For the past few years, Karen Cappotto and James Ryan, co-founders of the Modern Provincetown Collagists, have mounted an annual exhibition at the Commons on Bradford Street celebrating collage as […]
Art
STUDIO VISIT
Hope and Despair, One Dot at a Time
Donna Flax’s new paintings evoke humanity’s place in the cosmos
A group of ex-voto paintings line the wall of a hallway leading into Donna Flax’s studio at her home in Wellfleet. She collected the paintings in Mexico, which she began […]
OUTSIDERS
Bringing a Legendary Happening Back to Life
Billy Hough restages Andy Warhol’s ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ for a new generation
This spring marks the 20th anniversary of Provincetown singer and songwriter Billy Hough’s show “Scream Along With Billy,” in which he and his musical partner, Susan Goldberg, perform entire albums […]
BIG PICTURE
Feeling Yellow
Dee Shippelhute works with severe contrasts and her son’s favorite color
Dee Shippelhute, an artist living in Chatham, has twice traveled to China to study painting. In 2008, she had a residency at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in Tianjin and […]
VIGNETTES
Art Leaves the Gallery for the Parlor
At the Vorse house, paintings see anew amid traces of history
Gene Tartaglia recalls a 2022 exhibition of Salvatore Del Deo’s artwork at the Mary Heaton Vorse house as revelatory. “It kind of shook the art community up a bit,” he […]
BIG PICTURE
The Suggestiveness of Red
Bob Henry does a lot with one color
Wellfleet’s Bob Henry has been painting and drawing for 70 years, but he’s not the kind of artist who makes the same painting over and over again. There are some […]
SMALL TOWN SCENES
Provincetown in Miniature
Elizabeth Kirby evokes the feeling of a place in intricate detail
Commercial Street in Provincetown is a theatrical place. In the summer, it’s filled with drag queens, street performers, and colorful characters. Similarly, many of its buildings embody outsize personalities. There’s […]
SACRED ART
Epiphanies in the Sanctuary
At St. Mary of the Harbor, a side of Provincetown’s art colony rarely seen
On the rear wall of the nave at the Church of St. Mary of the Harbor in Provincetown is a triangular mural, Epiphany, painted by Robert Douglas Hunter. Religious iconography […]
HUMAN, NATURE
Susan Lyman Sculpts a Defiant Life Force
Beauty, sensuality, and destruction converge in works of wood and paint
In one of Susan Lyman’s sculptures, Washashore (Survivor), a white cedar tree is truncated just above the roots, like a figure cut at the torso. It stands upright, supported by […]
Elena Kovylyaeva’s Creative Wandering
Looking at things that have been thrown away and waiting for something to happen
When Elena Kovylyaeva arrived in Provincetown in October as a Fine Arts Work Center visual arts fellow, many of the shops in town were getting ready to close for the […]
EVERLASTING RIPPLES
There’s Plenty of Hope in the Sea
In paintings and mixed media, Nancy Jenner finds beauty, inspiration, and a sense of herself
In recent years, the world has seemed especially cacophonous to artist Nancy Jenner. In a loud room, says Jenner, “I get quiet.” Her impulse is to travel inward, she says, […]
SEMI-UTOPIA
An Artist Play-Acts His Way to Something Real
Ian Page explores the edges of things
Fine Arts Work Center visual arts fellow Ian Page arrived in Provincetown last fall from Los Angeles, where he had become interested in Wienerschnitzel, a fast-food chain that sells hot […]
STILL FRAME
An Artist Takes a Moment
Solitude provides Zeinab Shahidi Marnani with new perspectives
Zeinab Shahidi Marnani, a visual arts fellow at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center, spends a lot of time in relative isolation. “Seven months is a long time,” she says. She’s […]
PIGMENT
A Magician in the Studio
For Dani Levine, deconstruction is necessary for invention
Dani Levine’s studio at the Fine Arts Work Center, where she’s a visual arts fellow, feels like an old-time painting workshop transposed to the present. “I like the notion of […]
HANDMADE
Gail Browne Gets Lost in Her Art
A home filled with ceramics, watercolors, and white-line prints
There’s a big bowl on Provincetown artist Gail Browne’s dining table, but it’s not full of fruit. The dish contains marbled ceramic balls and horseshoe crabs — paperweights. “It’s what […]
