Cortile Gallery (230 Commercial St.)
It’s been 24 hours since the Carnival parade ended, and Provincetown is still looking for a street party. Across from the Cortile Gallery, a Dixieland jazz band is only too happy to oblige, its big brass horns honking and flashing in the twilight, turning this stretch of Commercial Street into an East Coast version of Bourbon Street. People sway to the music, their backs to the gallery. Inside, Provincetown artist Ed Walsh awaits some company.
“It is quieter than it used to be,” Cortile director Kerry Filiberto observes. She’s not talking about the street scene outside the gallery. She’s reflecting on this season’s strolls. Sky-high rents, she figures, mean more people are staying elsewhere on the Cape and popping into Provincetown for shorter visits. Still, she says, there are plenty of collectors who remain loyal to galleries like Cortile.
And sure enough, in walk Timna Tanners and Jonathan Miller of Greenwich, Conn. and Wellfleet, who purchase one of Walsh’s seascapes to add to their collection of his work. The couple’s four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Talia, is captivated by the work of another artist represented by Cortile, Ann Parks McCray, whose Gardenfest is a vivid waterfall of flowers.
“I like the blue,” Talia says, pointing at the rivers of color running between rows of blooms. “And the purple.”
Frederick Studio (237 Commercial St.)
Lee Michael McLean of Milton strolls into the Frederick Studio at Whaler’s Wharf and instantly falls in love with owner James Frederick’s Hatches Glow, an acrylic landscape that typifies the artist’s expressionist style and use of bright colors, in this case, oranges and blues.
“I like the teeny tiny little lighthouse; you have to infer that it’s there,” McLean says, looking admiringly at the canvas. “And I love the reflection of the clouds in the water. It looks like it’s on fire!”
Frederick, who is celebrating the 10th anniversary of his studio, points out the tiny signs marking the protected territory of piping plovers on the dunes. “Oh, neat!” says McLean.
On Center Gallery (352 Commercial St.)
Daniel M. Tehrani of New York City and an exuberant group of friends, all wearing baby blue Boy Beach T-shirts, arrive at On Center Gallery and become instant fans of photographic artist Jennifer Pritchard’s Gray Gardens, one in a series of layered images of a rose captured at every stage of its life.
Tehrani is drawn to the work’s moody colors: plum, black, and green. “It’s romantic without being sappy in any way,” he says. “A rose is for Valentine’s Day, but this is darker, more sensual. An ominous, sexy, human rose.”
Galleria Cubana (357 Commercial St.)
Visiting Provincetown from Serbia, Katerina Nedic is drawn to the huge, bright yellow mixed-media works by Cuban artist Luis Rodriguez NOA.
Two separate pieces appear on either side of a single canvas. Fallen Idol and Neglected Building both feature symbols and comic characters meant to evoke the crowded streets and gossipy neighbors of NOA’s native Havana. Nedic resists the urge to deconstruct the detailed elements of the paintings, looking for broader meanings instead.
“I like that there are two sides,” Nedic says. “I’m always drawn to abstract art. It’s very vibrant but not in a happy way. It speaks to me; it has a lot of emotions. I like to take it all in.”
Simie Maryles Gallery (435 Commercial St.)
It’s crowded inside this low-ceilinged gallery in the East End because it’s opening night for artist Ken Cadwallader’s show, “From China to Provincetown.” Cadwallader has just wrapped a whirlwind week-long plein air tour of the town, painting landmarks (Captain Jack’s, the Red Inn, the Lobster Pot) and local homes and gardens. He’s also known for dark Victorian-era interiors, one of which, a dining room, captivates Gloria Leon of Orleans.
“I love the black frame, the sparkly brass,” she says. “The painting tells a story about a dinner. Look at the way the chair is turned. It makes you wonder if someone’s just left, and why.”
On the other side of the room, 14-year-old Tobi Shaver from Watertown is fixated on artist Roxie Munro’s City Streets, 57th & 7th, Night. The painting looks almost lit from within; he loves its luminescence and fine lines.
“It’s really detailed — there are all these different people just going around in their lives,” he says admiringly, showing some of his own artwork on his cell phone. “It just feels like you’re there, but in a separate universe at the same time.”
Maryles, who began work as a portrait artist in Provincetown in the 1970s, surveys the scene in her gallery as people admire Cadwallader’s paintings and the work of nearly two dozen other artists she represents.
“It’s a moveable feast,” she says of the art scene and the stroll. “Unlike in city galleries, where the day after an opening no one knows there was a show, in Provincetown, the crowd keeps moving.”
