Arts & Minds
Celebrating the creative and sometimes quirky culture of the Outer Cape.
Browse all Arts & Minds stories below or dive into a topic:
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 […]
WRITERS
A Journey From a Nigerian Village to the Outer Cape
Bhion Achimba’s writing situates personal experience in a wider political and social reality
Growing up in a small farming village in southeastern Nigeria, Bhion Achimba was not supposed to become a writer. His family lacked the resources to send him to college, and […]
LINE BREAK
Is Artificial Intelligence Going to Take Over Poetry?
Spoiler alert: No — at least, not yet
Questions about the promise and existential threat of artificial intelligence are everywhere these days. What can A.I. do? What should it do? As recently as last year, most of the […]
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 […]
Arts Briefs
Arts Briefs for March 30, 2023 through April 6, 2023
James Stanley’s Views of a ‘Narrow Place’ Wellfleet artist James Everett Stanley is showing a group of paintings in an exhibition titled From the narrow place at Hirschl & Adler […]
DOCUMENTARIES
Remembering Boston’s Countercultural Radio Hub
A film about the heyday of WBCN tells the story of a station and a movement
Journalist and documentarian Bill Lichtenstein has uncovered major investigative scoops, won a Peabody Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received a Special Recognition honor from the Mass. Association for Mental […]
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 […]
WRITERS
Kim Coleman Foote’s Art of Biomythography
The FAWC writing fellow explores the ‘muddiness’ of history and memory
“When you forget parts of a history, patterns repeat themselves,” says Kim Coleman Foote. “This goes for the great human tragedies as much as for intergenerational trauma within families.” Foote, […]
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 […]
Arts Briefs
Arts Briefs for March 23, 2023 through March 30, 2023
The English Beat Keeps On Rocking Music fans of a certain age will remember the English Beat as a staple of early-1980s alternative radio and Friday Night Videos blocks. (The […]
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 […]
INDIE SCREEN
A Fassbinder Classic Gets a Meta Gender Flip
François Ozon’s Peter von Kant is a pas de deux auteurs
French filmmaker François Ozon is a bit of a chameleon. He’s best known for the film Swimming Pool, with Charlotte Rampling as a British mystery writer vacationing in Provence. But […]
WRITERS
Finding Rhythm and Beauty in the Strange and Odd
Kieron Walquist brings a ‘queer, neurodivergent hillbilly perspective’ to his visceral poetry
Late at night, hearing the coyotes cry, Kieron Walquist watches as a red-tailed fox makes its rounds of the Fine Arts Work Center campus. When Walquist and the fox finally […]