Photos and story by Edward Boches
Early on a summer Saturday morning, Lily Cianfaglione is already at her potter’s wheel, which she’s set up in her Orleans back yard. It takes her just a few minutes to transform a lump of clay into a perfectly symmetrical planter — or “a cup, if I had a handle,” she says with a smile.
Part of Cianfaglione’s summer was spent at Castle Hill, where she worked as a teaching assistant. She wants to become an art teacher and is heading to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn this month. She also spent a lot of time at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, where she was an inaugural summer art resident.
Cianfaglione’s trajectory as an artist is about something more than her own determination. It’s a testament to the parents, teachers, mentors, and other artists who create a support system that welcomes and nurtures young talent — a tradition on the Outer Cape for generations.
This network of artists was one of the reasons her family moved to Orleans when Cianfaglione was a rising high school junior. They traded Longmeadow for a place with a richer arts environment and a high school program that could challenge her.
“Lily’s more about what’s on the inside, not the outside,” says her father, Rick Cianfaglione, “and she’s always been interested in art.” From their Orleans place, where they spent time every summer, they would venture to Castle Hill in Truro and to galleries in Wellfleet and Provincetown. “You could see that the Cape had a real arts culture,” Rick says.
At Nauset Regional High School, it was the clay room that first impressed Cianfaglione. “I was blown away,” she says. “It wasn’t just a couple of wheels and a kiln — it felt like a real studio.”
More important were the teachers. Amy Kandall, an accomplished artist herself, was Cianfaglione’s teacher for two throwing classes and an independent study. “Once she knew how interested I was, she made sure to spend more one-on-one time with me,” Cianfaglione says. “Often, we would be working at the same time, so I could watch her technique.”
Kandall sees her work with young artists as something bigger than her teaching job and as an effort taken on with others in the community.
“We have a huge responsibility to the kids who want to become artists to help them understand all the steps needed to pursue that,” she says.
It’s different here than it is in New York City, where Kandall grew up. In a big city, “there’s no clear path to the cross-generational connections that we have here,” she says. “Finding an apprenticeship or a paying job that might lead to a better recommendation or creating an experience that might get an art institute to consider someone more seriously is all part of continuing the tradition of being an artist colony.”
A call for entries from the Galley West Art Gallery in Orleans led to two pieces being accepted for a show there last spring — and a warm welcome from a circle of local artists.
It was with a recommendation from Kandall that Cianfaglione first secured a paid position as a teaching assistant at GROW (the letters stand for gratitude, respect, optimism, and wonder), the after-school art program at Castle Hill for Outer Cape elementary school students. For Cianfaglione, the program checked off all the boxes: she got to teach, but she could also take workshops and enjoy access to the center’s pottery studio.
On graduation day at Nauset in June, Cianfaglione found out she’d been chosen as one of two artists to be Wellfleet Preservation Hall’s first summer art residents. That meant she and Romanee Hunt, an aspiring filmmaker from Wellfleet who is a rising junior at Nauset, would have the chance to exhibit their work at the hall.
They also took part in a symposium designed to give the summer residents time with working artists. Seven local artists across disciplines including photography, pottery, and painting offered advice on everything from finding sources of inspiration to developing a creative process to marketing one’s work.
“We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to artists on the Outer Cape,” says Kate Ryan, the hall’s executive director.
As a former teacher, Ryan sees the importance of connecting established artists with budding talent. “We all have a story about the one person — a teacher or a mentor — who said something encouraging to us, something that really hit home and then stuck with us for life.”
She wanted to get the hall’s young residents in the same room with well-known artists as a way to boost their confidence.
That confidence can help artists forge ahead even when there are setbacks. Cianfaglione was rejected from the Rhode Island School of Design, an early disappointment that stung but didn’t derail her. “I wanted that validation, sure,” she says, but she had her own sense of being part of a creative community by then. “Even when there’s rejection, there’s an upside if you keep working and building connections.”
As the wheel spins in her Orleans yard, Cianfaglione leans in, steadily coaxing the clay into a new form.
