Four Writers on Their Favorite Books
The Fine Arts Work Center’s 24PearlStreet online program — named for FAWC’s physical location — was established to bring writing workshops, resources, and community to “anyone who loves books” on the Outer Cape and beyond. In a new series of online events, the program will present four FAWC faculty members in discussions of books that have influenced their evolution as writers and changed the course of their lives.
The new “Books That Matter” series begins on Wednesday, April 24 with a talk by Alexander Chee, who will discuss E.M. Forster’s Maurice. Written in 1913 and revised several times during the author’s lifetime, the novel — a story about a gay love affair between a member of the British upper class and a working-class gamekeeper — was not published until after Forster’s death in 1970. The James Ivory-directed film adaptation was released in 1987.
Subsequent talks will feature Nick Flynn on Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes on Tuesday, May 7; Victoria Redel on Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold on Tuesday, May 21; and Eileen Myles on Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse on Tuesday, June 4. Tickets for each talk are $125, with discounts for educators and students; a discounted series ticket for all four talks is also available. See fawc.org/24pearlstreet/workshops for more information. —John D’Addario
Diane Messinger at the Commons
Diane Messinger paints large works on paper with exuberant color and figures that often seem to be rehearsing some kind of improvisational, light-hearted performance. Her paintings — and their charming characters — find a stage at the Provincetown Commons (46 Bradford St.) in a current exhibition.
This is a rare opportunity to see so much of Messinger’s work in one place. Hanging these pictures in proximity to each other has created opportunities for narratives among the paintings and for new associations to percolate.
Inspired by what she describes as “the complexity of relationships and range of human emotions,” the Truro-based Messinger creates paintings that are messy and ambiguous. Talking captures a range of relational experiences. In the foreground, two women embrace tentatively while a third lies face down at the top of the composition. The viewer is left with no clear answer as to what is happening. Rather, it’s an invitation to project one’s own imagination and experience onto the tableau.
In Community, Messinger paints costumed figures lined up in a row. Again, the figures aren’t part of any obvious narrative or performance. Instead, they seem to be waiting for something to happen, or perhaps they’re simply relaxing before a performance.
The imagery that Messinger employs is an apt metaphor for painting as something sensuous, playful, suggestive, and open-ended. That approach is also evident in her application of paint, as the surface of each painting becomes a playground for the joyful exploration of color and marks.
There will be a reception for the artist on Sunday, April 28 from 3 to 5 p.m. The exhibition is on view until May 12. See provincetowncommons.org for information. —Abraham Storer
Collages That Capture Nostalgia
If you had a child, knew a child, or were a child in the last three decades, odds are high that you’re familiar with the series of I Spy books by Jean Marzollo and photographer Walter Wick. In riddles of dactylic tetrameter rhyme, the books — themed around holidays and treasure hunts, letters and numbers — challenge the viewer to scour a detailed landscape for objects with familiar silhouettes. One can (still) spend hours escaping into the images with a sense of discovery and wonder.
The work of Boston-based artist Keith Maddy, now on view at the Truro Public Library (7 Standish Way), revives that same nostalgia. In Chinese Lanterns 1, outlines of children are visually connected to a cacophony of disparate images: you might spy a lucky horseshoe, an outstretched hand, a blooming flower, or a ghostly cowboy. No image is exactly clear, but that is what makes Maddy’s work so hypnotizing. He requires the viewer to draw on associations that rest on the mental equivalent of the tip of the tongue.
In a collage technique that incorporates images from vintage children’s books, Maddy creates precise and layered pieces that recall childhood. But it is not childhood as it is actually experienced. The scenes are childhood as it is remembered: impartially, alive with color, and mired with imagination, like looking in on a party through a window.
“Cutting Edge” is on view until April 30 during library hours. See trurolibrary.org for information. —Aden Choate
Celebrating Lesbian Community in Provincetown
The inaugural Provincetown Lesbian Visibility Week, which will take place from Monday, April 22 to Sunday, April 28, was conceived to emphasize lesbian community in its many forms.
“In our planning, we wanted it all to be pretty grassroots and focus on the women who live here,” says Michelle Axelson, the proprietor of Provincetown’s Womencrafts. Axelson collaborated on the week’s schedule with Tracy Stieber, Melissa Giberson, Sam Sewell, and Carmen da Silva of the production company Babes and Bois — which specializes in events “for the queer and sapphically inclined” — and Lynette Molnar of Provincetown for Women.
The week will kick off with a “We Are Family” potluck dinner at the Summer of Sass house (210 Bradford St.) on Monday, April 22. Among the week’s other highlights is a “P’town Herstory” storytelling panel at the Gifford House (9 Carver St.) on Thursday, April 25, which will feature an ensemble of legendary voices including Byllye Avery, Ngina Lythcott, Lynette Molnar, Donna Walker, Jha D. Amazi, and Char Priolo. The schedule also includes full-moon tarot readings, an astrology-based dating game, play and book readings, trivia nights, a pickup softball tournament, a drag king brunch, and dance parties in several venues around town.
Organizers say that lesbian visibility plays an important role for the not-yet-visible while empowering those who already are. “I’ve met so many people who’ve helped me blossom and come out and own that I’m on the queer spectrum,” Sewell says. Adds Axelson, “When we’re visible, we’re powerful.” See lesbianvisibilityweekptown.com for a complete schedule and more information. —Sophie Mann-Shafir
See a Film, Save the Ocean
Planting trees and community cleanup projects have long been part of annual Earth Day celebrations on April 22 since the global event was first observed in 1970. For the second year in a row, Outer Cape audiences can add movies to those activities.
Presented by the Center for Coastal Studies and the Provincetown Film Society, the second annual Planet Ptown environmental film series features three Massachusetts-made films focusing on issues related to the ocean, climate change, and citizen science. The films will be screened at Waters Edge Cinema (237 Commercial St.), and each will be followed by a conversation with filmmakers or scientists.
The series begins on Saturday, April 20 with a screening of the new documentary Inundation District. Directed by David Abel and Andy Lamb, the film examines “rising seas and the implications of one city’s decision to ignore the threats posed by climate change and spend billions of dollars building a new waterfront district on landfill and at sea level,” according to a press release. Abel will participate in a question-and-answer session with the audience after the screening.
Abel will also be on hand on Sunday, April 21 to present his 2023 documentary In the Whale. Described as “the greatest (true) fish story ever told,” the film tells the story of commercial lobster diver Michael Packard’s experience of being scooped up by a humpback whale in Provincetown Harbor and spending more than 30 seconds in its closed mouth before being spat out. The film also looks at the aftermath of the encounter as Packard became the focus of news headlines around the world.
The series concludes on Monday, April 22 with a screening of Rescuing Our Oceans Through Recycled Art. Directed by Johnny Bergmann, the film surveys the ways Cape Cod artists have created projects to bring awareness to ocean conservation efforts using marine detritus and other found materials. Bergmann will discuss the film with CCS scientists after the screening.
Tickets for each film are $20. See provincetownfilm.org/planet-ptown-3/ for screening times and more information. —John D’Addario
Reading Wellfleet Writers
Philip Hamburger, who joined the staff at the New Yorker in 1939, was “not a single-subject man,” according to David Remnick’s 2004 remembrance in the magazine. He wrote dispatches from around the country, describing its character and characters for 65 years “less from a sense of schooled expertise than from the vantage point of an enthusiast.” One of his enthusiasms was the Wellfleet, where he spent summers.
“6 a.m.: Turned up the furnace, rummaged for coat, drove to beach,” he wrote in one of his New Yorker “Postcards” from the Outer Cape. “Atlantic Ocean majestic, vast, with slow-rolling waves. Iberian Peninsula obviously more than a stone’s throw away.”
Andrea Pluhar, an artist and fiddler and Hamburger’s step-granddaughter, will read from his work at Reading Wellfleet Writers on Saturday, April 20 from 3 to 5 p.m.
The afternoon also includes readings from Annie Dillard’s The Abundance, selected by Kai Potter, a naturalist, surfer, gardener, and writer (including in the Provincetown Independent). Nature, in Dillard’s essays, has a nearly hallucinatory power. “Her preferred method is to transform, through the alchemy of metaphor, natural phenomena into spiritual ones,” wrote Donovan Hohn in the New York Times in 2016, when the collection was released.
Retired Wellfleet summer police officer Marc Spigel will read from Alec Wilkinson’s Midnights. The book chronicles the year the writer — before he was a writer — spent as a rookie cop in Wellfleet.
The readings will take place at the late Lawrence Kohlberg’s modernist house, built in 1961 on the dunes not far from Newcomb Hollow Beach. It is one of the houses leased from the National Park Service and restored by the Cape Cod Modern House Trust. Peter McMahon, director of the trust, will talk about the history of the house, which was designed and built by the prolific self-taught local builder Luther Crowell.
Reading Wellfleet Writers is organized by the Local Journalism Project, the nonprofit partner of the Provincetown Independent. Tickets are $30 and proceeds benefit the project’s summer fellowship program. See localjournalismproject.org/events for details. —Teresa Parker
