38 — is known for her avant-garde, boundary-stretching style. She’s currently touring in support of her latest album, Red 4 Filth. The title is a recognizable catchphrase to her nearly two million Instagram followers, but nearly impossible to explain to those who aren’t immersed in Drag Race lexicon. It’s still a polished addition to the growing canon of albums by Drag Race alumnae. Tickets for the show, which is part of producer Mark Cortale’s Art House/Town Hall series, are $75-$200 (plus fees) at provincetownarthouse.com.
While Alaska’s persona embraces an edgy, goth-flavored sensibility, Allyssa Edwards hews to a classic style of drag that’s heavy on sequins and influenced by the great ladies of Hollywood’s golden age. Although she didn’t reach the top tier in either the Drag Race season in which she first appeared or later in the All Stars season, Edwards has nonetheless emerged as one of the most beloved characters of the franchise — and, like Alaska, boasts two million followers on Instagram.
The creation of Justin Dwayne Lee Johnson, 43, from Mesquite, Texas (where he still lives and runs a dance studio), Alyssa Edwards has a quirky personality and positive attitude that helped her rise above the drama of some of the harder-edged contestants. She’s also known for being frequently confused, slightly paranoid, and obsessed with her own image. Can she pass by a mirror without becoming mesmerized by her own reflection? Maybe, but we haven’t seen it yet. Her Carnival Week show on Wednesday, Aug. 16 is presented by the Provincetown Business Guild. Tickets are $45-$165 (plus fees) at ptown.org. —James Judd
Andrew Jacob at Rugosa Gallery
Andrew Jacob likes to take one image and stay with it for a while, creating a variety of iterations. “I get obsessed with an image,” he says. In each painting, he tries “to make it a little better or try out a new color scheme.”
He’s perhaps best known locally for his paintings of stylized waves, a motif he’s repeated on canvases, walls, and even the side of a food truck. The truck now sits outside Rugosa Gallery (4100 Route 6, Eastham), where Jacob’s show “Radical Dreamers” opens on Friday, Aug. 11 with an opening reception at 6 p.m. Artist Ryan Garcia’s work will also be on view.
In addition to waves, other images Jacob returns to include owls, flowers in vases, geishas, and samurai warriors. “It’s all merging into one fantasy world,” he says. Growing up in Danvers, Jacob was fascinated by the astronomer Carl Sagan, comics (Garfield was a favorite), and graffiti. Jacob’s current paintings reveal a mature body of work that explores the creation of a reality parallel to what exists in the world, not unlike a subculture or the alternate realities found in comic books, science fiction, or outer-space fantasies.
Jacob’s use of bright colors, flat shapes, and patterns conjure a synthetic reality, which is dramatically out of step with the warm, vintage environs of his studio at the historic Beachcombers Club in Provincetown. In a series of closely cropped paintings of owls, the form of the animal remains the same, while its scale, color, and pattern shift from painting to painting. The image becomes an armature for a rigorously playful exploration of formal concerns. The simple image of an animal and Jacob’s repetitive mark-making conjure associations with the meditative and mystical approach of Aboriginal art. In his paintings of flowers in vases, he nods to Western still-life traditions but with colors and forms that pull from graffiti, op-art, and contemporary Japanese art.
“As a kid I was really interested in aliens and space,” says Jacob. “As I get older, I just love it here on Earth.” The paintings trace this development, feeling both recognizable and otherworldly, in gestures rich with enthusiasm and curiosity. —Abraham Storer
Paintings That Celebrate Provincetown’s Alter Egos
Donna Pomponio says that “Alter Ego,” her new collection of paintings currently on view at The Commons (46 Bradford St., Provincetown), was inspired by Provincetown drag performer Jimmy Lee’s fashion show at The Commons last summer.
The current political climate — and in particular the wave of anti-drag legislation — led Pomponio to choose drag queens as subjects. “The more you get to see and break through the differences in people, the more you see how alike we are,” she says. “Behind all the personas, there are human beings. The more you get to know them, the more the fear breaks down.” Pomponio hopes that her paintings show the strength of these performers as well as the collective power of the Provincetown drag performance community. “I want to give the world a gift of everybody who has the courage and the freedom to be who they are.”
Pomponio’s painting of Jimmy Lee is one of her favorites. “The three poses show how fiercely she loves and protects her ‘children,’ as she calls a lot of the young people here,” she says. “I see that in those faces. That’s strength. That’s community.”
There will be reception for the artist on Saturday, Aug. 12 from 5 to 7 p.m., and the
exhibition will coincide with this year’s fashion show on Saturday, Aug. 19. Both the exhibition and the fashion show are free. See provincetowncommons.org for information. —Oliver Egger
New ‘Mudheads’ at Arthur Egeli
At Arthur Egeli Gallery (382 Commercial St., Provincetown), a new exhibition of recently discovered paintings is testament to the formative influence and continued legacy of the Cape Cod School of Art, founded by Charles Hawthorne in 1899.
Hawthorne’s methods, which are still taught and practiced today, involved painting en plein air from live models in order to capture ever-changing color, light, and shade. Students were instructed to record their impressions quickly, without regard to capturing fine details. Egeli says that thousands of these improvisational portrait studies — called “mudheads” for their lack of detailed facial features and the predominant earth tones in which they were painted — were produced over the years.
The current collection of mudheads was found two months ago during renovations of the former studio of sign painter Ernest Irmer (1908-1995) at 25 Brewster St., just across from the original Cape Cod School of Art building, where a trove of more than 150 similar paintings was discovered in 2005.
Painted on compressed cardboard panels, the portraits — which were intended as student exercises and mostly discarded after they were made — were used as insulation material in the walls of the studio. Egeli says that several of Irmer’s signs were found among the insulation material as well.
The history and authorship of the paintings were determined through examination of the material they were painted on as well as the architectural history of the building in which they were discovered. “We know that the students started using Masonite boards for the studies sometime during World War II,” says Egeli. “And the last record we have of work done on the building is 1936. So, the works had to have been made before then.” Egeli adds that only Irmer and Henry Hensche were known to have used the building space as a studio. “There’s a good chance that these works were made by them,” he says.
Egeli’s own experience corroborates the story behind the paintings’ preservation and discovery. “The story rings true,” he says. “When I was 18, I helped Hensche do some renovation work. I saw him tearing up walls that had paintings like these inside them.”
While the surfaces of the paintings were in good condition when they were discovered, Egeli says that the panels required some restoration work by Provincetown-based art conservator Kristina Bird to be exhibited. “Many of them were bent to fit into the walls,” he says. “They had to be straightened out and flattened.”
The current collection of more than 30 paintings represents a small fraction of the mudheads that were produced over the years. “It’s ironic that thousands of these were discarded in dumpsters,” says Egeli. “Some of them are masterpieces.”
There will be an opening reception for the exhibition during the Provincetown weekly gallery stroll on Friday, Aug. 11, from 7 to 9 p.m. See egeligallery.com for information. —John D’Addario
Art After Dark in Wellfleet
For 90 minutes after sundown on Friday, Aug. 11, the nighttime streetscape of Wellfleet will be transformed through a series of site-specific projected installations.
Titled “Project/Project,” the open-air exhibition will feature five projects by Outer Cape artists Elizabeth Bradfield, Cole Barash, Megan Hinton, Elizabeth Giamatti, Bella Hay, Traci Harmon-Hay, and Janice Redmond. The projections, which begin at 7:45 p.m., will take place along a nearly mile-long stretch of Commercial Street and Main Street at locations including Farm Projects and Such a Much (355 Main St.), When Studio (95 Commercial St.), and the Wellfleet Pier (255 Commercial St.). Visitors are encouraged to walk or bike between the sites; maps will be available at Farm Projects, which will also host a reception during the event.
According to organizer and Farm Projects director Susie Nielsen, the event is intended to lay the groundwork for a summer tradition. “This inaugural happening has the potential to grow into a recurring event that will help solidify Wellfleet as a home for experimental contemporary art on Cape Cod,” Nielsen said in a statement accompanying the announcement of the show. “Site-specific projections have this magical ability to transform familiar places and help people to see things in a new way. My hope is that this will grow to become an event artists and residents in the area will look forward to as an opportunity to shift their thinking and engagement with this special place.”
The exhibition and reception are free. See farmprojectspace.org for information.
From Criminal Lawyer to Party Clown
Robert Markowitz has had an unusual career trajectory. After graduating from Duke Law School, he practiced criminal law in Palo Alto, Calif. But, he says, he was miserable. So, he quit his job, spent two years traveling in Mexico, and then returned to the U.S. to live with his mother. Broke, jobless, and confused, he found a job as a party clown.
“I was looking through ads in the New York Times, and everything was some stupid office job,” says Markowitz. “And then I saw a party clown position, and I felt something inside me go ‘woo-hoo!’ ” He loved the role and became a guitar-playing children’s entertainer.
The journey inspired a new project. “I started to fictionalize my experience going from a criminal lawyer to a children’s musician,” he says. After 20 drafts, he completed a novel, Clown Shoes, published in June 2023.
“I didn’t think my autobiography was interesting enough for a full novel,” he says. “But I thought it could serve as a springboard for a fictional narrative.”
Using Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises as a model, Markowitz will talk about turning personal stories into compelling fiction at the Truro Public Library (7 Standish Way, North Truro) on Tuesday, Aug. 15 at 6:30 p.m.
“I hope people will learn that they can take their real-life experiences and make a good story,” says Markowitz. “Make it more universal, make it bigger, something that will interest readers.”
The talk is free and co-sponsored by the Wellfleet Public Library. See trurolibrary.org for information. —Georgia Hall
