Listening to Women at WOMR
WOMR has celebrated International Women’s Day since 1988, and for the past 14 years, that celebration has included featuring the station’s women DJs for the entire day. This Saturday, March 8, from 6 a.m. to midnight, 19 women will host a range of shows that DJ Pandora Peoples, who organized the day’s programming with Dinah Mellin, says “celebrate women around the world, bring attention to women artists, and create a space that pays respect to the accomplishments of women.”
From 9 to 10 a.m., Peoples hosts “Stories, Poetry, and Music on Womanhood.” “It’s an hour of local women exploring their stories on gender, sexuality, race, and identity,” says Peoples. “Their words are interspersed with music.”
DJ Calla, who is an eighth-grade student at Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, hosts “Mum’s the Word: Mothers Throughout History” from 10 to 10:30 a.m. Chef Rossi — who Mellin says will be “sending out good vibes to women” — hosts a show from 7:30 to 8 p.m. called “Raging & Eating — Live, Laugh, Love, and Roar.”
From 8 to 9 p.m., longtime DJ Denya LeVine presents “Trailblazing Women in Irish Music.” Mellin’s own show, from 10 to 11 p.m., is an interview with Deborah Greenblatt and Stephanie Pieck on braille music. Greenblatt is the first woman to win the Nebraska State Fiddling Championship and the Mid-America Fiddle Championship and was inducted into the Mid-America Old-Time Fiddler’s Hall of Fame. Stephanie Pieck is blind and plays piano and violin professionally. Together, Pieck and Greenblatt translated some of Greenblatt’s compositions into braille.
“When you learn about the important people in history,” says Peoples, “you mostly learn about straight white men. Women are often less visible.” This day at WOMR is a step in the right direction: “We’ve come a long way toward a greater respect for women’s experiences,” she says.
“Every day is ‘men’s day,’ ” adds Mellin, emphasizing that International Women’s Day is a real holiday and should be celebrated as such. “How come other stations aren’t doing this?” she says. “It should be like, ‘Look, the women took over the airwaves!’ ” See womr.org for a complete schedule and more information. —Dorothea Samaha
Looking Ahead to FAWC’s Summer Workshops
The Fine Arts Work Center’s 2025 summer workshop program is open for registration, with nearly 60 weeklong workshops scheduled from June 15 to Aug. 15.
The workshops run the gamut of artistic practices. Participants can meditate on the intricacies of point of view in fiction, experiment with watercolor monoprinting, consider the “true self” while learning portrait photography, or ground themselves in painting the figure.
FAWC summer program manager Sara Siegel says the workshops are for people serious about their craft. But that doesn’t mean they have to be accomplished. “A novice and a published author might take the same workshop,” she says.
Small class sizes are integral to the workshops. Registration is capped at eight students for photography and printmaking classes; all other classes are limited to 10 students. “By virtue of being part of a small class,” says Siegel, “participants really get to build a community and learn from each other.”
Several workshops are taught by returning FAWC faculty members and guest instructors. Liz Collins will return to teach a workshop called “Trash Lab/Trash Textiles.” Most of the visual arts classes have a materials list, says Siegel. “They say, ‘Bring canvas or paint brushes or glue.’ ” But Collins’s class has no such list — everything is discarded material, found and given new purpose.
Author and poet Michelle Tea will also return with a workshop called “Writing for Witches.” It’s not a typical creative writing class, says Siegel. “Their workshop has an altar and crystals and rocks and sticks.” (In the description of the workshop, Tea calls the group a coven.)
Some of the workshops will overlap, like the two that share the title “The Monstrous Body”: one is a creative writing class taught by Carmen Maria Machado, and the other is an experimental art class taught by Ilana Savdie. The two classes will combine for one session.
Siegel points to two classes she says are unusual this summer. One is Abeer Hoque’s “Writing Personal Statements & Applying for Grants and Residencies,” an opportunity for professional development. The other is Sara Stern and Vicky Tomayko’s “Performing Print/Printing Performance,” in which students will “consider the process of monotype itself as a dance,” according to the class description.
Workshop fees are tiered, ranging from $500 to $900, according to financial need, and scholarships for Cape Cod residents and others are available. See fawc.org for a complete schedule and more information. —Dorothea Samaha
Speaking Figuratively With Laura Shabott
“Figuratively Speaking,” a mini-retrospective of work by Laura Shabott, is on view through March at the Wellfleet Adult Community Center at 715 Old King’s Hwy.
In collaboration with gallery founder and curator Robert Rindler, Shabott selected 13 works for the exhibition ranging from 12-inch-square paintings to large-scale collages. Rindler began following Shabott’s work a decade ago when she was working at the Fine Arts Work Center.
Shabott is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and a Provincetown resident since the early 2000s. Her work reflects the energy and influence of the Outer Cape painters who transformed her art practice. Now an art teacher herself, she has also curated several exhibitions by other artists, most recently “Why Cape Cod?” at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis.
In preparing for her own show, she and Rindler grouped pieces that told a cohesive story. Shabott says she learned about curating through her experience as an assistant at Berta Walker Gallery, where she also exhibits her work. “Berta taught me that artworks talk to each other when creating a show,” she says.
Several motifs run through the works in her current exhibition, including the use of black lines and techniques that communicate a sense of movement. “The final selection was work that speaks figuratively,” says Shabott, who considers herself a third-generation student of Hans Hofmann and names artist Robert Henry, who studied with Hofmann, as her primary teacher. She also credits Fritz Bultman, Lillian Orlowsky, and Helen Frankenthaler — all “icons of Provincetown’s art colony” — as influences.
Some of the works in the show are drawings that Shabott repurposed as collage elements. The swirling black lines and splashes of orange and yellow gouache in the diptych Sometimes I Feel Like Two People form an expressionist figure seated on a stool. One hand points up, the other down. “Just the freedom of using your own work and recontextualizing it is thrilling,” she says. “The hand is in the work.”
There will be a reception for the exhibition on Sunday, March 9 from 3 to 5 p.m., and the show is on view until March 31. See wellfleetcoa.org for more information. —Susan Rand Brown
Creating a Strong Arts Community
Visual artist Megan Hinton and gallerist Susie Nielsen will co-facilitate “Joining a Creative Community,” an interactive workshop for artists at the Provincetown Commons (46 Bradford St.) on Tuesday, March 11.
The event is the fourth in a series of six workshops sponsored by the Commons for artists seeking to enhance their creative practice. It is presented in conjunction with the Community Development Partnership, which describes itself as “leading the Lower and Outer Cape in building a diverse year-round community of people who can afford to live, work, and thrive here.” A common goal of both organizations is to sustain and grow the arts.
“Artists mostly work alone in their studios,” says Hinton, who describes her own studio — an antique barn in Truro — as her “happy place.” “We’re presenting a tutorial for giving and receiving artistic criticism and feedback, beginning with asking what folks think a critique entails.”
In the first part of the session, Hinton and Nielsen will model three critiques that typically would take place in an artist’s studio or in an art gallery, suggesting prompts to make the process less intimidating and more accessible. “The idea of ‘critique’ is such a general word, often with a stigma attached,” says Nielsen. “Our session will teach specific skills in close looking, leading to a productive, supportive conversation about art, including, for the artist, the etiquette of asking for a critique. And as a guest in someone’s studio, you’re not just stopping by. You want to be more thoughtful than that, by asking questions that open up ideas.”
Workshop participants are asked to bring an artwork to discuss. After Hinton and Nielsen model a respectful back-and-forth critique, participants will exchange roles with each other, playing both artist and studio visitor, conducting their own critiques. After the workshop, everyone will be invited to have a meal together.
“In a critique, what’s most important is to think about what the artist is trying to say in the work and to help pull out what’s there,” says Hinton. “Ideally, a critique is open and expansive. It’s about giving and receiving feedback. This is how we build a creative community.”
The workshop will be presented both in person and online and is free. Registration is required. See capecdp.org for more information. —Susan Rand Brown
