Barbara Cohen at Land’s End Gallery and Books
Artist and photographer Barbara Cohen shows her work at the Land’s End Gallery and Books until Aug. 7. The pieces are original Polaroid photographs, oil-painted over, from Cohen’s 2021 book Our Provincetown: Intimate Portraits.
In the book, Provincetown locals, writers, and artists wrote short essays revealing their beloved P’town spots, ranging from back alleys to storefronts to the Pilgrim Monument. Cohen photographed the places and added her own interpretations of color and texture.
In the photo of the Pilgrim Monument, the building stands center stage, almost untouched by paint. Around it, the dark blue sky, white clouds, and earth-toned trees are smudged and blurred, making the monument more striking.
In each piece, the opaque oil paint enhances the character of the place. What might have been passed by suddenly cannot be ignored. —Eve Samaha
The Love of the Nightingale by Campfire Quorum
The Campfire Quorum offers its last Sunday-evening-at-the-beach performance of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play The Love of the Nightingale on Sunday, Aug. 7.
This modern retelling of a Greek myth is about the silencing of a wronged woman and the way she breaks the system to get her revenge. Campfire Quorum founder Megan Nussle says that there are larger implications to the play. It shows how people under rigid, oppressive governments could regain their power.
Campfire Quorum has a unique approach to theater. Nussle says the mission is to create “nomadic, organic, and fantastic live theater.” The plays are not confined to a man-made stage. Instead, the actors perform in a natural environment related to the play, such as the woods, sidewalk, or beach. The environment becomes a character in the scene.
Though the cast is small, Nussle says that the play feels large. With the environment and the audience playing their respective roles of atmosphere and imagination, the play takes on a life of its own. Call 508-687-2267 for information about this Sunday’s performance. —Eve Samaha
Housing Benefit Concert at WHAT
The Narrow Land String Band was active in the 1980s but has played only intermittently in recent years. This summer brings the musicians back together for an important cause: they will perform a benefit concert on Monday, Aug. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (2357 Route 6) to raise awareness and funds for affordable housing in Wellfleet.
Elaine McIlroy, one of the organizers, promises a “big evening of music.” The headline band will be joined by friends including Julie Charland, the Cove Jazz Quartet, the Ruffled Hens, the Beat Greens, Harriet Jerusha Korim, Fred Magee, Theresa and John Owens, Tom Leidenfrost, Blu Central, and Cakes and Ale.
The show is intended to raise money and “get people to start thinking about what they can do as individuals to help create more affordable housing,” says McIlroy. This event will dovetail with other initiatives this month in Wellfleet to support affordable housing, including an art show by Traci Harmon-Hay and shows at Farm Projects and Off Main Gallery.
Concert tickets are $40 at what.org or call 508-349-9428. All proceeds benefit the Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust. —Abraham Storer
Submit Writing for P’town Book Festival
The 2022 Provincetown Book Festival will open at 10 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 17, with an event titled “Reading Local.” Patrick Nolan, vice president and publisher of Penguin Books, will judge writing submitted by Cape Cod authors and choose five entrants to read their work. Poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction are all welcome.
To submit work, writers should send a sample of no more than three pages of prose or three poems no longer than three pages each. Include a brief introduction and biography and send to Nan Cinnater at the Provincetown Library ([email protected]). The deadline for submissions is Aug. 19; the five winners will be announced on Sept. 6.
Marian Roth at Provincetown Commons
Marian Roth’s photographs are on exhibit at the Commons gallery in Provincetown until Sunday, Aug, 7. Roth moved to Provincetown in 1982 to live among artists. She’s known for her camera obscura work, a technique involving a darkened room with a small hole in one wall, through which an image is projected onto the opposite wall. The image arrives upside down.
Roth’s photos are vividly distorted, sometimes unsettling images of real life. A picture of an ordinary lawn and house is washed in shades of blue; the windows of the house are black. One photo, The Mystery, in startling orange, red, and white, shows trees that look like flames.
Roth was honored with a lifetime award for artistic excellence by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. —Dorothea Samaha
Taylor Fox at Orleans Modern Art
In Taylor Fox’s paintings, it seems that anything is possible.
In his Harwich studio, Fox has a series of paintings imagining Noah’s Ark at Nauset Beach. Last year, he showed a series of straightforward postcard-sized paintings of local landscapes at Orleans Modern Art.
In his upcoming show at the same gallery (85 Route 6A, Orleans), Fox continues to mix it up. The works in the show, from Aug. 6 to 18, include loose figurative paintings, Pop-inspired text pieces, and large paintings of beach sculptures.
In one painting, Fox paints a tangle of rope he saw on the beach that reminded him of a buffalo. He ran with the idea in the painting, adding Buffalo legs to the object, and then, inexplicably, his daughter’s legs.
He picks up the theme of legs in a series of three paintings based on a photograph of Sally Field on the beach. In contrast to the precise rendering of tangled rope in the buffalo, Fox paints here with loose wet-on-wet gestures. His palette is bright and high-key, and the flesh tones in these paintings capture buttery California colors.
Fox throws another curveball in a series of text paintings that serve as odd still lifes of American consumer packaging. He takes letters from packaging, rearranging them to spell out simple phrases, and then makes enlarged paintings of the text. “Something for everyone, everyone for something,” reads one painting. The message isn’t obvious, but the picture is fun, like much of Fox’s work. —Abraham Storer
‘Tough Girls and Lucid Dreamers’ at AMP
Katrina del Mar, a New York-based photographer, writer, and filmmaker, hosts “Tough Girls and Lucid Dreamers” at Art Market Provincetown (432 Commercial St.) on Saturday, Aug. 6 at 6:30 p.m. It’s less a show than a traveling space. At different venues, mostly in New York City and Provincetown, del Mar invites writers, artists, and musicians to perform, read, and show visual work (including video) in one concentrated space. The show has a feminist bent and is a chance for visitors to immerse themselves in the work of many artists across many mediums all at once.
The iteration of the show coming up at AMP has an impressive lineup: Mark Adams, Elizabeth Bradfield, Jay Critchley, Monica Falcone, Sarah Greenwood, Billy Hough and Susan Goldberg, Amy Hoffman, Heather Kapplow, Shelley Marlow, Sue Metro and Debbie Nadolney, Bobby Miller, Eileen Myles, Runn Shayo, Genny Slag, Anne Stott, Betsy Todd, Darlene Van Alstyne, and Thalia Zedek, as well as other last-minute arrivals. The event is free. —Paul Sullivan
