PROVINCETOWN — On a windy Tuesday night here, shoppers who walked through the green light that runs across the entrance to Stop & Shop on Shank Painter Road encountered a […]
CHARACTER STUDIES
Mary Beck Has Seen It All
A lifelong Provincetowner who raised a town at Veterans Memorial Elementary
Mary Beck is sitting on the couch in the living room of her corner house in the West End. She’s a little hidden behind her oversize rectangular sunglasses. Beck is […]
LEGACY
A Life Anchored in Provincetown by Art and Friendship
Works by Richard Pepitone, ‘an oddball muse’ among the Beachcombers
Aside from some short stints of formal study, Richard Pepitone was a self-made artist. A sculptor by profession, he was energetic, prolific, and fearless in his work. Pepitone, who died […]
ARTISTS
MP Landis’s Visual Jazz
His Warehouse Drawings are meant to be simple, direct, emotional
A folded piece of watercolor paper peeks out of MP Landis’s jeans pocket. The artist stands in front of his work — two abstract oil paintings and 10 pieces from […]
FIXATION
Rewirings of Things Past
A mechanically minded artist builds assemblages by intuition
Jody Johnson is one of those rare people you can turn to when things fall apart. Last February, she was one of the stars of the Wellfleet Fix-It Clinic, saving […]
PAINTING
The Value of Getting the Color Right
A painter follows the light back to Henry Hensche’s studio
Reggie Cabral bought the first landscape painting Hilda Neily sold in Provincetown over 50 years ago with $100 worth of bar change. Cabral, who owned the Atlantic House from 1949 […]
CUMULONIMBUS
It’s Cloud Illusions He Recalls
Layers of color shape Steve Bowersock’s imaginary skies
It’s never a clear day in a Bowersock painting. His clouds — rising over sparkling water or looming over farmland — suggest narratives, but ethereal ones. “My skies aren’t real,” […]
PAINTING
The Haunted Memories of Larry Collins
The artist’s work looks back at the Vietnam War and the recognition of his sexuality
Provincetown artist Larry Collins stands over the kitchen sink in his apartment on Alden Street stirring an iced coffee. Every turn of the spoon is considered. Collins’s hair is neatly […]
DRAG DESK
Delta Miles Celebrates Judy Garland at Her Best
An homage to the star’s ability to make people feel good
Blue lights cover the stage of the cabaret room at the Crown & Anchor. A voice seeps through the narrow opening in the curtain: “Another openin’, another show,” sings Delta […]
CHARACTER STUDIES
Finding Disco, Leather, and Love in 1970s Provincetown
Ardis Markarian has no claim to fame. She just loves it here.
Leading the way to her living room, Ardis Markarian adjusts a visitor’s view of Provincetown. “You don’t have to be a writer or artist to live here,” she says. “You […]
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
Trafficking in the Unexpected
After writing about artists here for two years, I was relieved to find myself hustling through the mist that hung over Commercial Street to PAAM a couple of weeks ago […]
LIFE OF THE MIND
Forum 24 Asks, ‘What Is an Artist?’
A symposium explores tradition, transformation, and uselessness
About 70 people crowded into the Robert Charles and Lorraine Bauer Duffy Family Gallery at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum on July 31 to contemplate the question “What is […]
MIXED MEDIA
Working Toward Imperfectionism
Elspeth Slayter layers colors over artifacts and memories
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; […]
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 […]
SCULPTURE
Ted Chapin and the Art of Complication
Eviscerating machines and critiquing capitalism
Ted Chapin pulls the guts out of machines — “eviscerating them,” he says. That’s how he assembles his intricate wall sculptures, which combine machines like typewriters with natural elements like […]
