Artists of ‘Exquisite Core’ Unite for Ukraine Relief
Watching the war in Ukraine unfold, Eugene Zhukau was struck by how everyday people, including artists, were having to turn into soldiers. “In war, you’re learning something you never knew, and you need to learn it quick,” he says. Eager to help, Zhukau took up a different sort of arms, using his social network of Provincetown artists. Despite having never previously sold art, Zhukau, a native of Belarus, has raised about $10,000 to support Ukrainians by selling cyanotype prints.
With an interest in history and a background in photography, Zhukau was struck by a 1908 panorama of Provincetown he found in an archive. He printed a digital negative of the photograph and, when the war started, he says, “I needed to do something. I thought maybe I could try to sell this panorama.” After creating a cyanotype print of the negative, using chemicals and sunlight to produce a blue-hued image, he posted it on Instagram, offering three prints to the highest bidders, with proceeds going to the International Rescue Committee.
Since then, Zhukau’s project has grown to include other artists. Along with Bob Keary, he created another cyanotype and sold it at a Crown & Anchor event for $2,000, with proceeds going to Gender Zed, “to cover the immediate needs of LGBTQ+ persons who have remained in Ukraine.” As more artists became interested, “Exquisite Core” became the project’s name, a reference to “Exquisite Corpse,” the Surrealist game of creative collaboration.
Zhukau gave artists one of his prints, inviting them to “enhance, challenge, reinterpret, or renegotiate the original meaning by way of some new context or layer.” These hybrid creations were sold, some in galleries, some online, with proceeds going to support a Ukrainian cause of the artist’s choosing. Participating artists include Paul Rizzo, Maura Cunningham, Caroline Carney, Tessera Knowles-Thompson, Eric Kosse, and Donna Pomponio, with support from the Provincetown Commons and Four Eleven Gallery.
Three works from the project will be on view at the Red Inn’s hallway gallery, 15 Commercial St. in Provincetown, beginning April 28. —Abraham Storer
A Whale Tale, Read Aloud
After two years of surfing cyberspace, the Provincetown Public Library’s Moby-Dick Marathon Reading returns in person this year. It will be held over three days: Friday, April 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, April 30, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, May 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Herman Melville’s classic tells of Captain Ahab’s obsessive quest for revenge on a huge white whale responsible for destroying his ship and severing his leg. More than 110 local participants will each read five pages aloud over a total of more than 24 hours. Come listen, for free, on the starboard side of the library’s Rose Dorothea model at 356 Commercial St. If you are interested in reading, contact Brittany Taylor at [email protected].
Provincetown Arts Auction
While visitors to Provincetown Arts Press’s spring auction won’t hear the familiar ring of “going once, going twice” from their web browser, they can bid on pieces virtually through Saturday, May 7. All proceeds go to the annual printing of Provincetown Arts magazine and books by and about Outer Cape artists.
Artworks in the auction include a Bobby Miller portrait of Andy Warhol from 1977, with an estimated value of $1,500. Amy Arbus’s photograph of John Waters sitting cross-legged in a mismatched plaid suit, valued at $2,500, is also available as a 14-by-11-inch print. Esteban del Valle, who painted the Time and the Town mural on the side of Provincetown’s Marine Specialties, has a silkscreen print, We Can Create, on the auction block. There are also walnut ink drawings by Mark Adams scattered throughout a book by Nick Flynn, as well as a whimsical painting by Naya Bricher titled The Cat Is Actually Nice. Bid at provincetownarts.org.
Transformative Show at the Cultural Center
“Trans(formation),” a show of photographs by Julia Cumes, runs through May 21 at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, 307 Old Main St. in South Yarmouth. There will be a reception on Friday, April 29, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
The show consists of 18 portraits of trans people in the Cape community, along with their stories. “This collaborative project was initially inspired by my nephew, who is trans and who made me realize how little visual representation there was of the trans community on the Cape,” says Cumes in a press release. “One of the people I photographed and interviewed early on in the project told me that statistically more people think they’ve seen a ghost than a trans person.”
Cumes photographs her subjects with objects and in settings of their choosing. In Hayden, the subject holds a childhood photograph and sits in a bathtub beside five vials of testosterone, each representing one year of their transition. In Elizabeth, the subject sits on her shellfisherman father’s bright yellow skiff.
The subject of Rikki poses with her drum kit. “I’d been playing with the Incredible Casuals for 35 years and we’d built up this following all over the world and then, when I decided to start transitioning, they suddenly fired me,” she says in an interview with Cumes. “The hardest thing about transitioning was overcoming my fear and all the rejection I experienced. Simultaneously, with my life getting blown apart, there was a sense of triumph.”
WOMR’s 40th Birthday
WOMR is celebrating 40 years of grassroots radio with an open house at 494 Commercial St. in Provincetown on Sunday, May 1, from noon to 4 p.m. “We are very excited to be celebrating this milestone,” says John Braden, WOMR’s executive director, in a press release.
WOMR was started by a group of community radio enthusiasts in 1976. They made their first broadcast in 1982 at 91.9 FM. In 1995, WOMR moved to 92.1 FM to reach a wider audience and installed a second transmitter (WFMR 91.3 FM) to improve the signal from Orleans to Hyannis.
Braden began volunteering in 1991. “The station has really come a long way since I started,” he says. “We’ve seen hundreds of volunteers move through the station and the airwaves, literally too many to count.”
