When we settled on “Changing the Climate” as the theme of the Independent’s annual New Year’s art and photography issue for 2023, we told contributors that they could interpret the theme as loosely as they liked, and they responded with paintings, drawings, collages, cartoons, and photographic images of striking variety and originality. Some of the work addresses global climate change and potential catastrophe; on other pages you will find reflections on masculinity and femininity, gender fluidity, consumerism, politics, religion, social class, technology, apocalyptic visions, and “pre-traumatic stress” — formerly known as “worry.”
We are grateful to the 18 artists and photographers who have contributed to this special edition, which we hope will inspire appreciation for the abundance of imagination in our neighbors. We offer all our readers sincere wishes for a year full of improvements in the climate, both meteorological and social. —The editors.
Changing With the Climate. Traci Harmon-Hay is an artist and illustrator who studied in Baltimore and co-founded Studio Six, an illustration coop there. Her work has been published in the Baltimore Sun, the Provincetown Independent, and other newspapers. On Cape Cod, Harmon-Hay began working as a watercolorist with the natural world as her subject, but she is also interested in what humans build. Houses are a recurring theme — often depicted as animate objects. Her “Floating Structures” asks what it means to be safe from the wind and water that come with climate change. Harmon-Hay opened the Harmon Gallery in 2000 and showed there until it closed in 2021. She lives in Wellfleet and teaches at PAAM and at Castle Hill. Her work is at traciharmonhay.com.
It’s Snowing. Daniel Dejean’s drawings are about everyday human foibles. He is an avid observer of nature and is amused by people’s awkward encounters with it — the characters in his slightly subversive drawings are often drawn as animals. He chronicles life on Outer Cape Cod for the Provincetown Independent in a weekly cartoon series called “Vignette.” Dejean is also a gardener, a cook, a runner, and a painter who works in acrylics. He grew up in the small town of Preignac in Bordeaux, France and later lived in Toulouse. He now lives in Wellfleet. More @daniel_dejean.
On the Shore. Chris Kelly is an artist living and working in Eastham. He is known for his Dune Patrol series and other abstract paintings and is the creative director for the Provincetown Independent. Cassandra Complex has been painting in Provincetown for over 10 years. She is known for her male figurative paintings, often created using playing cards as a brush. In the warm months, you can find her painting outdoors in front of her studio across from the Crown & Anchor. Kelly and Complex collaborated on On the Shore. More at heyitschriskelly.com and at cassandracomplexgallery.com.
Foozle. Mike Carroll is an artist who works in Truro and in Provincetown, where he is the owner and director of the Schoolhouse Gallery. His paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States and are held in numerous collections. The primary tenet of his practice is agency. His work suggests that makers and lookers, when grounded in truth, can be positioned to move into conversation and action and that what occurs in the bodies and minds of people who look and listen has the potential to help us connect and think forward. Foozle is currently on display at the Berta Walker Gallery.
Malina, After the Rain. Agata Storer is a photographer whose work focuses on the experiences of instability and a nomadic life. She was born in Poland where she studied at the Art Academy of Katowice. She lived in New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, and Israel before moving to Wellfleet, where she has shown at Farm Projects. One of her photos was featured in the December 2022 issue of Vogue. She is a regular contributor to the Independent. In this image of her daughter riding her bike after the rain she sees a joyful moment, but also the certainty that her daughter will one day have to deal with living on a boiling planet. More at agatastorer.com.
Madame J. Joe Navas is a photographer who specializes in fine art portraiture. Madame J is influenced by the mood and light of John Singer Sargent’s paintings, particularly by his Madame X, but it offers a different take on who is regal and worthy. Its subject is Jamie Demetri, a local community leader. In this photograph, Demetri is wearing a $10 piece of tulle, no makeup, nor anything else — symbolizing a move away from the idea of regalness as something possessed exclusively by the privileged classes. Navas lives in Eastham and co-owns Organic Photography with his wife, Kristen. He has taught workshops at PAAM and been an adjunct professor at Cape Cod Community College. More @joeink.
Yellow Crab Island. Adam O’Day was born in Murfreesboro, Tenn. and now lives and works in Abington, Mass. He has a B.F.A. in illustration and design from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University (2005). He is known for his murals of — and on — iconic places in Boston. His work has been shown from London to Miami to Cape Cod, including at Longstreet in Eastham and at Woodman Shimko Gallery in Provincetown. Yellow Crab Island is a recent installment in “Gemini,” an ongoing series, in which O’Day explores a hopeful, lighthearted view of post-apocalyptic Earth. It is now on view at Curation250 in Lowell. More @adam_oday.
Appear Strange vs. to Be Strange. Naya Bricher is an artist who has been working in Provincetown since 2014. She is from South Kent, Conn. and is an alumna of Smith College. She is the administrative director at the Fine Arts Work Center and administrative coordinator at the Peaked Hill Trust. Bricher’s paintings honor the effervescence of living an object-filled life as shaped and narrated by the intense color, wide-ranging materials, and cultural references she finds everywhere from basements and tag sales to social media — and which she combines whimsically. Her paintings can be found at Four Eleven Gallery in Provincetown. Follow her @naya.pi.
They. Edward Boches is a documentary photographer and creative activist. He regularly donates his images and services to social justice and mutual aid organizations that support the causes he believes in — affordable housing, access to food, sustainable farming, and the arts, among others. His work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout New England. He lives in Brookline and Brewster and has contributed many photographs to the Independent. The image here, They, is from an ongoing project about sexual identity.
Everything at Once and Nothing at All. Sofia Cabanas is an artist and restaurant worker living in Provincetown. Her work emerges from her own curiosity and experimentation and her studies at Mass. College of Art and Design and the University of Vermont. This piece is a reflection on the joyful fracturing of expectations that has come with the challenges of the past three years. She offers it in recognition of younger generations of queer and nonbinary people who, by living authentically, are changing the climate — inspiring people to reflect on the inherited roles and expectations that hold them back and proving we do not always have to be one exact thing.
What World? Mark Adams is a coastal scientist, public artist, and artist-scientist in residence at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. Since 1985 he has lived in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Vineyard Haven, Chilmark, Oak Bluffs, and Edgartown. He is a utilitarian, swayed by the idea that expertise — desalinization, Moon colonies — will allow us to rise to every occasion. But he does not want to live in a world without herons wading in tidal marshes, without dangerous wild animals and rivers in flood. His coloring book page in this issue asks whether we’d rather live in engineered bubbles or at home in nature.
The Golden Standard. Joseph Diggs was born in France and grew up on Cape Cod. He now lives and paints in Osterville. The mixed-media piece in this issue brings together two themes that defined his work in 2022. First, he grappled with racial injustice and how to conceptualize jazz without patriarchy. And he continued working on landscapes inspired by his ancestors’ properties in Osterville. The piece explores our changing environment and its impact on our evolving social relations. Diggs’s work is being exhibited at the Carr Center in Detroit, Mich. He is represented by the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown. More at joediggsart.com.
Don’t Give Up. Siân Robertson is a self-taught artist originally from Wales and now living in North Truro. Used maps and atlases are the primary source materials for her collages and assemblages, and the X-acto knife her main tool. As she excavates the maps, what emerges is a sense of connection across geography and history. In her rearrangements, there is fragility, loss, and change. But there are also reminders of adventure, resilience, and endurance. Her three-dimensional works made from two-dimensional representations of the three-dimensional realm make the world seem smaller. Her work can be seen at sianrobertsonart.com.
Solastalgiac. Award-winning cartoonist, super-modest guy, and all-around mensch A. Crock is the locally sourced, organic, grass-fed, irony-rich alter ego of artist Adam M. Graham, who has lived and worked in Provincetown since 1999. From the founding of the Provincetown Independent in 2019, heaping portions of his “Steamers” have been served to the wit-starved from the Crock. His contribution to this issue heralds the new year with second helpings of cheap oil and eco-anxiety.
Intertidal. Grace Emmet is an eco-artist, educator, and sustainability advocate. Through her foraging and natural ink-making practice, she explores her relationship with nature and how our lives intertwine with the beauties and complexities around us. She believes in building awareness about environmental issues and sustainable practices through art and education. She is the curator of community education at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and shows her work at galleries, museums, and universities across Massachusetts. Intertidal, her piece included in this issue, was made with acorn and copper oxide inks.
Artist Paul Suggs and His Wellfleet Clam. Marnie Crawford Samuelson is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and writer who lives in Wellfleet and Berkeley, Calif. Her photographs are featured in The Wild Braid, a collaboration with poets Stanley Kunitz and Genine Lentine. Her photograph in this issue of Paul Suggs, a Wellfleet neighbor, is from An Outer Cape Village, a project that features people who are deeply attached to this extraordinary and fragile place. Paul and his giant squirting clam, made of fiberglass, built on a lawnmower frame, and powered with a car battery, is a low-tech and humorous piece of local art — which is key to changing hearts and minds in matters related to a changing climate.
Facing the Future. Nancy Bloom lives in Truro, enjoys photographing the nature of Cape Cod, and specializes in working on the water. She has documented the America’s Cup, the Newport Bermuda Race, and several world races. The simple beauty of Edward Hopper’s paintings that show his love of the sea has influenced her approach. Bloom is a juried member of the Cape Cod Art Association and has won awards in local, New England, and international contests. Her commercial work has appeared in numerous advertisements and magazines and her journalistic work tells stories in the Provincetown Independent, where she is staff photographer. Her work is at nancybloomphotography.com.
