In Elspeth Slayter’s mixed-media works, paint is pressed on paint, layer after layer: a web of yellow covers a block of cayenne red; sky blue buoys are bruised with violet; […]
Arts & Minds
Celebrating the creative and sometimes quirky culture of the Outer Cape.
Browse all Arts & Minds stories below or dive into a topic:
DRAG DESK
In the Audience With Miss Richfield
In her new show, the drag queen masters the art of loving schadenfreude
Nathaniel is a lawyer from Boston. (Actually, he’s from Milton, which sounds nice but also boring.) He’s here with his children, Teddy and Sophia. It’s Family Week in Provincetown, meaning […]
PERFORMANCE
Taylor Mac Wants You to Try a Little Tenderness
A musical performance offers ‘a different understanding of the world’
Theater artist Taylor Mac says he’s been misrepresented by headlines claiming that he wants to make audiences “uncomfortable.” That isn’t the whole truth. Instead, he says, “I use theater to […]
THE STROLL
Provincetown, Friday Night
Seen and heard on the weekly gallery walk
William-Scott Gallery (439 Commercial St.) Daniel Schwarz says Michael Costello’s paintings at the William-Scott Gallery might be a reference to American poet and critic Marianne Moore’s definition of art: “imaginary gardens with […]
BOOKS
The Long Shadows of a Dictatorship
Lily Meyer’s fictional Short War makes real the lasting trauma of the 1973 Chilean coup
Last September the people of Chile commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bloody, U.S.-backed coup d’état that changed the fate of their country and their lives on Sept. 11, 1973. […]
Arts Briefs
Arts Briefs for August 8, 2024 through August 15, 2024
Jazz for All at the Provincetown Festival When Bart Weisman moved to Cape Cod after growing up in Washington, D.C., he didn’t see much in the way of jazz on […]
REST AND REASSESS
Covid-19 Pauses Outer Cape Entertainment
Two venues canceled a week of performances in July
PROVINCETOWN — Four years after Covid-19 brought live performances worldwide to a halt, the virus is still working its will on Outer Cape arts venues. The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater […]
UTOPIA
Abraham Storer Paints the Real Eden
The artist confronts the banality of paradise
In Abraham Storer’s painting Heart, a painfully red disk-shaped object unabashedly occupies the foreground. It’s the top of a large wooden spool. Visible to the left of it: the edge […]
PHOTOGRAPHY
Images of Belonging and Detachment
Elias Duncan explores Provincetown’s liminal spaces
Certain motifs appear repeatedly in artistic depictions of Provincetown: the sweep of the dunes, the silhouette of the Pilgrim Monument, the transcendent quality of the storied Cape light. But photographer […]
COMPOSITIONS
Two Artists a Generation Apart Find Rhythms in Figures and Forms
Michael Prodanou and Sean Flood each show their big riffs on abstraction
Michael Prodanou’s abstract figures are composed slowly but energetically. First, he considers a nude, making sketches and drawings in charcoal. Later, painting from these sketches, Prodanou moves fast, applying oil […]
POETRY
Cape Window
Tonight the west wind is blowing through Aaron’s small window over his half-size bed, his toddler’s body. Where does wind come from? he asks. The sky, the weather, the whole […]
POETRY
Unpin That Red Pin Icon
The car slowly passed, back and forth, then at last crept up our half-washed-out driveway. An electric window slid down. “We’re looking for Moses Hinkley,” the driver said. I took […]
POETRY
The Swing
The light leads down the long white ropes it fills the swing, it swings the seat Each night each night the moon is full the long white ropes, the sucked-in cheeks […]
BOOKS
The Compromised Power of Being Young and Beautiful
Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues follows Gordon, a gay man who wants nothing more than to be looked at
Gordon, the 24-year-old antihero of Thomas Grattan’s queer coming-of-age novel In Tongues, craves attention the way Wall Street traders crave cocaine: with a slick kind of desperation and the certainty […]
MUSIC
Indie Playlist: Summer Sounds
Songs for sun, sand, and blue skies
For this installment of Indie’s Playlist, we asked six members of the Independent team to describe their songs of the summer: the song that best encapsulates the feeling of the […]
