Diane Robertson’s Ways of Seeing
Diane Robertson’s watercolor paintings — almost all of which are based on her own photographs — are currently on view in the Great Pond Gallery at the Wellfleet Adult Community Center. It’s the first time the 88-year-old artist has shown her paintings publicly: previously, they were known mostly to her family. To many others, Robertson has been best known for her prize-winning photographs.
At age six, she bought her first camera, a Kodak Baby Brownie, and was soon taking snapshots of friends. When a neighbor presented her with darkroom equipment, she began developing her own film. After high school, she completed a dental hygiene program. Then came a hygienist career, marriage, and family.
Retired by her early 60s and an inveterate thrift store shopper, Robertson found a Pentax K1000 for $35. “It had a camera bag, an instruction book, and extra lenses,” she says. “I joined a camera club in Foxboro. There were competitions, and the judges would comment on members’ pictures.” She carried her equipment on solo drives. Soon, Robertson was winning medals for her work.
Her travels to scenic places including Gloucester, several national parks, and China. In the late 1990s, Robertson and her husband built a house in Wellfleet, where she joined a local camera club. She also discovered watercolor classes in Barnstable, where her teachers instructed her to paint whatever she wished. She did so for over a decade, basing her watercolors on her carefully composed photographs.
Robertson’s process of going from photograph to painting begins with a plastic grid overlay to record the placement of objects in the photograph. She then lightly sketches those placements and proportions onto watercolor paper. She uses the same colors as the ones in the original photograph. Her painterly landscapes and seascapes pop with flowing greens, blues, and purples.
During the summer, Wellfleet Adult Community Center outreach coordinator Sally Welch visited Robertson and spotted a small album with dozens of photographs Robertson had taken of her watercolors. Welch brought the album to Wellfleet-based curator Robert Rindler, who has featured over 60 Outer Cape painters since starting the Great Pond Gallery in 2018.
Rindler chose 21 of Robertson’s paintings for public viewing. At the exhibition opening last month, her network of family and friends offered congratulations and flowers. “I expect to remain in Wellfleet for a good long time,” Robertson said, smiling.
The paintings are on view at the WACC through the end of October. See wellfleetcoa.org for information. —Susan Rand Brown
A Musical Take on Goody Hallett, the ‘Witch of Eastham’
Margaret Van Sant’s play Goody: The Witch of Eastham will be performed as a staged reading with live singers at the second annual O’Neill Festival of New Works in Provincetown this month. It’s a musical take on the story of the pirate ship Whydah, its captain, Sam Bellamy, and Bellamy’s paramour “Goody” Hallett, with a detailed imagining of what she experienced after Bellamy’s death in the sinking of his galley off Marconi Beach in Wellfleet in 1716.
“The story of the Whydah is incredible,” says Van Sant. “It’s almost like there are voices that are determined to be heard.” Van Sant lets those voices sing in her rendition: “I wanted everyone to find a song that exemplified their character,” she says. The cast has been preparing the staged reading by studying folk songs and hymns from the early 1700s, the time during which the story is set.
The play emphasizes Hallett’s pluck and courage to live her life as she wanted in a society that defamed her as a witch. After Hallett allegedly gave birth to Bellamy’s child out of wedlock, Van Sant says, she was shamed by her community and made to live alone as an “abandoned, isolated woman” through a harsh winter in the “barren lands of Eastham.”
The reading will take place at the Davis Space at WOMR (494 Commercial St., Provincetown) on Monday, Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. General admission is $20, with a festival pass (which includes admission to other readings) for $40 and a discount for EBT Card to Culture holders. See ptowndramaticarts.org/current-season for more information. —Hazel Everett
A Feminist Artist’s ‘Visual Autobiography’
When the Provincetown Commons gave artist Heather Blume a choice of dates and available space for a fall exhibition of her work, she turned down the offer of a show in November for the chance to show her paintings during Women’s Week. That show, “Eye to I: Personal Exchanges by Heather Blume,” runs Tuesday, Oct. 15 through Sunday, Oct. 27 at the Commons (46 Bradford St.).
“I’ve always wanted to show during Women’s Week,” Blume says. “I’ve been a feminist since the ’60s, and recent developments — the Dobbs case, ongoing threats to women’s reproductive rights — have been like a stab to the heart and stomach. It’s a deep feeling, of coming so far and then, boom! — being knocked back, the whole thing shifting the way it has.”
Blume will share wall space with two other artists of local renown, Jo Hay and Jody Johnson. Her paintings include self-portraits that she hopes will “invite viewers to reflect on their own sense of self and how it is intertwined with their perceptions of others.”
Whether sculpting, painting, or drawing, Blume identifies primarily as a figurative artist and is used to working with models. One day she realized she could use herself as a subject. At 74, she says, that self is at a crossroads, “a 20th-century woman living in the 21st century, a good time to do a visual autobiography of sorts.”
One of the paintings that will be on display is Sustenance, a double self-portrait. Two nearly identical figures, each dressed in blue, are seated on either side of a white table that signifies a gathering space for the exchange of ideas.
“In this case, I’m exchanging them with myself,” Blume says. “One of me is drinking out of a cup, and the other me is offering the cup to the viewer. Behind the table is a tree, almost like a fresco growing on the wall, which is the tree of life. I call it Sustenance because it’s about what we get from our life experiences.”
Blume’s own experience as an artist reflects that of many women of her generation who put artistic talents and desires on hold to raise children and support families. Blume did not pursue her art until her son was in high school, working instead as a chef in restaurants in Hyannis Port and New Seabury. Even then, she found creative outlets, carving sculptures out of ice and watermelon for lavish buffets. Today, she has her own gallery and studio in Harwich Port and enjoys teaching at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and elsewhere.
“I want to make it easier for others, to give them what I was not able to get,” she says. “Everyone has a creative part of them. I just love giving people permission to go ahead and find that part of themselves, because it is the essence of how we know ourselves.”
See provincetowncommons.org for more information. —Katy Abel
Jo Hay’s ‘Persisters’ Keep on Going
Jo Hay has been painting portraits of culturally and politically influential women for her Persisters project since 2017. Previously, she painted a series of rabbits who were named after prominent women. The new series began after Hillary Clinton’s election loss in 2016, when Hay and her wife had a gallery opposite Joe’s Coffee on Commercial Street at the old Ruby’s jewelry store.
“Had Hillary became president, I wouldn’t have ever started these paintings,” says Hay. “I was looking for figures that I felt could explain what was going on and give me some sort of solace.”
Hay exhibited the first round of her Persisters portraits in 2019. She will be exhibiting the second round at the Provincetown Commons for the 40th anniversary of Women’s Week this month.
The Persisters line the walls of Hay’s studio in Provincetown’s West End. The palette she uses to create them is on a table in the center of the studio. During a recent visit, she looked at her painting of basketball player Brittney Griner, decided that her eyes needed “a little more brightness,” and adjusted them accordingly. Nearby hang her portraits of New York Attorney General Letitia James, Vice President Kamala Harris, activist Urvashi Vaid, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Hay studied at the Arts Students League in New York and the New York Academy of Arts and was also an art director at Elle Décor. Her painting of Rachel Maddow, which she made in the aftermath of the 2016 election, marked a transformative moment in her career. Her portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsberg was so well received, she says, that people would visit the gallery just to look at it in the window.
The exhibition of Hay’s new Persisters, as well as a selection of older ones, will open at the Commons with a reception on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 2 p.m. The show is on view until Oct 27. See provincetowncommons.org for information. —Pat Kearns
Feeling the Roots and Blues
The Outermost Roots and Blues Festival returns to Nauset Beach on Saturday, Oct. 12 and Sunday, Oct. 13. This is the first time the festival has stretched over two days instead of one, says Garrett Dutton, who performs as G. Love in the band G. Love & Special Sauce. He started the festival in 2018 alongside Mike McNamara and Mac Gallant, the founder and owner of Hog Island Beer, respectively. “The festival is a long-time dream of mine — to curate a lineup and an experience for people,” says Dutton.
Appearing on the Southside Stage of the festival will be Slightly Stoopid, G. Love & Special Sauce with Mihali, Donavon Frankenreiter, John Brown’s Body, Judith Hill, Iam Tongi, Tauk, and Ron Artis II. Van Gordon Martin, Anthony Michael, Solgyres, Don McCloskey, Dirty Water Dance Band, and Nikki and the Barn Boys will play on the Northside Stage. There will also be a “surprise set” featuring a friend and collaborator of Dutton’s on Sunday.
“Some of these musicians are people I’ve collaborated with,” says Dutton, who lives in Orleans. “Some of them I’ve never met before, but I’m a fan of. It’s getting quiet this time of year. Outermost Roots and Blues helps to extend the fall season and bring a lot of people to Cape Cod.”
Two-day passes for adults are $189 ($49 for children 4 to 12, with free admission for toddlers.) Single-day tickets are also available. The festival will donate a portion of its profits to Friends of Nauset Beach. Visit outermostfestival.com for more information. —Eve Samaha
