Berta Walker Gallery (208 Bradford St.)
Last week there was a fishnet full of famous folk and local art lovers outside the East End galleries, but tonight it’s raining and only brave souls roam the streets.
For a miraculous moment, before the Friday night stroll officially begins, the sun shines through the street-facing window at the Berta Walker Gallery and lands directly on Paul Resika’s fleet of abstract oil paintings on canvas. Hanging above the gallery desk in a silver frame is a strip of vermilion sand in Green Boat. Resika’s milky oils soothe the eye. The earthy red strip closest to the tide line brings depth to the green boat, beached at low tide. The piece seems almost symmetrical, but then the eye is drawn to the small dark piece of wood in the foreground, which sends the viewer in toward the boat and out again, into the gaps in the iron gray wharf.
Provincetown Art Association & Museum (460 Commercial St.)
There’s a pink blister pulsing on the back of my foot, but that won’t stop me from taking you to the Members’ 12×12 Exhibition at PAAM, where a few other strollers have gathered by now. There, mesmerized by the hundreds of photos, paintings, and wall sculptures by local artists, are Aydali Gutiérrez, Daniry López, and José González of New Bedford.
After looking for a while, they are moved to reveal their own sketchbooks and collages. González goes by Celebi and makes digital art and drawings on paper. López works in collage, text, and sticky notes and sketches with ink. As an artist, Daniry goes by Dani. Her cut-out language is reminiscent of Jack Pierson’s found-word sculptures, invoking both nostalgia and excitement.
Land’s End Gallery and Books (437 Commercial St.)
Michael Gaffney and Daniel Lander are getting married in two weeks, but tonight, they say, “We’re strolling.”
In their blue and green raincoats, they stand in Mischa Richter’s Land’s End Gallery next to a photograph by artist Ryan McKinley, part of a show called “Miss Adventure.”
“It’s whimsical, and the moon is not contributing a lot of light to the shot, but it gives the illusion it’s giving light to the shot,” Daniel says.
“And it’s so practical to go out into the open ocean for the shot,” Michael says.
Bowersock Gallery (371 Commercial St.)
Steve Bowersock, Provincetown artist and owner of Bowersock Gallery, is discussing an oil painting with frequent gallery stroller Brent Fields: La Revolución de los Niños by Christopher Pothier.
“I always see conformism in his paintings, and he’s fighting against it,” says Fields, who is visiting from Washington, D.C. “This is one of the paintings that’s going to be current for years to come.”
“I met Christopher at a pub in Cambridge 12 years ago,” says Bowersock. “I like his photorealism, and he has businessmen in his paintings quite often.” The businessman in this painting appears to be dead. “The businessmen, to me, are trapped in this certain world and he always shows them here being taken down by youth and innocence,” Bowersock says. “He doesn’t want to tell you what it means. He wants you to interpret it yourself.”
Bowersock is from rural Ohio. “People have gotten really upset and pissed off at me because they think we’re promoting guns, but it’s a metaphor,” he says. “It brings a sort of angst. But for our generation, we were forced to carry a gun at that age. There’s a misconception about guns in rural America and the city. Where I grew up, you had to take a hunter safety course at nine. This is a normal sight when I go home. It becomes normalized and you don’t think any other way about it. There’s so much farmland in the Midwest.”
In the far back room of the gallery, Bowersock is showing his own photographs of abandoned farmhouses. “I’m trying to bring awareness to our farms that are being lost,” he says. “I’m able to go in and take these photos because my brother is a hillbilly and jack-of-all-trades.” The farms he’s been photographing are all within five or six miles of his family’s farm, “and they’ve just been left,” he says.
“It’s sad and tragic, but you’ve also turned them into beautiful pieces of work,” says Fields.
Egeli Gallery (382 Commercial St.)
The next time you see an artist blocking traffic, it might be John Clayton. He’s one of the few Provincetown painters who paints on location. John is a follower of Henry Hensche’s Cape Cod School of Art tradition.
Inside the Egeli Gallery, Shavon Hazel and Courtney Paulson-Martin, both from Provincetown, are struck by Clayton’s use of color and light in the soft palette oil painting Dyer Street. Courtney’s watch beeps. “Someone’s calling me,” she says. “Oh no, it’s my heart rate. I got so emotional about this piece, my heart rate did go up.”
Wine has a place on the stroll. But Courtney says she and Shavon “are not here for the booze.” Standing in front of Clayton’s painting, Courtney says, “I can talk about that street because that was my street. I’m drawn to a little nostalgia because I walked my dogs every day down this street. This fence isn’t here anymore, and a raccoon used to live in that tree,” she says.
“I like that you can stand on the top of Dyer and the slope feels like you could roll down into the water,” she says. “The painting gives me a beautiful spring day; I love the ivy growing on the building and this dramatic use of purple on the trees.”
