“Anything is better than brown paper,” says Marc Guerrette, the brains and the brawn behind “Winter Windows,” a project that aims to remedy a problem that has been bothering Guerrette — and anyone who walks down Commercial Street in the winter — for some time now: the drabness of empty storefronts.
“During my first winter here, I was shocked to see stores put up brown paper in their windows,” he says. “I get that it’s a seasonal town, but it’s really sad, and it makes Commercial Street a bleak place. An artist colony deserves to be surrounded by art in the off-season, not brown paper.”
Guerrette determined to banish brown paper, one storefront at a time, and replace it with prints by local artists. Rather than just covering up the interiors of seasonal businesses, the art will also brighten up their exteriors.
The project, in its first year, has four participating locations. Café Heaven (199 Commercial St.) is displaying, in alternating panels, rainbows by Paul Rizzo and cartoon creatures by Benji Weinryb Grohsgal. Fran O’Neill’s abstract works, flush with color, are rendered in a print for the Crown & Anchor (247 Commercial St.). Lewis Brothers Ice Cream (310 Commercial St.) tempts with a print of Naya Bricher’s ice cream cones and bowls of sorbet, strawberry-pink and mang-orange, looking good enough to eat even on a frigid day. And the former location of Wired Puppy (379 Commercial St.) becomes more than an empty storefront with Beth Faherty’s reminder of spring flowers and summer parasols.
To print the works on a large enough scale, Guerrette partnered with fellow Provincetown resident Jane Simmons, who owns the Norwood-based printing company Makepeace. He culled the artists from the Provincetown Commons. “I wanted this project to support local artists,” he says, “particularly those without gallery representation.”
Guerrette came up with this clever and community-centered solution to the brown-paper problem during the pandemic when he read a Wall Street Journal article about Southampton, N.Y.’s “Storefront Art Project.” In January 2021, Southampton mayor Jesse Warren required landlords with storefronts vacant for more than a month to fill their windows with the work of local artists or else pay a $1,000 to $2,500 fine. The project was part of Warren’s plan to revitalize the Hamptons vacation town during the off-season.
Guerrette’ s “Winter Windows,” not a mandate but an invitation, asks businesses to pay the small amount required to print the works. Guerrette hangs the works himself for free. “It’s giving the businesses the opportunity to be good neighbors for those of us who live here year-round,” he says.
“My ultimate goal is that by the holiday weekend in February every year, we can have a ‘Winter Windows’ unveiling with tons of businesses participating,” he says. “People can come down to Commercial Street with a hot chocolate and see all the art in the windows.”
