Albert Merola Gallery Archives - Page 2 of 2 - The Provincetown Independent

Albert Merola Gallery

Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for July 23 through July 29

By Howard Karren Jul 23, 2020

Richard Baker’s Reflections in a Golden Eye is part of a new group show at Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Albert Merola Gallery)

Supremely Nostalgic Group Show at Albert Merola

The Albert Merola Gallery will present a new group show, “Reflections of…,” opening Friday, July 24, and on view through Aug.12. Featured are work by Matías Alvial, David Armstrong, Richard Baker, James Balla, Richard Bosman, Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, Pat de Groot, Lyle Ashton Harris, Karen Heagle, Peter Hujar, Jacqueline Humphries, Kunle Martins, Jack Pierson, Mischa Richter, Tabitha Vevers, John Waters, and Helen Miranda Wilson.The title of the show is borrowed from a 1967 song by the Supremes and is variously interpreted by the individual artists.The gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment (508-487-4424).

Tianna Esperanza’s Afro Gypsy Arrives

Singer-songwriter Tianna Esperanza, a Cape Cod native now living in Wellfleet, is clear from the jump about her range of influences. Her debut album, Afro Gypsy, will be released on Friday, July 24 (at tiannaesperanza.com), and its title delivers not only a hip-sounding sobriquet but a condensed rundown on her style. She’s searching for a sound that’s somewhere between Erykah Badu and Roma music. It’s also clear from the first moments of the album,with its woody double-bass and floating guitar and trumpet harmony, and from the confident, evocative storytelling she talk-sings, that Esperanza is a fluent songwriter. Afro Gypsy is full of well-crafted, memorable songs.

Afro Gypsy will be released on July 24. (Photo courtesy Tianna Esperanza)

Over the course of the album, her voice changes as she takes on various approaches. She moves from a well-executed grasp of Badu jazz to a Bill Withers roots sound to a fiddling American folk thing (written by Wellfleet’s Alex Brewer), then goes into a 6/8 groove that recalls Balkan music and the jazz it inspired. The last song, “Truth,” seems to draw from Broadway’s Hamilton. As with many debut albums, Esperanza’s skills come through gloriously, but there’s a sense that she’s still seeking a form to carry all that she has to say. And indeed, there’s a lots he has to cover—family, dreams, the black experience, American violence. She’s a formidable writer and musician, and we’re lucky to have her on the Cape.—Will Powers

‘Still Woman Run Deep’ at Bowersock Gallery

Summer, by Natalie Featherstone, is part of the “Still Woman Run Deep” show at Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Bowersock Gallery)

The Bowersock Gallery at 373 Commercial St. in Provincetown has curated a group show, “Still Woman Run Deep,” opening Friday, July 24, and on view through Aug. 6.There will be a virtual preview on Friday, July 24, at 6 p.m., before a live reception at the gallery at 7 p.m.The show features still-life paintings by the artists Noriko Fox, Sydney Bella Sparrow, Julie Beck, Terry Rafferty, Natalie Featherstone, Loren Pugh, and Brittany Haynes. Featherstone is making her gallery debut. The gallery has a limit of 10 people at a time due to Covid-19 restrictions. Masks are required.The hours are weekdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and weekends from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Gaa Gallery and the Art of ‘Repose’

Cherub, by Jane Corrigan. (Photo Gaa Gallery)

Through Aug. 11, Gaa Gallery,at 494 Commercial St. in Provincetown, is offering a group show, “Repose,” featuring work by Jane Corrigan, Jen Dwyer, Patrice Aphrodite Helmar, Nan Goldin, Dani Leventhal Restack, Autumn Wallace, and Qualeasha Wood.The exhibit, apropos of the pandemic,reflects on the activities we do in bed—sleep, sex, work, and reading—exploring notions about the body, nude or clothed, in art and society, such as passivity, power, the gaze, and voyeurism. The gallery is open by appointment: go to gaa-gallery.com to schedule a visit. For the duration of the show, Gaa Gallery will donate 20 percent of profits from each sale to the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust and the Boston Ujima Project.

Elise Kaufman at Off Main Online

Field, Ruin + Cottage, by Elise Kaufman. (Photo Off Main Gallery)

Off Main Gallery in Wellfleet, though closed to the public, is offering virtual exhibits and Zoom openings. Artist Elise Kaufman’s virtual exhibit opens Friday,July 24, with a reception via Zoom at 7 p.m., and will remain on view through Aug. 7.To register for the Zoom opening or see the exhibit, visit offmaingallery.com. Kaufman’s most recent work consists of India ink paintings on Mylar as well as cyanotypes and photographs. She takes her inspiration from architecture and landscapes,and explores memories both clear-cut and foggy, in the way that light conveys the passage of time.

Olson, Schlosberg, and Malin at Hutson Gallery

Every Little Thing, by Lynda Schlosberg. (Photo courtesy Hutson Gallery)

The Hutson Gallery, at 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown, is presenting an exhibit of Rose Olson’s work, “Neil’s Game,” a tribute to her late husband,and new paintings inspired by quantum theory and the philosophy of science by Lynda Schlosberg, through July 30.The gallery is open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Tuesdays. Also during these dates, the Hutson Gallery is showing a virtual exhibit of sculptures by Gay Malin at hutsongallery.net.

Megan Hilty Joins Seth Rudetsky Online

Broadway star Megan Hilty is the next guest featured on the Seth Concert Series, presented by Mark Cortale of Provincetown’s Art House. Hilty will join Seth Rudetsky for a virtual evening of song and conversation on Sunday, July 26,at 8 p.m.Tickets are$23.50 at thesethconcertseries.com. Hilty is best known for her role in the TV musical drama series Smash. She made her Broadway debut as Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked, and has since been nominated fora Tony for her performance in Noises Off.

Garrard Conley to Read From Boy Erased

Garrard Conley. (Photo Colin Boyd Shafer Photography)

East End Books Ptown is hosting a virtual book event with Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased, on Friday, July 24, at 5 p.m. This autobiographical tale, adapted into a film starring Lucas Hedges,tells how the author, the son of a Baptist minister in Arkansas, endured a conversion therapy program aimed at eradicating his gay desires. Advance registration is required for this free Zoom event. Visit eastendbooksptown.com for a link and to purchase signed copies of the book.

May Tveit’s Industrial ‘Self’ at Farm Projects

Monoprint 01, ink on paper, is by May Tveit. (Photo courtesy Farm Projects)

“Fields, Planes, Systems: Self,” a show of new prints by Kansas City-based artist May Tveit, is on view at Farm Projects at 355 Main St. in Wellfleet through Aug. 2. Tveit, a sculptor and printmaker whose large-scale installations use the materials of commerce and industry, is Farm’s first artist-in-residence, working in the barn just above the gallery’s exhibition space.The prints on view in this show are monochromatic investigations of Tveit’s primary sculptural material: corrugated cardboard.

Farm Projects is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment. Call Susie Nielsen at 617-650-9800 to schedule a visit to the gallery or barn studio. Masks are required at all times.

Women Artists at Schoolhouse

Oculus, a 3-by-6-foot acrylic on two panels by Jeannie Motherwell, is part of a new group show at Schoolhouse Gallery. (Photo Jeannie Motherwell)

A new group show at the Schoolhouse Gallery, at 494 Commercial St. in Provincetown, features the work of photographer Amy Arbus (“Iconic”), sculptor Breon Dunigan, mixed media artist Lynne Kortenhaus, and painter Jeannie Motherwell (“Multiples”). It opens on Friday, July 24,with a live virtual walk-through on Instagram, and is on view through Aug. 10.This summer, the Schoolhouse Gallery is open by appointment or online. Go to galleryschoolhouse.com or call 508-487-4800.

Queen of Katwe Screens at Preservation Hall’s Back Yard

Lupita Nyong’o is the single mother of a chess prodigy in Queen of Katwe. (Photo Edward Echwalu/Disney)

The film Queen of Katwe is about a single mother in Uganda (Lupita Nyong’o) whose young daughter (Madina Malwanga) is a chess prodigy.Directed by Mira Nair, and co-starring David Oyelowo as the girl’s mentor, the film is a beautifully wrought family drama. Wellfleet Preservation Hall, at 335 Main St., is screening the film as part of its renewed series of films shown outdoors in its back yard. Showtime is Wednesday, July 29, at 8 p.m. Bring a lawn chair or blanket. A cash bar with drinks and snacks will be open.Admission is free, but due to the pandemic, preregistration and social distancing are required. Go to wellfleetpreservationhall.org for details.

Renaissance-inspired Hounds at Gary Marotta

The Hounds of Jan Steen: Entreaty, by Kimberly Witham. (Photo courtesy Gary Marotta Fine Art)

A series of photographs by Kimberly Witham that were inspired by the paintings of Dutch master Jan Steen will be featured at g-1: Gary Marotta Fine Art, at 162 Commercial St. in Provincetown’s West End, from Friday, July 24, through Aug. 20. Witham studied art history at Duke University and got her M.F.A. in photography at UMass Dartmouth.The show will have opening receptions on Friday, July 24, and Saturday, July 25, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for July 16 through July 22

By The Independent Jul 16, 2020

In-Person Classes Return to Castle Hill

Rob DuToit pastel — Painter Rob DuToit, who created this pastel of Provincetown Harbor, will be teaching “Zen and the Art of Paste,” live at Edgewood Farm, the week of August 10 to 14. (Photo courtesy Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill)

Following its success with virtual classes this summer, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill is reintroducing in-person instruction, starting in August. Classes will be held outside, either at Castle Hill’s main campus at 10 Meetinghouse Road, or at the spacious Edgewood Farm on Edgewood Way, off Route 6. They will be limited to seven students, with masks required and social distancing.

Twelve classes will be offered, including sketchbook drawing and writing with Nick Flynn and Mark Adams, photography with Robert Johnson, “Making Pictures” with Pete Hocking, hand building with Chris Watt, pastels with Rob DuToit, and plein air landscape with Cammie Watson. Visit castlehill.org for dates and times. Classes cost between $280 and $490.

What James Balla Sees in Provincetown

The Plague by James Balla — The Plague is a pencil on paper by James Balla, inspired by the Albert Camus book cover and part of his show at Albert Merola Gallery. (Photo courtesy Albert Merola Gallery)

Artist James Balla, who has run the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown along with its namesake for three decades, is having a show there, “What I see when you’re not here,” from Friday, July 17, through Aug. 5 at 424 Commercial St.

The work on view is a series of pencil drawings of things seen around Provincetown during the winter and spring, “when the crowds are gone, when people are not here, except the locals, and we have time to make note of the small things, or the personal things, or the simple reading of a book or watching of a film,” Balla writes in the announcement for the exhibit.

The gallery is open noon to 5 p.m. on Wednesday through Sunday, and by appointment (508-487-4424).

Virtual Reading of The Great Believers

East End Books Ptown is hosting a virtual book reading and discussion on Friday, July 17, at 5 p.m., with Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers. The novel was one of the New York Times’s top 10 picks for 2018.

The Great Believers tells two intertwining stories. The first is about the director of a Chicago art gallery in the ’80s who loses countless friends to the AIDS epidemic. He becomes close to the younger sister of one of those friends, and the second story tells of her journey, 30 years later, to reconnect with her estranged daughter, who has joined a cult.

To register for this free Zoom event, or order a signed copy, visit eastendbooksptown.com.

Miss Richfield Sprinkles ‘Sunshine’ at Pilgrim House

Miss Richfield 1981 is back in Provincetown, and ready to replace your Covid blues with a full spectrum of living color. She will be performing in “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows,” something she is calling her “outdoor parking lot show.” And indeed, it will take place outdoors at Pilgrim House, 336 Commercial St. in Provincetown, with social distancing, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 9 p.m. through Sept. 12.

Miss Richfield, a Provincetown favorite, has been doing virtual editions of “Bingo Bonanza” and “Trivia Shack,” but this is her first in-person show here since last year. Ticket holders (at $35 a pop) are seated first come, first served, and early shows have been selling out, so visit pilgrimhouseptown.com in advance to ensure yourself a good spot.

Conversations on the T by Salvatore Del Deo — Conversations on the T (2014) is an oil on canvas by Salvatore Del Deo at Berta Walker Gallery. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

Hope by Romolo Del Deo — Hope (2017) is a bronze by Romolo Del Deo. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

Del Deos at Berta Walker Gallery

The Berta Walker Gallery at 206 Bradford St. in Provincetown is celebrating “Provincetown 400” with a season full of artists who are new to its roster. But included in the show that opens on Saturday, July 18, and runs through Aug. 8, will be two ever-talented stalwarts of the Provincetown art colony, painter Salvatore Del Deo and his son, Romolo, a sculptor. (Also in the show are works by the late Elspeth Halvorsen and by painter Laura Shabott, who will be profiled in next week’s Independent.)

During the Covid-19 crisis, the gallery will be open by appointment only (go to bertawalkergallery.com) from noon to 4 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday.

Classical Musicians Step Up to the Virtual Mic

The Tiberius String Quartet will be featured on the virtual Open Mic Classical on Sunday. (Photo courtesy Open Mic Classical)

Open mics aren’t only for pop musicians. Open Mic Classical, which usually hosts events at First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist Church, has gone virtual. Classical musicians hoping to share their talent can participate in an informal Zoom concert, during which audience members can give feedback and ask questions.

Founded by clarinetist Monika Veress Woods and sculptor Bob Marcus, Open Mic Classical meets on the third Sunday of the month. On Sunday, July 19, at 3 p.m., it will feature the Tiberius String Quartet, an internationally acclaimed quartet from Transylvania. To register, visit openmicclassical.org.

Wellfleet Preservation Hall Launches Doc Days

Flannery O'Connor — Author Flannery O’Connor is the subject of the documentary Flannery, streaming online as part of the Doc Days Film Series presented by Wellfleet Preservation Hall. (Photo Georgia Humanities)

Wellfleet Preservation Hall is presenting the first of its virtual Doc Days Film Series from Friday, July 17, through July 31. The opening title is a premiere: the documentary Flannery, about Flannery O’Connor, author of the novel Wise Blood and numerous short stories with a perversely ironic and morally complex view of midcentury Southern life. The movie was the first winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize (for $200,000), given to independent filmmakers telling stories of American history.

For $10, you can rent the film for 72 hours and stream it at home. Go to wellfleetpreservationhall.org for details.

Mike Wright and Paul Kelly at Alden Gallery

The Alden Gallery at 423 Commercial St. in Provincetown will present new work by sculptor Mike Wright and painter Paul Kelly in a two-person show opening Friday, July 17, and on view through July 30.

Both artists have lived and worked in Provincetown for decades. Wright uses found painted wood for her modernist sculptures, and Kelly paints Provincetown landscapes from unusual (and sometimes imaginary) vantage points.

The gallery is open noon to 5 p.m. daily during the Covid-19 crisis, and masks are required.

Hunk by Mike Wright — Hunk is a sculpture of found painted wood by Mike Wright. (Photo courtesy Alden Gallery)

Paul Kelly, Captain Jack's Wharf — Captain Jack’s Wharf #12 is an oil on canvas by Paul Kelly. (Photo courtesy Alden Gallery)

GALLERIES

For Duane Slick, the Coyote Is Transcendent

His paintings spring from the animal’s place in history and art

By Will Powers Jun 25, 2020

In his career-long exploration of the coyote in Native American storytelling, painter Duane Slick often takes the image of a coyote head and obscures it. In the process, he explores the nature of representation itself. This is true of each of the 10 new paintings Slick is offering in his solo show, “Arias for a Coyote Opera,” at the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown from Friday, June 26, through Wednesday, July 15.

Slick is of Native American descent, a member of the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa through his father’s lineage. His mother is from the Ho-Chunk Nation in Nebraska. The coyote, he explains, is the archetypal “trickster character” in North American tribal folklore. It also has an unusual ecological history on the continent.

“The character is sort of illusive,” he says, “and the animal itself is what you call an ‘invigorated species’ — when it first had contact with Europeans, its numbers were decimated. But as an invigorated species, it came back and it adapted. The idea is that we can’t really get rid of them.”

Coyote's Return by Duane Slick — Coyote’s Return, a 14-by-11-inch acrylic on panel by Duane Slick, was chosen as the logo-image of the 2020 Provincetown Swim for Life. (Photo courtesy Albert Merola Gallery)

Slick’s paintings will trick you at times. The coyote heads are often camouflaged in layers of paint: impasto mounds, black marks, lines, swirls, and shapes with hints of depth. They offer mere suggestion and shadow, abstract at certain angles before suddenly revealing coyote ears and jaw. Slick creates these outlines by tracing the shadow of a coyote papier-mâché mask, a folk-art object he bought in Mexico. He talks about this process as aiming to “activate” the mask, bringing it back to life from obscurity after Europeans had reduced it to a trinket for sale in a market. In this way, his paintings activate the coyote — as a storytelling symbol and flesh-and-blood species.

Slick is from Iowa, born in Waterloo and raised in Cedar Falls. After earning his B.F.A. from the University of Northern Iowa and his M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis, he was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown from 1990 to 1992. In those Provincetown years, he met Albert Merola and James Balla, who had just started the UFO gallery (predecessor to the Albert Merola Gallery). Since 1999, Slick has been at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, where he was appointed professor of painting in 2005.

Merola and Balla have represented Slick since the early ’90s, and this will be his ninth solo show at their gallery. “Coyote is trickster and hero,” Balla says in an email, “a magician and creative force — not exactly an alter ego, but rather the prime character in an epic story of life, death, and redemption.”

A Changing Procession by Duane Slick — Swirls of thick impasto surround a coyote head in Slick’s A Changing Precession in Red #1. (Photo courtesy Albert Merola Gallery)

Stories, and the telling of history, are important to Slick. He talks about working from an “untraceable present,” where linear time is forgotten, as is any attempt to conform to a grand “master narrative.” In the paintings, too, history is rendered in hidden layers of paint. In some of them, a gray background proves, on closer inspection, not to be a background at all — just beneath it lies faded worlds of color.

One of the paintings in the show, Coyote’s Return, was chosen by artist Jay Critchley as the logo-image for this year’s Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla. It depicts a coyote standing on the backs of two sea turtles. Around the edges are the silhouettes of clover flowers, which the artist traced from flowers he picked.

The title of the Merola Gallery show comes from the one large (50-by-40-inch) painting in the series, Aria for a Coyote Opera: Naming Your Predecessors, which itself takes inspiration from the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach. Slick says he shows a segment of Glass’s five-hour work — the song “Spaceship” — to his students at RISD. He emphasizes the mesmerizing union of Glass’s music and Robert Wilson’s art direction and choreography: the performers moving in slow motion and the lighting. “I was thinking about that kind of spectacle,” he says. In the painting, a group of coyote head silhouettes are in a kind of mass, floating together in the center of the canvas, a coordinated performance.

Trickster Treat

The event: Exhibit of paintings by Duane Slick, “Arias for a Coyote Opera”

The time: Friday, June 26, through Wednesday, July 15; gallery open by appointment only, Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.

The place: Albert Merola Gallery, 424 Commercial St., Provincetown, 508-487-4424

The cost: Free

Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for June 11 through June 17

By The Independent Jun 11, 2020

Girl With Long Nose, a painting by Diane Messinger, is part of the online exhibit “We Are All Contagious.” (Photo courtesy Diane Messinger)

Diane Messinger’s Art Is Contagious

A painting by Truro artist Diane Messinger has been accepted in a juried virtual show, “We Are All Contagious,” presented by the UMass Dartmouth University Art Gallery. Forty-nine pieces were chosen by juror Nato Thompson, artistic director of Philadelphia Contemporary, from 745 submitted. (To find the exhibit on the UMass Dartmouth website, search for “We Are All Contagious.”)

Messinger’s piece is a massive 6-by-10-foot acrylic on paper called Girl With Long Nose. In the text accompanying the piece online, Messinger writes, “What does that mean, contagious? I think contagious is feelings and emotions. These travel like a virus, unseen but there.”

Bay Rain III is a 2009 painting by Michael Mazur that’s on view at Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Albert Merola Gallery)

Michael Mazur Paintings at Albert Merola

The Albert Merola Gallery at 424 Commercial St. in Provincetown will present its first show of the season, “Gathered at the edge of light,” of paintings by Michael Mazur from the 1990s and a series he created shortly before his death in 2009. The exhibit will be on view June 12 through July 1. Call the gallery at 508-487-4424 for admission information during the Covid-19 crisis.

Mazur’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where a traveling exhibit of his prints opened in 2000. He was deeply involved in the Fine Arts Work Center, serving on its board and visual committees, and founding its Provincetown Print Project in 1990.

The History of Provincetown, by Susan Baker, has been reissued. (Photo courtesy Susan Baker Museum Press)

Susan Baker Reprints History

With Susan Baker’s out-of-print, tongue-in-cheek picture book, The History of Provincetown, first published in 1999, going for hundreds of dollars on Amazon, the Truro artist decided to do a second printing through her Susan Baker Museum Press in the spirit of Provincetown 400. Both the Provincetown Bookshop and Truro’s Salty Market are carrying it curbside. (Baker’s “memorial museum” is a charming exhibit space filled with her art and constructions at 46 Shore Road in North Truro, 508-487-2557, very near Salty Market. Summer hours have yet to be posted.)

The History of Provincetown is not exactly a children’s book — there’s a bit too much nudity and canoodling for that — but it does have a storybook quality that adults will find whimsical and amusing. Baker arrived in Provincetown in the late ’60s as one of the first fellows at the Fine Arts Work Center, and she’s been here ever since. Her History preserves Provincetown lore experienced first-hand or told to her by her friends — “History is just gossip writ large,” Baker often signs her books. These vignettes include Edmund Wilson sunbathing in a suit, Harry Kemp holding a séance in the dunes, and Howard Mitcham’s “famous” lighter-fluid pork loin. Though many of the local characters are now gone and memories fading, Baker hopes it’s all still entertaining.

She started her own press in anticipation of two new children’s books coming out soon. The first is My Brother From Another Mother, which Baker says is about basset hounds: “My basset hound and my son’s basset hound are half-brothers.” The other is Rupert, based on a “neighborhood goat who was like a movie star.” —Saskia Maxwell Keller

Bill Bolton. (Photos courtesy Payomet Performing Arts Center)

Artists Retrace Thoreau’s Cape Walks

Two artists, Ben Shattuck and William Bolton, inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s walks on Cape Cod, will retrace his steps at a Tiny Tent Early Stage virtual event, presented by the Payomet Performing Arts Center on Sunday, June 14, at 11:30 a.m.

Shattuck will read from an essay he wrote, “Three Walks,” and he will join Bolton, a plein air painter, in a conversation about “art, Thoreau, Cape Cod, and nature,” according to the announcement for the event.

The program is free, but registration is required in order to join the event on Zoom. Go to payomet.org to find the link to register.

« Previous Page

Arts Briefs for July 23 through July 29

Arts Briefs for July 16 through July 22

For Duane Slick, the Coyote Is Transcendent

His paintings spring from the animal’s place in history and art

Arts Briefs for June 11 through June 17

About + Team

Contact + Tips

Stories + Columns

The Local Journalism Project

Search The Indie

Join + Donate