Diane Messinger’s Art Is Contagious
A painting by Truro artist Diane Messinger has been accepted in a juried virtual show, “We Are All Contagious,” presented by the UMass Dartmouth University Art Gallery. Forty-nine pieces were chosen by juror Nato Thompson, artistic director of Philadelphia Contemporary, from 745 submitted. (To find the exhibit on the UMass Dartmouth website, search for “We Are All Contagious.”)
Messinger’s piece is a massive 6-by-10-foot acrylic on paper called Girl With Long Nose. In the text accompanying the piece online, Messinger writes, “What does that mean, contagious? I think contagious is feelings and emotions. These travel like a virus, unseen but there.”
Michael Mazur Paintings at Albert Merola
The Albert Merola Gallery at 424 Commercial St. in Provincetown will present its first show of the season, “Gathered at the edge of light,” of paintings by Michael Mazur from the 1990s and a series he created shortly before his death in 2009. The exhibit will be on view June 12 through July 1. Call the gallery at 508-487-4424 for admission information during the Covid-19 crisis.
Mazur’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where a traveling exhibit of his prints opened in 2000. He was deeply involved in the Fine Arts Work Center, serving on its board and visual committees, and founding its Provincetown Print Project in 1990.
Susan Baker Reprints History
With Susan Baker’s out-of-print, tongue-in-cheek picture book, The History of Provincetown, first published in 1999, going for hundreds of dollars on Amazon, the Truro artist decided to do a second printing through her Susan Baker Museum Press in the spirit of Provincetown 400. Both the Provincetown Bookshop and Truro’s Salty Market are carrying it curbside. (Baker’s “memorial museum” is a charming exhibit space filled with her art and constructions at 46 Shore Road in North Truro, 508-487-2557, very near Salty Market. Summer hours have yet to be posted.)
The History of Provincetown is not exactly a children’s book — there’s a bit too much nudity and canoodling for that — but it does have a storybook quality that adults will find whimsical and amusing. Baker arrived in Provincetown in the late ’60s as one of the first fellows at the Fine Arts Work Center, and she’s been here ever since. Her History preserves Provincetown lore experienced first-hand or told to her by her friends — “History is just gossip writ large,” Baker often signs her books. These vignettes include Edmund Wilson sunbathing in a suit, Harry Kemp holding a séance in the dunes, and Howard Mitcham’s “famous” lighter-fluid pork loin. Though many of the local characters are now gone and memories fading, Baker hopes it’s all still entertaining.
She started her own press in anticipation of two new children’s books coming out soon. The first is My Brother From Another Mother, which Baker says is about basset hounds: “My basset hound and my son’s basset hound are half-brothers.” The other is Rupert, based on a “neighborhood goat who was like a movie star.” —Saskia Maxwell Keller
Artists Retrace Thoreau’s Cape Walks
Two artists, Ben Shattuck and William Bolton, inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s walks on Cape Cod, will retrace his steps at a Tiny Tent Early Stage virtual event, presented by the Payomet Performing Arts Center on Sunday, June 14, at 11:30 a.m.
Shattuck will read from an essay he wrote, “Three Walks,” and he will join Bolton, a plein air painter, in a conversation about “art, Thoreau, Cape Cod, and nature,” according to the announcement for the event.
The program is free, but registration is required in order to join the event on Zoom. Go to payomet.org to find the link to register.
