It seems like it takes a miracle to get an art studio in Provincetown. That’s how Janine Evers felt when she found a place at the Commons Community Studios, eight new studios in a building on Shank Painter Road. “I feel like somebody somewhere helped me out,” says Evers.
The space, available to artists since March, is an initiative of the Provincetown Commons, which has provided studios and co-working space in its Bradford Street home since 2019.
Alison Blake, another studio artist and a newcomer to Provincetown, talks about the space in terms of destiny. “If you put it out there in the universe, and you’re meant to be in Provincetown, then it sort of scoops you up,” she says. “I feel really lucky. I don’t think I would have stayed if it wasn’t for the studio.”
Evers and Blake, along with six other artists, now work on the ground floor of the building, which is near the Stop & Shop, the laundromat, and Pennies Wine & Spirits. The space, previously rented by Gallery Ehva (now closed), had been vacant for four or five years, according to Chuck Silva, who helps manage the building owned by his mother, Helen “Penny” Silva. “We didn’t pursue it,” says Chuck. “Nobody really had a good use for the space.” His family owns multiple retail and commercial business properties along Shank Painter Road.
It was artist Mallory White who first saw studio potential there. “I had been watching the property at 74 Shank Painter for quite a while,” says White. “My main goal was to find some space for myself to work and hopefully some space for other artists, because we’re all desperate to find studio space.”
When White saw a “for lease” sign go up in the window last spring, she jumped at the opportunity. “I called as fast as I could,” she says. Early this year, her vision became a reality. “It’s kind of like a little answer to a prayer.”
Despite the town’s history as an art colony, studio space has become a rarity in Provincetown’s red-hot real estate market. Elspeth Slayter, who makes colorful abstractions through a process of layering printed images, had been on the waitlist at the Provincetown Commons for two and a half years before these new spaces opened up. Those Bradford Street studios are subsidized and have been a boon for the local art community since they opened. But demand for the studios, which rent for $350 a month, outstrips supply, in spite of a built-in way to increase opportunities there: after three years in their studios, artists must move on to make space for others. That was the case for White, who had to leave her studio there in 2022 without prospects for a new space.
When White found the Shank Painter space, she thought at first she would manage a co-working studio space herself but quickly realized the Commons would be better suited to the task. “I’m gone in the winters,” she says. “It would really be much better for the Commons to have the project.” Jill Stauffer, the executive director at the time, greeted the idea with enthusiasm. “I felt like it was a perfect extension of what we were trying to create,” she says.
In February, the Commons signed a three-year lease with a right to renew, but before artists could move in, the space needed a significant amount of work.
White, who has a background as an investment executive, donated $25,000 to the Commons for the project to ensure there was enough money to fix it up with a cleaning, fresh paint, new air conditioners, new lighting, and repairs to the bathroom.
In March, eight artists moved in, each of them, including White, paying between $525 and $600 a month for spaces that max out at about 200 square feet. These are market-rate prices, not subsidized as they are at the Commons studios on Bradford Street.
“It filled much quicker than I thought it would,” says Stauffer. So far, cash flow from rents has met the expenses of the lease and utilities, White says.
Slayter attended an open house last February. “I was the second person in and just grabbed the space,” she says. “I was so grateful, even if it’s more than I would like to spend.” Previously, she was sharing a small space on Whaler’s Wharf with her husband, artist Murat Recevik. “It was a disaster, because he works on a very large scale with wood and metal, and I work with paint and paper,” she says.
The building features a small gallery where residents can show their work. Beyond the gallery, each person has a space with low walls and no doors. White wanted to replicate the open studio environment of the Commons, and Stauffer hoped to create an environment that could accommodate flexible configurations and changes. The resulting layout has facilitated a degree of intimacy among the artists that is uncharacteristic of most studio buildings.
“There’s no full privacy,” says Blake, but she likes it that way. “I think most of us came here because we wanted to be part of a community and to be around other artists and feel inspired. I think that’s such a big part of why it’s so magical.”
Blake, who moved to Provincetown after getting a graduate degree in design from the School of Visual Arts in New York, makes charcoal and pastel drawings of dramatically lit figures, which she shows at Art Love on Commercial Street. She also uses the space for doing design work. When she first moved in, she considered building a wall. But when she got to know her studio neighbor, Karen Miller, she changed her mind.
The connections between the artists span the personal and the professional. Blake says she gets help building panels from Miller and printing tips from Slayter. She helps others with web design and marketing. Slayter often discusses art materials with Jeff Osmond, a realist painter working on the other side of her.
“We’ve become a really solid community of people supporting each other through not only our art process but through difficult things,” says Slayter.
“Art is an intimate thing, and it can be very emotional,” says Blake. “I had a lot of tumultuous events in my life this summer. I was completely supported by everyone here.”
The studios have given Daniel Wagner and Janine Evers fresh momentum in their painting practices. “When I had no space, it was miserable,” says Wagner, who also lost his studio at the Commons in 2022. “I need to be in a studio on a daily basis,” he adds. Since getting a space here, he has started a new body of colorful, expressive, brusquely painted portraits.
Evers moved into her space in August after learning about the new studios from Slayter, who shows with her at Four Eleven Gallery. “It has got me working again,” she says.
She recently finished some colorful abstract paintings that had previously piled up in her storage space. On one studio wall, she’s working on a series on paper with a limited palette of greens and blues. “I’m trying to pare down my palette,” Evers says. “It’s great just being able to leave up artwork. When I was painting at my house, it was hard to have it in the middle of my kitchen or bedroom.”
Lesley Marchessault, executive director of the Commons, is hopeful that the organization — and the larger Provincetown community — can continue to support similar ventures. “How can we utilize spaces here?” she says. “These are the creative types of solutions we need.”
