Images of Art and Community at Wellfleet Library
Two Outer Cape artists and educators have opened their practices to one another and the public, and the result is the exhibition “Cross-Pollination: Portraits of Fusion and Identity,” currently on view at the Wellfleet Public Library (55 West Main St.).
Photographs by Joe Navas include both portraits and series documenting the hub of creativity that is Amy Kandall’s ceramics studio, Truro Clay Works. Viewing the two art forms together — one dependent on the physical presence of a subject, the other on hands-on manipulation of material — demonstrates what happens when people and art unite in dynamic, collaborative spaces.
A statement accompanying the exhibition says, “Cross-pollination is a process that sparks diverse growth. It blends distinct elements, creating new life and possibilities.” There are different levels of intimacy depicted throughout the show and enough diversity to challenge ideas of the Cape as socially monolithic.
Over 40 of Navas’s photographs are on view. Almost a third are dedicated to Kandall’s studio. Some depict her working space; others document the process and materials of ceramics production. It’s clear that Kandall is at home in her studio. Several photos show her teaching classes and working with students and other artists, including her teaching partner and assistant, Emily Shiell.
The photographs in “Cross-Pollination” are not labeled with individual names. Instead, the show incorporates quotations from and about its subjects. A portrait of artist Sophie Yingling shows her posing on a chair in Navas’s studio. Nearby is a quotation from an unidentified sitter from Navas’s project “I Am,” expressing a subject’s confidence and composure in front of the camera: “I Am enough, I Am worthy of my time, I Am allowed to take up space, I Am allowed to celebrate, I Am allowed to express that life is painful and beautiful for me.” It is as pertinent to Yingling’s photo as it is to others in the show.
In addition to depicting Kandall’s studio, Navas’s work addresses place more broadly. In his large-format photograph of musician Jeffrey Foucault, taken at High Head in Truro at sunrise, the subject is juxtaposed with the grandeur of the Outer Cape. A massive cloud serves as backdrop, adding to the drama and colors of autumn and to a sense of Foucault as a person.
The show is on view until May 2. See wellfleetlibrary.org for more information. —Chet Domitz
Another Look at a Complicated Family
Playwright Meryl Cohn says the three “messy, complicated, funny, and flawed” sisters from her play The Siegels of Montauk have lived vividly in her imagination for years, and she’s long wanted to return to their story.
The play is set at a beach house where the sisters gather with their mother after their father’s sudden death and figure out how to deal with the discovery of a shocking secret. “I’ve lived through things I once thought were unimaginable,” Cohn says. “And that’s exactly what the Siegels face: being thrown into a situation none of them planned for or wanted — and figuring out who they are in the middle of the wreckage. That kind of uncertainty, that kind of unexpected survival — that’s the heartbeat of the play.”
Siegels was originally produced at the Provincetown Theater in 2008 and later evolved through staged readings in Manhattan and Los Angeles. Cohn has made changes to the script for an upcoming reading at Truro Public Library (7 Standish Way) on Saturday, April 19, and she expects to make more revisions based on audience feedback.
“When I wrote the original, I was writing on gut instinct and caffeine,” says Cohn. “It was like hosting a dinner party where everyone showed up, started talking at once, and I took notes. Coming back to it, I’ve been able to shape it more intentionally. I’ve trimmed the excess, deepened the emotional arcs, and let the quieter moments land.”
Despite the changes, Cohn’s connection to her fictional family has remained her central focus. “What keeps me feeling connected to them is that even amid conflict and upheaval, there’s genuine love. Family dynamics are rarely tidy — but that’s exactly what makes them so rich, so human, and ultimately, so universal.”
The free reading of The Siegels of Montauk on April 19 at 2 p.m. will be led by Rebecca Berger, who directed the premiere of Cohn’s play The Fade-Away Advantage at the Provincetown Theater last year. See truroplaywrightcollective.org and trurolibrary.org for more information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Celebrating the Arts in Orleans
An expanded program for the second annual Arts Week Orleans from Friday, April 18 through Saturday, April 26 includes more than two dozen free events from gallery shows and concerts to theater performances and hands-on workshops.
At the Orleans Village Green on Wednesday, April 23 at 11 a.m., members of the community are invited to help repurpose beach debris and cast-off fishing gear as part of West Yarmouth “artivist” Sarah Thornington’s Marine Debris Community Weaving Project.
“This will become a beautiful exhibit of colorful objects Thornington has found on beach clean-ups,” says JoAnn Del Negro, an Orleans Cultural District Committee organizer. “It will be there all week, so can be added to as we go.” Previously, Thornington built a giant seagull sculpture from repurposed beach trash for a visitor welcome center in Yarmouth.
Another participatory event will be the Orleans debut of the Mosquito Story Slam at Town Cove Tap House (inside a former greenhouse at Snow’s on Main Street) on Saturday, April 26, at 7 p.m. Participants will be invited to tell true five-minute stories about “Spring Awakenings, Fresh Starts, and New Beginnings.”
Orleans will celebrate its art history with a docent-led tour of works by Vernon B. Smith and other artists at the Church of the Holy Spirit (204 Monument Road) on Thursday, April 24, at 1 p.m. In 1935, Smith became the Works Progress Administration’s Cape supervisor, overseeing 100-plus artists, including Provincetown’s Blanche Lazzell and Karl Knaths.
“The church campus is a historic treasure,” says Del Negro. “It was Orleans’s art colony.” The location currently includes the Galley West Art Gallery, which features a Smith mural and an operating metalwork studio.
The week will also include hip-hop and “tiny art” workshops for students, as well as a celebration featuring music by Natalia Bonfini and live painting by Maryalice Eizenberg at Addison Art Gallery (43 South Orleans Road) on Saturday, April 19, at 5 p.m.
See orleansmaculturaldistrict.org for a complete schedule. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Using History to Sound an Alarm
Last July, Writers for Democratic Action — a group of poets, fiction writers, and journalists founded in 2020 to build a coalition opposing Donald Trump’s re-election — held a series of nationwide play readings to sound an alarm about the danger of rising fascist politics in the U.S. This month, the group is renewing the call to action with a new play.
Paul Revere Resists, a 30-minute one-act play co-written by author and WDA co-founder James Carroll, will be presented by five actors in a free staged reading at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (2357 Rt. 6) on Saturday, April 19. According to director Jeff Zinn, the play is a debate between a “self-identified MAGA-bro character” and others who push back with different points of view.
Woven through the dialogue are lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” which tells the story of the midnight warning of a British attack that preceded the first Revolutionary War battles in Lexington and Concord, exactly 250 years before the date of the staged reading. In its publicity statement, WDA describes the play as a “celebration of patriotic refusal” and “an absolute rejection of Donald Trump’s betrayals of American democracy.”
Unlike last year’s It Can’t Happen Here — Again, an adaptation of a 1936 play by Sinclair Lewis, the script of Paul Revere Resists has been more of a work in progress, says Carroll, as current events unfold and are pulled into the story.
For Zinn, theater is an effective way to spark conversation. “There’s something different that happens when you put words into the mouths of characters and let them interact,” he says. “Theater is also a way for people to come together in solidarity and feel a sense of community.” For any political resistance, he says, from recent protests to the arts, “it’s easy to ask, ‘What are we accomplishing?’ But there’s power in it. You’ve got to do something; you’ve got to make a stand. So that’s what we’re doing.”
Carroll’s script will be read in theaters and other spaces in Boston, Chicago, New York, Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin, and he will hold a post-show question-and-answer session following the staged reading at WHAT on April 19. The event is free, but registration is required at what.org. Zinn says that a recording of the play will later be available on his YouTube channel. See youtube.com/@jeffzinn1 for information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
