Bob Mackie, Still Sparkling If you close your eyes and picture some of the most memorable celebrity fashion looks of the past half century — particularly the more revealing ones […]
Arts & Minds
Celebrating the creative and sometimes quirky culture of the Outer Cape.
Browse all Arts & Minds stories below or dive into a topic:
CROSSWORD #55
Renaissance x REvolution
LOST AND FOUND
Tom Deininger Turns Chaos Into Catharsis
The assemblage artist finds materials in a ‘dream state,’ then gets down to work
Mounted on the wall at Jeff Soderbergh Gallery in Wellfleet is a large striped bass. From a distance, the fish looks natural and seamless — an iridescent specimen with a […]
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; […]
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 […]