When Paul Schulenburg was growing up in Schenectady, N.Y. his family came to Dennis Port in the summers, and that included an annual day trip to Provincetown. “I was always […]
Art
NATURE STUDIES
The Very Fabric of the Landscape
Alexa Elam is not making plaids today
The dirt road to Alexa Elam’s Truro studio is bumpy and surrounded by brush, with a few pullouts for oncoming cars to pass, and marked only by a hand-painted sign […]
BIG PICTURE
Electric Purple
Diana Horowitz on Brenda Horowitz’s color vocabulary
Diana Horowitz grew up watching her mother, Brenda Horowitz, paint. Their family spent summers in Provincetown, where Brenda had studied with Hans Hofmann and Wolf Kahn. During the year, they […]
ENLIGHTENED
An Artist Trades Illustration for Emotion
Rob DuToit’s recent work soars with energetic abandon
Last fall, Rob DuToit was walking in the Audubon sanctuary in Wellfleet when he approached a platform with a sweeping view of the marsh and Cape Cod Bay. The scene […]
BIG PICTURE
Out of the Blue
Mike Wright makes a painting, but really, she doesn’t
Mike Wright, who has lived in Provincetown since 1984, makes abstract sculptures out of found wood. She has requirements for her materials: the wood must be from Provincetown, and it […]
SURFACES
On the Line Between Accident and Intention
Anthony Fisher embodies the unexpected in his intensely physical paintings
Anthony Fisher remembers seeing an exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum of Alvin Ross’s realist paintings. Fisher was 14 years old. “It was really an inspiration,” he says, […]
BIG PICTURE
Painting Spring’s First Shade
Tony Chimento learns to love green
Tony Chimento is a realist painter who lived and worked in Provincetown in the 1980s. He now lives in Florida and is represented in Provincetown by the Simie Maryles Gallery. […]
WHAT STICKS
Putting the Pieces Together
An exhibition at the Commons celebrates the immediacy of collage
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 […]
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 […]