Barbara Cohen Captures Four-Legged Frolic
A college art teacher once warned Barbara E. Cohen against becoming an abstract painter, advising her that only “realists” can support themselves through their art. But Cohen, who moved to Provincetown in 1993, found a sweet spot: while her colorful abstract paintings are frequently exhibited in local galleries, she reaches a larger audience by publishing more realist work in books.
Cohen’s realist pieces are inspired by places and four-legged creatures close to her heart. The books feature Polaroid images that she paints. Dog in the Dunes (1998), a tribute to her black Labrador Gabe, is set during her ailing companion’s final visit to the back shore, while the images in Provincetown: Intimate Portraits (2021), a visual journey through town from its hidden ponds to the Pilgrim Monument, are accompanied by texts by Provincetown writers including Michael Cunningham.
The recently published Dog Time (2025), Cohen’s fourth dog-themed book, is dedicated to the memory of Yofi, a 10-pound mixed-breed rescue who appears in most of the book’s 45 collaged illustrations. In one image, Yofi mingles with other dogs at Angel Foods, where the frisky pack waits outside the shop’s red front door for bones and scraps.
Yofi also appears in a trailer park, a deck shaded by striped umbrellas, a slumber party, a grocery store, and in Stormy Mayo’s dahlia garden on Bradford Street. The backgrounds in these images are created through a layered process of painting directly onto collaged Polaroids and Fujifilm prints and are deliberately askew.
“Shooting dog photos became an obsession,” Cohen writes, “and over the years they began to populate collages. During Covid, Provincetown changed. Dog parks became social centers. I collaged dog photos into party scenes. Dog Time was the result.”
Cohen will be exhibiting work from the project and signing copies of Dog Time at Cad Red Studio (437 Commercial St., Provincetown) on Friday, July 18 from 7 to 9 p.m. and on Sunday, July 20 from 3 to 5 p.m. See barbaracohen.com. —Susan Rand Brown
Deb Mell’s Magnificent Menagerie
“I’m a serious artist,” says Deb Mell. “But I like to play.” Both aspects of Mell’s work are on view in her current exhibition at Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown.
Colored pencil drawings of strange humanoid creatures hang on one wall. Their vibrant bodies stand out against backgrounds of heavily pigmented black paint. Each character has a name and is based on a member of Mell’s family or someone she has met.
Stevie looks awkward. It wears a pointy black hat and a guilty grimace, and its hairy legs poke out from a turtle shell-shaped body. “I used to have a turtle named Stevie Nicks,” Mell says. “She started out the size of a quarter and ended up huge. She used to walk around the house.” Nearby, a groovy-looking Elvis is inspired by Mell’s aunt, who loved the musician.
On another wall, a bedazzled foam deer head stares hungrily at gallery visitors. Its head and broad neck are a rainbow jumble of buttons, beads, and sparkly bits of plastic. It sports a real set of antlers, and it’s smiling with real teeth that Mell found at a yard sale. “There was a dentist that was going out of business,” says Mell. “I said, ‘How much for the whole box?’ ”
The deer’s eyes are white fishing bobs with buttons for irises. Its facial expression could be interpreted as creepy or friendly. Mell prefers the latter. “There are some people who think my work is scary,” she says. “I really don’t want it to be. I want it to be playful.”
Mell’s show is at Berta Walker Gallery (208 Bradford St., Provincetown) through July 20. See bertawalkergallery.com. —Eve Samaha
Looking at the State of the Fourth Estate
According to Northwestern University’s 2024 State of Local News Report, on average more than two newspapers disappear each week in the U.S. — and although Massachusetts gained 16 newspapers in 2024, the country as a whole lost 130.
Few people know more about the decline of local news than Jeremiah Ariaz, a professor at Louisiana State University who photographed over 100 newspaper offices in his home state of Kansas. He describes the resulting book, The Kansas Mirror: The Fourth Estate in the Heart of America, as “both an ode and an elegy.” On Thursday, July 17, Ariaz will present a slide lecture about his work at the Provincetown Commons (48 Bradford St.) in an event hosted by the Local Journalism Project, the nonprofit partner of the Provincetown Independent.
Along with Ariaz’s photographs, the book includes letters from newspaper editors. “I care about this community and about making sure it has access to information it can rely upon in making informed decisions about moving forward,” writes Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record. “Such information depends on a watchdog press that doesn’t kowtow to economic or political powers-that-be.”
Ariaz photographed the Marion County Record office in 2022. The following year, police illegally raided the office and Meyer’s home as part of an investigation involving a dispute between the newspaper and a local business owner. “I didn’t think it could happen in America,” says Meyer. Ariaz visited the offices again after the police raid. This time, he took a photo of a reporter wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a newspaper on it, its front page reading, “Seized but not silenced.”
It’s one of the stories in Ariaz’s book that illustrates both the vulnerability and the resilience of local newspapers. “The decimation of America’s newspapers over the last two decades has been well documented,” says Tim Stauffer, managing editor of the Iola Register, in a letter included in Ariaz’s project. “That story has been told, and it’s a tragedy. But here we are. Still standing. Still publishing five days a week. Still telling our community’s story.”
Tickets for the event, benefitting the Local Journalism Project, are $45. See localjournalismproject.org. —Lauren Hakimi
An Artist and the Sea
For five years, from 2018 to 2023, artist Kate McConnell regularly went to Provincetown Harbor, where she would paint en plein air using oils on a piece of cold-pressed paper. McConnell worked in all weather. “I had seaweed on my feet from nor’easters,” she says. “I would be freezing in a puffer jacket, hardly able to move my hands.” Sometimes, she says, the winds were so strong that her heavy watercolor paper, taped to a board, would “sail away.”
This week at the Commons (46 Bradford St., Provincetown), McConnell will exhibit 365 of these works in a show titled “Almanac — A Year at the Sea in 365 Variations.”
McConnell, who splits her time between Provincetown and Washington, D.C., organized the pieces carefully over the years. Each work is titled with the day, month, and year of its creation. Many have notes on the back: personal thoughts, air temperature, tidal height, and significant current events. The project was like keeping a diary, McConnell says. “It was a diary of the sea, weather conditions, and the conditions of the day.”
The back of one piece painted on July 30, 2023 reads: “As translated in ‘The Odyssey,’ today is definitely one of a ‘wine-dark sea’ and ‘rose sky.’ The days’ light is shortening.” The ocean in the painting is deep indigo, the sky above it a wash of yellow, pink, and white. One can imagine the prow of an ancient Greek ship emerging on the horizon.
The rest of the pieces vary vastly in color. “There are so many purples and reds and ochre colors,” says McConnell. “At a glance, people determine the sky is blue and the sea is sea-green or deep blue. But really, the sky is often pink or yellow and the sea is almost brown. And on foggy days, when you can’t discern sky from sea, it’s all a warm, gray mist.”
Since she started the series, McConnell feels she has improved as an observational painter. “I’ve aged, I’ve evolved, I look differently,” she says. “If you sit around long enough and observe, your eye gets better and better at seeing.”
There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Friday, July 11 at 5 p.m.; the show is on view until Monday, Aug. 4. See kate-mcconnell.com and provincetowncommons.org. —Eve Samaha
An Enchanting New Literary Anthology
Michelle Tea says she’s always been a writer. But as a child growing up in Chelsea, she says, “I didn’t understand how a writer became a writer.” She didn’t know anyone who had gone to college, and the world of authorship felt remote; while she wrote poetry, she didn’t know what to do with it. “The challenge was understanding how to find a way in.”
Now Tea, who lives in Los Angeles, is the author of more than a dozen books of memoir, fiction, poetry, and children’s literature. Her memoir Valencia won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction. She’s also the founder of a small nonprofit press called Dopamine, which “is dedicated to stories of unvarnished queer existence,” according to its website.
To raise money for the press, Tea decided to edit and publish a curated anthology every year. Last year, the theme was “SLUTS.” This year, the anthology is called WITCH. On Friday, July 11, 7 p.m. at the Gifford House (9 Carver St.), Tea will discuss the project with 12 of the anthology’s contributors in an event produced by the Provincetown Bookshop.
Tea describes WITCH as a “mixtape”: it includes poetry, fiction, an excerpt from a play, an interview, and an elegy. Writer Ariel Gore contributed a piece “that’s dealing with her wife’s recent death and the idea of being haunted by a demon,” says Tea. “It’s her signature tone: she doesn’t shy away from something being heavy, and she also doesn’t shy away from something being funny or absurd.” Tea also mentions work by CAConrad, another contributor. “When I think of a literary witch,” says Tea, “I immediately think of CAConrad. They’ve created a whole somatic poetry practice that’s very mystical and experiential.”
At the Gifford House, writers will read excerpts from their contributions to the book, says Tea — “unless they have something that’s more interactive to offer in a magical way,” adding that she encourages “meditations and rituals” that involve the audience.
The event is free, and copies of the book will be available for sale. See provincetownbookshop.com. —Dorothea Samaha
Calling All Local Writers
At the ninth annual Provincetown Book Festival this fall, five local writers will have the opportunity to share their work in a reading that will open the weekend-long program.
Curated by author Alejandro Varela, whose novel The Town of Babylon was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022, the festival’s “Reading Local” will take place on Saturday, Sept. 20. Cape Cod-based and regional writers of poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction are invited to submit samples of their work for consideration.
Writing samples should be no longer than three pages and should be mailed to Nan Cinnater at the Provincetown Library ([email protected]). The deadline is Thursday, July 24, and the five selected readers will be announced on Friday, Aug. 22.
The “Reading Local” program will take place just before another program, “Sense of Place: Cape Cod Writers,” which will feature readings by Cynthia Blakely, Dennis Minsky, and Judith Stiles. Stiles, author of the 2025 novel Hush Little Fire, was one of the readers selected to share their work at last year’s festival opening event.
“You never know who will be in the audience,” says Stiles in a statement accompanying the announcement of the 2025 festival. “A literary agent heard my story, and now I just published my first novel because of that listener.”
The festival will also include presentation of the 2025 Rose Dorothea Award, which is given annually by the Provincetown Board of Library Trustees to a writer “with a strong connection to the Outer Cape who has made a significant contribution through the written word,” as well as book talks and panel discussions by more than 20 regional and national writers.
All events are held at the Provincetown Public Library. See provincetownbookfestival.org. —John D’Addario
