Sculptor Breon Dunigan comes from a long line of local artists. Her great-grandparents were the first in her family to move to the Outer Cape, drawn by Charles Hawthorne’s Cape […]
Art
IN THE STUDIO
Julia Felsenthal Finds No Place to Hide in Her Paintings
The artist and writer explores ‘the ever-changing present’ in her watercolor seascapes and portraits
Julia Felsenthal likes to paint the same thing over and over again. In her Orleans studio — a small room in her house overlooking Pleasant Bay — stacks of watercolors […]
MUSEUMS
Will Barnet’s Search for Meaning
An artist and teacher used form to evoke deep feeling in works inspired by the natural world
Far from the heroic scale and subject matter of works by many of his contemporaries, Will Barnet’s flat, crisp compositions often depicted women (and their cats) in domestic spaces. Born […]
MUSEUMS
A Fresh Perspective on American Modernism
A Boston exhibit shows how Provincetown printmakers forged new creative territory
“The Provincetown Printmakers,” currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, makes a case for the significance of a group of mostly women artists who forged new directions […]
ARTISTS
Deb Mell Takes What She Knows and Spits It Out
Paintings and sculptures weave together stories and materials in an artist’s orbit
Deb Mell’s uncanny artwork often leaves one wondering. Her paintings are populated with recurring characters — half animal, half human — rendered in meticulous black-and-white marks. They float through spaces […]
ARTISTS
Experiments in Form and Speculation
Sichong Xie makes art ‘almost exploring something that’s impossible to reach’
In 1975, after driving east from Los Angeles, the Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader set sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a small boat. The performance piece was never […]
ARTISTS
Diane Messinger’s Operatic Narratives
The artist mines history — and her own experience — in a series of powerful figurative paintings
Over the past several months, Diane Messinger has been attending live broadcasts of performances from the Metropolitan Opera at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT). This month, her fellow opera fans […]
ARTISTS
Capturing Winter’s Turbulence on Canvas
Elizabeth Flood experiments with perspective in her second FAWC fellowship
Elizabeth Flood’s tempestuous paintings and ink drawings capture the striations of history, violence, extraction, and sublimity that accumulate in a landscape over time. So, it makes sense that after bearing […]
ART HISTORY
The Artistic Legacies of Mary Hackett
The self-taught Provincetown painter continues to hold an important place in local artists’ memories
When artist Susan Baker showed her work at the Fine Arts Work Center in 1974, Mary Hackett, then in her late 60s, attended the opening. The next day, Baker visited […]
ARTISTS
An Elegantly Colorful World of ‘Slightly Bad Taste’
Mark Joshua Epstein finds ‘arguments and romance’ in his unconventional paintings
Mark Joshua Epstein is not afraid of excess. In his paintings, saturated hues and whimsical patterns bump up against asymmetrical frames. Some pieces jut out from the wall in precisely […]
ARTISTS
Art as Social Organism
Siennie Lee’s work is guided by a fascination with the pulse of society
An imposing triptych — greenish on the left, then bluish, then purple — hangs on one wall of Siennie Lee’s studio at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Its […]
WOMEN’S HISTORY
An Artistic Dialogue Across the Decades
Megan Hinton on two influential Provincetown artists
Although Truro-based artist, curator, and teacher Megan Hinton never met Florence Brillinger or Janice Biala, their work has strongly informed her own art practice. We met recently at the Provincetown […]
WOMEN’S HISTORY
Discovering an Early Generation of Provincetown Artists
Important women from Provincetown’s art and civic histories
In 2014, Breon Dunigan and Mike Wright curated the Women Pioneers exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum to highlight the important roles that women played in the history […]
WOMEN’S HISTORY
An Artistic Sisterhood With No Apology
Artist Anna Poor reflects on community and the women who inspired her
While Anna Poor’s connections to the Outer Cape are deep and varied, a group of women artists, writers, and activists she has known and worked with over the years have […]
LOCALS
Jim Zimmerman Connects Provincetown’s Past With Its Present
PAAM’s resident jack-of-all-trades is a fountain of institutional and community knowledge
Jim Zimmerman — camera around his neck — greeted me in the lobby of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and led us through the museum’s expansive galleries with the […]
