Mapping the Wind at Farm Projects
The works in “Wind Maps,” an exhibition of drawings and video by artists Kai Potter and Eli Pasternak currently on view at Farm Projects (355 Main St., Wellfleet), chronicle the week that the pair spent in a Provincetown dune shack named Zara this past May.
“The project is a perfect example of the power of the dune shacks,” says Farm Projects director Susie Nielsen. “You’re remote, you’re one with nature, you’re pulling and extracting from your surroundings.”
The show features framed “wind drawings” that were inspired on their first morning in the dunes, when Potter and Pasternak walked to the beach and found a birthday balloon — still full of helium — tied to a piece of driftwood by a thin ribbon. They brought it back to their shack and let it float around the screened-in porch, observing how the wind dragged the balloon and its ribbon along the floor. They attached a pen to the ribbon and laid a large sheet of paper on the floor beneath it. The wind made the pen wander across the paper, creating elaborate and detailed abstract drawings.
They then laid more sheets of paper on the floor and hung lengths of twisted rope from the ceiling of the porch with pens attached to the ends. Paper sails were attached to the ropes to catch the movement of the wind to create additional drawings.
The drawings are titled with the times and dates of their creation, and the show also includes a video installation that documents how the drawings were made.
Serendipity and randomness are essential features. “Part of this process is when you don’t interfere — things happen,” says Nielsen. “We tend to get in our own way.”
There will be an opening reception on Saturday, Jan. 6 at 3 p.m. The show is on view until Jan. 16. See farmprojectspace.org for more information. —Pat Kearns
Verdi’s Nabucco at WHAT
A live screening of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco will be shown at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (2357 Route 6) on Saturday, Jan. 6, at 12:55 p.m.
This is the fourth of nine screenings in the Met’s Live in HD 2023-24 season at WHAT. Previous screenings have included Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, and Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, all written during the last 40 years. Nabucco is the first of the series composed in the 19th century.
Written in 1841, Nabucco premiered in Milan to great success the following year and catapulted Verdi into his long, influential career in theater and opera. Sung in Italian, it is “a stirring drama about the fall of ancient Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco),” according to the Met’s production notes.
For the Jan. 6 performance, the opera features baritone George Gagnidze as Nabucco; soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as his daughter, Abigaille; mezzo-soprano Maria Barakova and tenor SeokJong Baek as the lovers Fenena and Ismaele; and bass Dmitry Belosselskiy as the high priest Zaccaria. The production is conducted by Daniele Callegari and features the Met Chorus as the chorus of Hebrew slaves in the stirring “Va, pensiero,” in which the Israelites express their longing for their homeland.
Tickets are $15 to $27, including fees, at what.org. —Eve Samaha
A Call to Explore Digital Creativity
At the Cape Cod Museum of Art (60 Hope Lane, Dennis), an expansive exhibition features art produced with digital technology as an essential part of the creative process.
“Pixels,” a collaboration between the National Association of Digital Artists and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, includes 45 pieces that were selected from an open call earlier this year. According to the museum, almost 200 works were submitted by more than 100 artists from throughout the U.S. and abroad. In addition to digitally produced elements, several of the works incorporate physical media such as collage and original photography. The exhibition also includes animated and video works.
The works on view encompass a wide range of techniques and styles. Dylan Griffin’s complex compositions occupy a space somewhere between architectural renderings and geometric abstraction. Similarly, Patricia Driscoll uses dozens of colorful shapes to create an intricate arrangement reminiscent of modernist pieces by Piet Mondrian and Stuart Davis. Amy Heller uses digital photography to create an intimately scaled grid of nude figure studies in which highlights and shadows create texture and pattern, while Lisa McKenna’s celestial-themed collage uses photographic components for a gently surreal, dreamlike effect.
The exhibition is on view at the museum as well as online through Feb. 11. See ccmoa.org/pixels for more information.
Another Year, Another Chance for Re-Rooting
With dead trees in the driveway and broken Christmas toys on the carpet, the end of the holiday season can be a sad time. As months of preparation and purchasing fade into gray January days, one local tradition aims to help the community let go of the past and connect with what really matters.
It’s the annual Re-Rooters Day ceremony, which will have its 41st iteration on Sunday, Jan. 7 at 4 p.m. in Provincetown Harbor near the beach across from the Harbor Hotel (698 Commercial St.) The ceremony was started and is still led by artist Jay Critchley, who is also the self-proclaimed president of the International Re-Rooters Society, or I.R.S.
Critchley says that the ceremony, which takes place after the “12 days of stockpiling of the consumptive holidays,” is a way to reconnect to the Earth and “purge all of the accumulation of stress, anxiety, and heartbreak so we can move forward as a people.” The event started as a small ceremony with Critchley’s friends in 1983 but has grown in years since. Last year brought 125 re-rooters to the harbor.
Each year’s ceremony, which includes a series of original songs and rituals and culminates in the burning of a Christmas tree in the harbor at sunset, has a unique theme related to how the economy and current culture is affecting the environment. Past themes included “Grass-Fed Capitalism” in 2023; “Meta-Purse” in 2022; and “Viral Warming” in 2021. As of press time, Critchley was still considering ideas for the 2024 ceremony, including “The Great Hate Replacement,” “Planet Hunting,” “Club MEDicare,” and “Air Inequality.” The theme will be the basis of the new version for the year’s Ten Commandments that Critchley reads at the ceremony.
The one certainty about this year’s event (other than the flaming tree-boat) is that Critchley says he will be singing his song “Oh Holy Blight Divine,” which he wrote 35 years ago for the 1989 Re-Rooters Ceremony to commemorate legendary drag queen Divine’s death the previous year. —Oliver Egger
