A New Mystery Series
Provincetown author Jeannette De Beauvoir is best known for her mysteries set in the town she’s called home for 20 years. But before she wrote 10 books starring wedding planner and amateur crime-solver Sydney Riley, De Beauvoir had planned to write a novel set in Nepal, where she’d once traveled. Then the 2016 election happened.
Courtesy Gregg Peterson)
“I was aghast at Trump being elected,” she says. “I thought, what are the problems in this country that it could come to this, and I thought the biggest problem is that we don’t know people who aren’t like us. So, I thought, I’m going to write good stories and lean on characters being real people, so maybe that housewife in Idaho picks up one of my books and says, ‘Oh, I see what it’s like to be a trans person.’ ” But the Nepal mystery was never far from her mind.
De Beauvoir eventually set her sights on Katmandu. The resulting novel, The Everest Enigma, will be launched with a reading at the Provincetown Public Library (356 Commercial St.) on Saturday, May 24 at 2 p.m. De Beauvoir’s new protagonist, historian Abbie Bradford, joins an Everest expedition and finds murder, betrayal, and clues to a persistent mystery over who scaled the world’s highest mountain first.
“I put the book off for 10 years, and as I finally sit down to write it there’s a flurry of activity,” says De Beauvoir of the 2024 discovery of remains believed to be those of Andrew Irvine, who perished during a 1924 climb along with his partner, George Mallory. Some researchers believe Mallory and Irvine may have reached the summit before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who were credited with being the first to reach the peak in May 1953. De Beauvoir uses a dual timeline to explore the circumstances surrounding Mallory’s disappearance and Bradford’s trek to the Everest base camp.
“In art, they talk about the vanishing point where lines come together,” she says. “That’s how I see dual timelines working in fiction; you’ve got these two stories, and at first they may not have much to do with each other. But as you get further and further into the book, they get closer and closer aligned.”
The reading is free. See provincetownlibrary.org for information. —Katy Abel
A Librarian’s Passion for Collecting
Dian Reynolds was a beloved trustee of the Wellfleet Public Library for almost two decades. She was also an art collector. Currently on view at the library is a selection of works from her collection, organized by her son Adam Miller, a current trustee.
Reynolds, who died in 2024, acquired some of the works in the show over 50 years ago, while others were added more recently. The collection consists mostly of prints and other works on paper, with a few small paintings. Reynolds’s tastes were ecumenical, demonstrating the far-reaching interests of someone surrounded by books who was trained in the library sciences.
Several works are by artists who were friends of Reynolds, including Wellfleet resident Winifred Milius Lubell, with whom she shared interests in mythology and ancient literature. Two ink drawings by Lubell include inscriptions to Reynolds and her husband, Edwin Reynolds. One of the drawings, Sumerian Pas de Deux, 2002 BCE, features characters including a minotaur, lined up as if on a frieze. The creatures seem to be engaged in a strange balletic dance. Another work by an anonymous artist includes figures in a landscape in the style of ancient Japanese court painting.
Reynolds’s personality comes through in the works she collected. A sense of humor is abundant. A drawing by caricaturist Al Hirshfield of three figures in a swordfight is both Shakespearian and comical. A cartoon-like ink drawing of squirrels raiding a group of suspended bird feeders — another work by Lubell — captures the animals’ shenanigans as bird seed showers down.
Other highlights in the show include a lithograph of a hand holding a pen by Ben Shahn; an intimate, minimally rendered line etching of a female nude by Amedeo Modigliani; and an ink drawing by George d’Almeida in which lines like wire filament delineate an amorphous form caught in the midst of transformation.
The exhibition is on view at the Wellfleet Public Library (55 West Main St.) through May 30. See wellfleetlibrary.org for more information. —Chet Domitz
Recording the World With Light
Over the past year, Milisa Moses has been capturing sunlight. Her process involves arranging plants and flowers on photosensitive paper and laying the paper outdoors. She’ll expose the paper to the elements for about 20 minutes.
“It gets wind, it gets rain, it gets light,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll place the paper in a tree or on a shrub and hope it doesn’t blow away.” Then she brings the paper inside to fix and scan it. Some of the resulting pieces will be framed; others will be mounted on plywood.
Moses’s first solo show, “Sun Writings,” opens at Farm Projects in Wellfleet on Friday, May 23, with an opening reception on Saturday, May 24 at 6 p.m.
A serene scene plays out in Moses’s Belt of Venus (Dahlias): sunlight seems to have wandered calmly across the page as dahlias bloom in one corner. In Andromeda (Clematis), the light dances as if reflected off water. The scene is atmospheric, like a place above the clouds — or inside one’s own eyelids when one is just waking up.
Moses, who describes her work as “analog recordings of magical things that we don’t really realize are happening,” says she has a tendency to view her work as “scientific.” The precision of her method is juxtaposed with the variables that occur when the works are produced. Her pieces feel as deliberately composed as paintings, with all the spontaneity of a snapshot.
“The work offers an opportunity to observe the natural phenomena occurring around us and the things that light can do,” says Moses, who grew up in Belmar, N.J. and now lives in Eastham. “I like being reminded that we are all just these teeny little things going on in the universe.”
Moses will discuss her work with Sara Moran at the gallery on Saturday, May 31 at 6 p.m. The show is on view through June 9. See farmprojectspace.org for information. —Dorothea Samaha
Sabrina Song’s Musical Journeys
Singer-songwriter Sabrina Song thinks up melodies whenever she has the chance to daydream — “when I’m in transit, cleaning the house, or in the shower,” she says. Then she goes to the piano or guitar to add chords. How does she know if an idea has the potential to become an actual song? “The cream rises,” Song says: the songs that move her simply seem to reveal themselves.
Song will perform as part of the 12th season of Twenty Summers at the Hawthorne Barn (29 Miller Hill Road, Provincetown) on Friday, May 23 at 7 p.m. with support from backup singers Lara Evans, Kayla Liquori, and Julia McBride.
When Song was growing up on Long Island, “music was the center of everything,” she says. She played piano and violin at school and participated in choirs and community theater. As a teenager, she began keeping a songwriting journal, inspired by indie rock artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, and Sasami, as well as musicians like Billy Joel, Carol King, and Joni Mitchell. “The artists that spoke to me were the ones that focused on storytelling,” Song says.
During her late teenage years, Song wrote songs that were “internal,” she says. “I was afraid to write outside of myself.” Her songs explored self-doubt, fear, and insecurity, with sparse instrumental arrangements. Those early tunes are a far cry from those on her 2024 debut album, You Could Stay in One Spot, and I’d Love You the Same, which were written during Song’s post-graduate years after studying engineering, production, and songwriting at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
“I was staring down the barrel of the rest of my life,” says Song. “I was feeling grateful for the life I’d built so far, while also feeling totally overwhelmed by the idea of entering adulthood in a full-on way.”
The album covers a range of emotions and experiences, including anxiety, joy, romance, anger, and confusion. A full band backs Song’s delicate yet powerful voice. “My hope is that my writing has become a lot more nuanced,” she says, “and that I’m able to explore more difficult, complex emotions.” Now that Song is older, her goal is to write about “things that are harder to distill into a song.”
Tickets are $45 at 20summers.org. —Eve Samaha
An Invitation to a Studio
For many artists, the process of turning raw materials into art is a private practice. So, it feels particularly special when an artist decides to open her studio to the public, as artist and illustrator Traci Harmon-Hay is doing this month. In collaboration with gallerist Susie Neilsen’s Farm Projects, Harmon-Hay is presenting “Studio Visit,” a body of work that she will show in her own studio space on Commercial Street in Wellfleet.
Any artist’s studio shows evidence of her working process as well as insight into the person who creates the work. In Harmon-Hay’s studio, light streams in from big windows onto materials that are set out in orderly fashion. Disorder is limited to splatters on two worktables and on drop cloths on the floor. An old tin filled with paint tubes and a few knick-knacks sit on a windowsill. A pile of watercolor images sits on a bench waiting to be added to a final piece, and a comfortable area for sitting, eating lunch, contemplating, or taking a nap fills a corner.
There’s a welcoming feeling and lightness to Harmon-Hay’s studio. Serious work happens here, but bright colors abound, and a spirit of experimentation is evident. One shelf displays teabags that Harmon-Hay has painted with detailed imagery, and nearby handmade paper fortune cookies are decorated with minute images of flowers and a portrait of Harmon-Hay’s daughters. A series of small watercolors on paper are laid out on low benches. Eventually, these works will each be paired with a three-dimensional object and put behind glass for exhibition. But for now, object and background are free to be moved around until they are properly matched.
Harmon-Hay emphasizes that viewers don’t often get to see where work is being created. But the place where she works is part of the story of her art, and telling that story has been important to her for a long time.
“That’s what the show is: a welcome to the space,” she says. “This is where the process happens. This is where things either work or don’t. People often wonder why I do one thing or another. I want them to be able to come in and ask the question.”
Harmon-Hay’s “Studio Visit” takes place from Friday, May 23 to Saturday, May 31 at 95 Commercial St., Wellfleet, with an opening reception on Sunday, May 25 at 5 p.m. See farmprojectspace.org for information. —Antonia DaSilva
