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AMP Gallery

    ARTISTS

    Karen Cappotto Brings Back Some Souvenirs

    ‘Why do people save tokens?’ the Provincetown painter and collagist asks

    By

    “My artwork is about telling stories,” says the artist Karen Cappotto. “I always thought that I would become a writer, but I discovered that telling my story visually works better for me.”

    Karen Cappotto and Pearl. (Photo Wayne Bund)

    In her paintings and collages, Cappotto explores the themes of loss, remembrance, change, and preservation. The place she revisits again and again in her work is Provincetown, where she lives. “Some places have more feelings to them, and Provincetown is one of them,” she says.

    Cappotto’s upcoming show at the AMP Gallery, opening Friday, includes a new series of collages titled Souvenirs, which capture Provincetown moments. The small-scale works on aged wood will be displayed in a grid alongside work by Pasquale Natale. Cappotto will also be showing paintings from her Meadowville series.

    “I collage photographs and objects that give a sense of time passing,” Cappotto says. “Historic places in town are torn down, and the people who lived in them are forced to leave or die. My hope is that my Souvenir series tells their stories in some form. Our shared legacy doesn’t end, and that keeps us connected.”

    Cappotto was born and raised in Syracuse, N.Y. and spent years living in Ireland. She visited Provincetown for the first time in 1988. She summered here before moving here full-time five years ago.

    Collages were Cappotto’s earliest way of creating art in her youth. After studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in her late 30s, she became known primarily as a collagist. In 2011, she opened Peg + Dick, a collage and decoupage studio named after her parents. “They’re effortless and humorous to me,” says Cappotto of her collages. “I laugh when I am working on them.”

    Sisters is a 6-by-8-inch mixed media collage on wood by Cappotto, part of her Souvenirs series. It is based on the cottage that Cappotto’s friend had to vacate. (Photo courtesy Karen Cappotto)

    Cappotto’s return to collage in her Souvenir series is a rumination on what is left when we’re gone. “I used to sell T-shirts as souvenirs,” says Cappotto. “Now I’m wondering: why do people save tokens? And what do we choose to take with us from a vacation or trip and save? Our souvenirs become our memories — our stories from the past.” Cappotto’s recent loss of her father has deepened these questions. She creates her collages on pieces of old wood left over from her father’s furniture-making workshop.

    Objects left behind were also the inspiration for a series of large-scale paintings titled Meadowville that have been Cappotto’s primary focus since 2015. She was preparing for a retreat in Vermont on a bitterly cold winter day when a friend called with an urgent request. He had been ordered to vacate his mint-green summer rental cottage, part of a cottage community that had just been sold, but he was out of town.

    Winter Village is a 40-by-30-inch oil and graphite on wood by Cappotto, part of her Meadowville series. (Photo courtesy Karen Cappotto)

    “I arrived at Cesar’s cottage and pushed his unlocked door open,” Cappotto remembers. “Confronted by a deeply personal space filled with summer possessions now silent and frozen, never intended to be sifted through by someone else, I found myself overwhelmed by the enormous finality of a moment that so vividly illustrated the relentless tide of gentrification on the Outer Cape.”

    Shaken by the experience, Cappotto arrived in Vermont the next evening. There, she heard the poet Brian Teare read a piece titled “Star Thistle.” The yellow star thistle is an invasive weed that was destroying the poet’s beloved meadows in Southern California: “It looks beautiful on its surface, like golden velvet, but underneath the star thistle is all thorns,” she explains. “When it takes over, it destroys the ecosystem of the land.”

    After learning that her friend’s cottage community called themselves “the sisters of village meadow,” Cappotto drew a connection in her mind. “For five years, I’ve been painting historical places in Provincetown that are disappearing,” she says.

    Carnival is a 10-by-9-inch mixed media collage on wood by Karen Cappotto, part of her Souvenirs series. (Photo courtesy Karen Cappotto)

    Cappotto paints what she feels as much as what she sees. In her studio overlooking the harbor, she points at a sweeping painting-in-progress on the wall. It shows an enclosed cove cradling sailboats depicted in a mélange of lightly sketched elements and soft-hued paint. The land surrounding the cove is speckled with small cottages. The painting emanates a feeling of the distant past.

    “When I think of Provincetown, I see two arms wrapped around water,” says Cappotto. “My paintings are my voice. They are me trying to match a place with my emotions.”

    When asked which souvenirs she hopes viewers will take away from the show, Cappotto says, “I like it when people bring their own story to my work. Hopefully, there’s room in my paintings and collages for viewers to roam around in their own narratives.”

    Memory Palace

    The event: Works by Karen Cappotto, alongside ones by Pasquale Natale, Bobby Busnach, Jamie Casertano, and Katrina del Mar

    The time: Friday, Sept. 24 through Oct. 31

    The place: AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free

    Forrest Williams at AMP

    By

    A retrospective of paintings by Forrest Williams continues through Sept. 15 at AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown. Williams’s narratives are as much about inner space as they are about exterior worlds. The male figures, nude and clothed, are, the gallery says, like psychological journeymen, anonymous ciphers about no one and everyone. Beautifully painted, the theatrical tableaux of imaginary worlds reside in isolation, connection, and disconnection.

    ABSTRACTION

    Rick Wrigley Has Entered Phase Three

    In which the furniture maker and builder turns to sculpture

    By

    It has been said that if you let an artist work long enough, he’ll eventually start working abstractly. If true, this certainly applies to Rick Wrigley, who says his career over the past 40 years can be broken into three phases: furniture maker, house builder, and now sculptor.

    Phase one: Wrigley grew up in Arlington, Va. — a place he calls “affluent America” — but left as soon as he graduated from high school. While his peers went to college, he traveled around the United States for six months in a “hippie van.” He apprenticed for a few years with a classically trained cabinetmaker before enrolling in the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, graduating with a B.F.A. in furniture design.

    Rick Wrigley in his summer studio. Located in the Provincetown woods, and nicknamed the “Mushroom House,” it was built by Donald Jasinski in the 1950s. (Photo John Greiner-Ferris)

    Wrigley opened a studio in New Rochelle, N.Y. During that time, he became an important member of the studio furniture movement. He was invited to exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. (where he has a piece in the permanent collection); the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the Silvermine Arts Center in New Canaan, Conn.; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

    Phase two: After moving to Provincetown in 1999, Wrigley started focusing on architecture. He sees the progression as natural. “If you’re designing furniture, it’s not that big a step to designing a house,” he says. “It’s the same kind of manual skills: drawing, woodworking, and other mechanical abilities. You’re just visualizing something you’re inside of, instead of looking down at it.”

    Sculpture No. 2, by Wrigley, is made from steam-bent white oak and lead. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    He built four houses and a studio, and designed two additional houses. But “after 20 years of designing and developing houses,” says Wrigley with a laugh, “I’ve had my fill.”

    Phase three: Since 2014, Wrigley has been making sculptures. His approach is process-driven, not conceptual. “I’m grounded in the making of things,” he says, with a focus on the “formal elements of design.”

    The difference, though, between a chair and a sculpture, is purpose. “A table has to be a certain height. A chair has to be comfortable. There are a lot more restrictions with a chair,” Wrigley explains. “That kind of work was challenging and interesting for me, but now it’s more interesting to be free of that. The kind of spontaneity that sculpting allows is a different way of working.

    Sculpture No. 4, by Wrigley, is made from white oak, Cambara mahogany, paint, and brass. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    “For years I’d do drawings measured to a 1/64 of an inch,” he continues. “Once you did the drawing, there was little opportunity for change. The client had signed off on it.” Now he sketches with crayon or charcoal.

    One gets the sense that a great weight has been lifted from Wrigley. “It’s all very intuitive for me,” he says. “It’s close to 50 years of working with my hands. And presenting myself with a challenge to make something. I’m not thinking about it intellectually. It’s a different approach.”

    Though all artists dream that a New York City gallery will discover them, “At this point in my life, I’ve learned that the rewards from that kind of publicity are limited,” Wrigley says. He is 65, which he says is “frightening.” His mother thinks he retired when he moved to Provincetown in 1999.

    Sculpture No. 1, by Rick Wrigley, is made from Cambara mahogany, paint, and brass nails. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    “I don’t feel confident,” says Wrigley. “I’m starting something brand new. It’s interesting and challenging and a little scary. It’s all about spending the day doing something that’s enjoyable and rewarding — just being in the studio. Sculpture is a really difficult road to go down. I’m not going to be another Ai Weiwei,” he says, referring to the conceptual artist exhibited seemingly everywhere at once. “It’s all about the work every day. The idea that it can be exhibited is secondary.

    “I’m just not happy if I’m not doing something with my hands,” continues Wrigley. “What I’d really like to do is work that takes less time to build. A commitment to hundreds of hours of work — I naturally gravitate to that kind of work because it’s what I’ve done in the past. To be able to experiment with work that takes less time would allow for a little spontaneity.”

    Wrigley gives a little shrug. He’s not comfortable talking about his artwork. He’s more comfortable using his hands.

    Master Builder

    The event: Works by Rick Wrigley, alongside “Forrest Williams: A Retrospective”

    The time: Friday, Aug. 13 through Sept. 15

    The place: AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free

    STILL LIFE

    Larry Collins Cures the Pandemic With a Pencil

    A show of drawings reveals the art of isolation

    By

    When the Covid lockdown hit in March 2020, Provincetown artist Larry Collins was living alone in his small condo in the middle of town. “Here I was, in my 70s, vulnerable to this,” Collins says, the sounds of summer tourists on MacMillan Wharf muffled by air-conditioning. “So, I decided to stay in, isolating myself. I bought a lot of canned goods, whatever I could find. My whole schedule changed. I used to get up really late. But, once Covid started, I’d go out for walks early in the morning. And, one day, I just started drawing.”

    Larry Collins takes stock of his Provincetown apartment and its objets d’art, 47 of which he sketched for his “Pandemic Drawings” show at AMP Gallery, opening Friday. (Photo Howard Karren)

    It was not the first time he had adapted to the demands of an epidemic or a horrific twist of history. Collins lost a longtime partner to AIDS in the 1980s. After graduating in 1967 from the University of Oklahoma with a B.F.A. in painting, he was drafted into the Army and served in Viet Nam. He was eventually lifted from the front lines to become a combat illustrator — a skill he learned on the job, because painters in that era were not taught to draw realistically. He also took photographs of his fellow soldiers — stunning images that were exhibited in a show of his wartime art at the Amarillo Museum of Art in Texas in 2017.

    Collins’s initial Covid drawings were “very loose and moody,” he says. “Somewhat different. I sent one to my friend Midge Battelle, and she said, ‘I can’t get that drawing out of my head.’ That was the spark. I began to draw other things around me. Something would jump out at me, and I would draw it. After a while, it became the center of my day. I would look forward to drawing. If it wasn’t happening very well, I’d stop after an hour. If it was going good, I’d go for five hours.

    Acrobats, by Larry Collins, is a drawing of carved marble blocks. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    “I didn’t set out for it to be a project in the beginning,” Collins continues in his gentle, gravelly voice. “But it developed into that. As I went along, the drawings got more and more detailed. I ordered special pencils online — 10B, very soft and dark. I hadn’t worked in pencil in many years. I used to use charcoal, which is more like paint — you can move it around, smear it. With pencil, you can erase it, but it’s not malleable. It’s more like ink drawing.”

    Using charcoal or paint was not feasible in his compact apartment. Though Collins shares a studio above the Provincetown Post Office with painter Christopher Sousa, “I didn’t want to go, because Chris was there all the time,” he says. “If you’re isolating yourself, you’re isolating yourself from your studio mate.”

    Bacchus, by Collins, is of a wooden sculpture. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    Collins’s paintings are celebrated — he had a survey show of them at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 2010 — and with their bold strokes and darkly saturated colors on large canvases, they’re a marked contrast to his pandemic drawings, which are small (8.5 by 5.5 inches) and delicate.

    After weeks of drawing, “I realized that I had a body of work,” Collins says. “And I wanted to keep going. At first, I thought I’d do 20. Then 30, then 40. I did 50. I took three out. I didn’t think they were good enough. There are 47, total.”

    Collins wasn’t sure if his gallerist, Debbie Nadolney, would want to do a show of the drawings, so he focused on creating a book, which he has self-published. “They have more meaning when put in context,” Collins says. “When you realize they were created in isolation during this pandemic. Otherwise, they’re just pictures of objects.”

    Boy Doll: a drawing come to life. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    Nadolney fully embraced the idea, however, and the show, “Pandemic Drawings,” will open at her AMP Gallery this Friday, and be on view through Aug. 11. Friday’s opening will double as the book launch.

    The drawings, like Collins’s apartment, are a deep reflection of his sensibility. He’d been an art and antiques dealer before settling in Provincetown in the 1990s, and, once here, he worked as a photography curator at the original Schoolhouse Center and owned a gallery in the West End.

    “I live in a little museum,” he says. The space is neat and organized, adorned with works in stone, wood, and bronze; prints and paintings; majolica and other collectibles; and shelf after shelf of books. “I grew up in a hoarder’s house,” he says. “It was kind of a nightmare existence. I have a little of that in me — I have to be really careful. What you see here is pared down to the stuff I really like.”

    Chest Candy, by Collins, is of a box of military medals from his service in Viet Nam. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    He has a story for almost everything. A box of military medals: “A therapist insisted that I get the ones I earned but didn’t have. It helps you come to terms with it.” A pair of acrobats cast in marble: “I found them on the side of a doorway, on the floor in a house in Andover. I said, ‘Give me a price.’ They did, and I bought ’em.”

    Pulv Myrrha depicts an antique bottle. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    All are now the subject of drawings — even everyday objects, such as a water glass or stack of toilet paper rolls. Collins says that drawing is more about the technique involved — light, shade, shadows, texture — than what’s depicted. “Some things are common, others are exquisite,” Collins says. “That’s what I do.”

    Top Drawer

    The event: Opening of “Pandemic Drawings,” a show of new work by Larry Collins, alongside “Communication & Courage,” a show of paintings by Jackie Lipton

    The time: Friday, July 23, 6 to 9 p.m.; on view through Aug. 11

    The place: AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free

    GALLERY PREVIEW

    Memorial Day Weekend Brings a Bonanza of Art

    With Covid precautions eased, an array of openings to enjoy

    By

    Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer and, with it, the gallery season. Opening Friday, May 28 at AMP Gallery is “these past few years,” a show of mixed media works by M P Landis, as well as “Garden of Ideas,” a show of paintings on wood panel by Lori Swartz. Don’t miss “Democracy of the Land: Viral Warming” by Jay Critchley (see story on page B3). Browse at 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown through June 23.

    Generations is a 76-by-100-inch oil on canvas by Joe Diggs. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

    There are two shows at Berta Walker Gallery, 208 Bradford St. in Provincetown, opening Saturday, May 29, with a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. “Soulscapes” is in an exhibit of large-scale paintings by Joe Diggs. There is also a group show of works by Donald Beal, Varujan Boghosian, Romolo Del Deo, Salvatore Del Deo, Elspeth Halvorsen, Bob Henry, Budd Hopkins, Anne MacAdam, Danielle Mailer, Deb Mell, Cynthia Packard, Sky Power, Paul Resika, and Murray Zimiles.

    Waves is a photograph by Greg Salvatori featuring a painting by Pete Hocking. (Photo courtesy Greg Salvatori)

    Check out Greg Salvatori’s Frames series, a collaboration with other local artists, at Greg Salvatori Gallery, 237 Commercial St. in Provincetown, with a show opening Friday, May 28 and running through June 6. The photographs show models posing with, or “framing,” original artworks by Adam Peck, Trevor Mikula, Pete Hocking, Gaston Lacombe, Mark Adams, James Frederick, and others.

    Three artists are featured this week at the Provincetown Commons, 46 Bradford St. A show of paintings by Cicely Carew opens Friday, May 28 and runs through June 6. Then, a show of paintings by Suzette Lebenzon as well as salvaged wood sculptures by Hilary McHugh opens Tuesday, June 1 and runs through June 16.

    Currently on display at Rice Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St. in Provincetown, is a group show featuring all gallery artists, including Nick Patten, Sean Thomas, and James Tyler, running through July 7.

    Mike Sullivan is one of the artists featured in a show at Schoolhouse Gallery opening Friday. (Photo courtesy Schoolhouse Gallery)

    Swing by Schoolhouse Gallery, 494 Commercial St. in Provincetown, to see Mark Adams’s Migration Mandalas, new oil paintings by Jen Bradley, sculptural headwear by Mike Sullivan, and collages and paintings by B.D. Graft, as well as embroidery by Lisa Paige. There will be an opening reception on Friday, May 28, from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will be on display through June 30.

    “In the Light, Beach Scenes,” is a show of acrylic and encaustic paintings by Karen Gausch at AMZehnder Gallery, 25 Bank Street, No. 3 in Wellfleet, from Thursday, May 27 through Tuesday, June 1. There will be a reception on Saturday, May 29, from 5 to 7 p.m.

    Words of is a work in progress by Asya Palatova. (Photo courtesy Farm Projects)

    Asya Palatova, a Cleveland-based ceramicist and sculptor who grew up in Russia, has a show titled “A Part Together” at Farm Projects, 355 Main St. in Wellfleet, from Thursday, May 27 through June 7. There will be a reception on Saturday, May 29, from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Horizontal #4 is a monotype with collage by Hanni Woodbury. (Photo Barbara Woodbury)

    Off Main Gallery christens its new location at 75 Commercial St. in Wellfleet with its first show of the season, featuring works by Hanni Woodbury, Susie Nielsen, Barbara Gordon, Mark Brennan, Elise Kaufman, Phyllis Ewen, Deborah Pressman, Mark Bernstein, and Robert Shreefter. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, May 29, from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Scribes in the Sky, a 48-by-39-inch mixed media work, is a collaboration between Andrew Jacob and Felipe Ortiz. (Photo courtesy Longstreet Gallery)

    Longstreet Gallery presents “Scribes in the Sky,” a show of works by Andrew Jacob and Felipe Ortiz, as well as some rare collaborations between the two. Both artists work in murals and graffiti as well as more traditional mediums. The show opens Saturday, May 29 at 4730B Route 6 in Eastham, with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. —Saskia Maxwell Keller

    PORTRAITS

    Justin Vivian Bond: The Eyes Have It

    A series of new watercolors is a window to queer culture

    By

    Mx. Justin Vivian Bond. (Photo Kyle Kupres)
    Mx. Justin Vivian Bond. (Photo Kyle Kupres)

    In an essay accompanying the exhibit “69 Witch Eyes,” Justin Vivian Bond, who uses the pronouns they/them, asks a pertinent question for life during the pandemic: “How do we care for others during times when we ourselves feel existentially threatened on the daily?” And then another: “How do we survive the dark times and muster the resolve to remain in or at least return to the light?”

    For the show, Bond has been working on a set of 69 4-by-4-inch watercolors of the left eyes of iconic authors, movie stars, singers, drag queens, and more, from Oscar Wilde to Judy Collins. Many of them are pre-sold, but they’ll be on view at Provincetown’s AMP Gallery at the show’s opening on Friday, Aug. 28, from 6 to 9 p.m. The New York City-based artist will be attending in person.

    A cabaret performer, singer-songwriter, author, transgender activist, and visual artist, Bond first came into prominence as Kiki of the punk-cabaret act Kiki & Herb, between 1993 and 2007. Bond’s renown continues to grow globally — they recently made their opera debut in the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando at the Staatsoper in Vienna, Austria.

    Bond understands a few things about feeling “threatened on the daily.” Born in 1963 to a religious family and raised in the suburb of Hagerstown, Md., young Justin attended high school during the 1970s, a time when identifying as transgender was rare and acceptance even rarer. Bond’s 2011 memoir, Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, details the violence — emotional and physical — and the humiliation, the perpetual sense of non-belonging, that had to be endured throughout much of their early life. During adolescence in particular, art became Bond’s escape and a means to covertly express vital parts of who they were without inviting judgment.

    Drawing and painting portraits of female friends in high school and admired female icons allowed Bond to focus on femininity in a way that was usually forbidden. “As a kid, I was glued on women’s faces,” Bond tells the Independent. “I wasn’t allowed to use makeup or play with long hair, so I started drawing the women I idolized. And, for some reason, I always started with the left eye.”

    Joan Crawford (Autumn Leaves) is a 4-by-4-inch watercolor by Justin Vivian Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    James Baldwin, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    James Baldwin, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    Dorothy Parker, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    Dorothy Parker, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    Elizabeth Taylor, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    Elizabeth Taylor, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Bond now considers the left eye to be both magical and meditative, “the eye that sees the world in a spiritual way.” A line attributed to Bond’s idol, Joan Crawford, inspired the phrase “witch eyes” to mean left eyes. During the filming of Autumn Leaves in 1956, director Robert Aldrich is said to have asked the 51-year-old Crawford whether she could cry on cue. Crawford’s response: “Out of which eye?”

    “I came across that quote years ago, I can’t even remember exactly when or how,” Bond says. “I’ve been obsessed with Joan Crawford since I was a kid.”

    Following the 2016 election, Bond began calling their left eye paintings “witch eyes” and selling them as talismans. “When I was a kid,” Bond says, “my family went on road trips. We would stop at souvenir shops that sold ‘devil eyes,’ which were supposed to protect you from evil. So, basically, I painted my ‘witch eyes’ for people who don’t want their lives to be invaded by patriarchal oppression.”

    Initially, Bond’s left eyes were only of women. Then, during the Covid lockdown, when Bond wasn’t live-streaming weekly performances of “House of Whimsy” concerts, they binged on YouTube and came across a Dick Cavett interview of Truman Capote. In it, Bond says, Capote “went on a tirade about how badly Tennessee Williams had been treated by the press, and how, in other countries, he would have been a hero instead of being constantly ripped to shreds. I found Capote’s defense of Tennessee Williams to be so moving, I decided I needed to introduce more diversity of gender.”

    As a result, Bond adds, their left eye paintings became “less about glorifying beauty or glamour. Especially, coming out of the last few months of racial unrest and the Supreme Court decision about LGBT rights, as well as going into the election, I felt it was really important just to focus on honoring and holding space for those who are doing the work of making the world safer for other people.”

    Truman Capote, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)
    Truman Capote, by J.V. Bond. (Photo by the artist)

    Bond considers the images of Joan Crawford’s and Truman Capote’s left eyes to be key works in the show.

    The artist uses photographs or images from film to capture the nuances of the subject’s left eye. Why create a set of 69? “Because the numbers 6 and 9 look a little bit like eyes to me. Also, the number 69 is evocative of yin and yang.”

    Painting “witch eyes” has become something of a meditative practice for Bond. “I sit here every day and drift off into the reverie of painting these eyes, which, you know, is great,” they say. “Since I can’t sing on stage right now, I’m happy I have these eyes to paint.”

     

     

    Art Is a Cabaret

    The event: “69 Witch Eyes,” a show of watercolors by Justin Vivian Bond, along with “Taking Stock,” work by Liz Collins

    The time: Opening Friday, Aug. 28, 6 to 9 p.m.; on view through Oct. 15

    The place: AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free

     

    MIXED MEDIA

    Megan Hinton Assembles a New Voice

    Creating art with a palette of different materials

    By

    Megan Hinton in her Wellfleet studio. (Photo Howard Karren)
    Megan Hinton in her Wellfleet studio. (Photo Howard Karren)

    In the fall of 2018, Wellfleet artist Megan Hinton entered Mills College in Oakland, Calif., to get an M.F.A., a fine art degree unlike the master’s she’d gotten years ago at New York University.

    “I wanted to get my M.F.A. for a few reasons,” Hinton says, at home in her airy Wellfleet studio, where she completed her courses virtually during the Covid shutdown and graduated. “I wanted to be qualified to teach, and I also wanted to overhaul my painting practice. I wanted to think about how I could be a painter in the 21st century. Not to pooh-pooh the landscape painting or figurative painting around here, but I wanted to find more of a voice through other materials. I had these flashes of assembling material and drawing around this material, using it as a way to push that flat restraint.”

    Flight (à la Milton Avery), by Megan Hinton, features a cut-out found oil painting on oil on panel. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
    Flight (à la Milton Avery), by Megan Hinton, features a cut-out found oil painting on oil on panel. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

    Those flashes have become manifest in a body of new work that Farm Projects in Wellfleet has given a show, “Signal,” opening Saturday and on view through Sept. 10. And as much as a departure as these assemblage paintings appear to be, there’s a definite thread to Hinton’s earlier work, even her paintings of “gatherings,” or masses of people, which were featured in a show at AMP Gallery in Provincetown in 2017. Into the mix of her mixed-media wall hangings are images of crowds of people inked in black and white.

    Also in the mix are works of found art and lumber, basketballs, portfolio cases, and images (and cut-outs) of birds and hands. Each piece is full of symbolic motifs with lots of personal meaning for Hinton, and the more one learns about her, the more personal they seem.

    Bird Case, by Megan Hinton, is a cut-out found painting with portfolio case with acrylic. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
    Bird Case, by Megan Hinton, is a cut-out found painting with portfolio case with acrylic. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

    “I was born and raised in Ohio, northern Ohio, near Lake Erie, in the ’80s and ’90s,” Hinton says. “I was an athlete, and I quit. I played basketball, softball. It was all about winning and succeeding, and it was very pressurized for me as a young person. I was pretty good at it. There were a lot of expectations of me. And there was a lot of queer repression going on. On the court you’re supposed to be butch and tough, and outside of court you’re supposed to wear dresses and be submissive.”

    By the time she got to Ohio Wesleyan University, she no longer had any interest in sports. “My mother was an interior designer,” Hinton says. “She went back to school to study design when I was 10. There were a lot of art history books around. I just immediately started looking at the stuff. To me, they were much more expansive than pop culture images on television. Then she took me to museums. My father, who was a coach and an athlete, wasn’t on that plane, but he never discouraged it. My parents never, ever discouraged me from being interested in art and going into art.”

    Ink Steamer, by Megan Hinton, presents a cut-out oil painting on reproduction of a George Baselitz ink drawing. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
    Ink Steamer, by Megan Hinton, presents a cut-out oil painting on reproduction of a George Baselitz ink drawing. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

    When Hinton was 19, her mother moved to Nantucket and opened a showroom. “She wanted to live in a beautiful place,” Hinton says. “The ocean, the stars, the quintessential seaside village. I started going there during my summer breaks, and I fell in love with the place. After college, I lived there for a year and worked at an art gallery.”

    She met a lesbian artist who knew Sally Nerber, of the fabled Cherry Stone Gallery in Wellfleet, and they came up to the Outer Cape to visit. Nerber’s guest room, where Hinton was staying, was adorned with works by Robert Motherwell and Jasper Johns. “I was coming out — it was 1998, ’99 — and we would go to Provincetown. This beautiful place had this long lineage. It’s queer, and there’s all this art.”

    She spent a few years looking around for the right artists’ community in which to settle down: first New York City; then Ottawa, Canada, for a relationship. And she ended up at the Cape.

    “Provincetown has been incredibly supportive of my work, and my work as an educator,” she says. “I’m not specifically one type of artist, and, in this community, I’ve been able to tap into all different channels.”

    Hinton’s assemblages reference the work of other artists, which is natural for her. “I feel like I’m talking to other painters when I’m working,” she says. “I like to put myself in that conversation.”

    And it’s reflected in the work. A portfolio case behind the cut-out of a bird. Another cut-out bird based on a Milton Avery painting. Paint that continues off the assemblage onto the wall. Add to that painted hands, alluding to creativity, painted basketballs, alluding to competition, and inked crowds, alluding to community. “I’ve started thinking of my work as components of materials being assembled rather than painted.”

    With these new materials, Hinton’s art more deeply expresses who she is and what she sees.

    Cinch, by Megan Hinton, is acrylic, oil, and photocopy of ink drawing on belt, basketball, and found lumber. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
    Cinch, by Megan Hinton, is acrylic, oil, and photocopy of ink drawing on belt, basketball, and found lumber. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

    Hanging by a Thread

    The event: “Signal,” a show of new assemblage work by Megan Hinton

    The time: Opening Saturday, Aug. 29, 4 to 7 p.m., through Sept. 10

    The place: Farm Projects, 355 Main St., Wellfleet (617-650-9800)

    The cost: Free

     

    Virtual Show of Phyllis Ewen’s ‘SandScapes’

    By

    Phyllis Ewen, whose work is also appearing at AMP Gallery in Provincetown, will have a virtual show of layered prints of Wellfleet beaches,“SandScapes,” at Off Main Gallery online. The exhibit will open with an artist’s talk and reception via Zoom on Saturday, August 22nd, at 6p.m. Get the link for these events and view the work at offmaingallery.com. The show will be on view through September 4th.

    GALLERIES

    Forrest Williams Paints Poetic Images of Gay Life

    He creates beautiful tableaux of yearning souls

    By

    “It sort of annoys me when people say, ‘I don’t want to be seen as a gay artist,’ ” Forrest Williams says. “There’s an incredible tradition of homoerotic art.”

    Williams is certainly right about that tradition, which extends back through the whole of art history. But queer identity is a more modern phenomenon. When a contemporary painter rejects the label “gay artist,” the rationale is usually that it’s somehow limiting or reductive. And for Williams, that is clearly not the case.

    Artist Forrest Williams in his Provincetown back yard. (Photo Howard Karren)

    Most of his oil paintings feature male figures, whether they’re nude or not, in a setting that is both realistic and subjective, in a painterly and decorative way. Many of his paintings are set in gay bars, and there’s erotic yearning in the gaze of artist and subject. But they’re less about sex than about loneliness and the lack of connection. In this way, Williams is like a gay Hopper.

    The work comes alive when experienced in person, as the artist’s play of texture and light reaches out beyond two dimensions. With a show of new work in a group exhibit at AMP Gallery in Provincetown, opening Friday, July 31, and on view through Aug. 25, that experience is available to all.

    Williams grew up in Burlington, N.C., “a small town right in the center of the state, nowheresville,” he says. “I had a nice childhood there. Mom and Dad had two kids, a brother and sister. Dad was a small-town doctor, a G.P. Classic Americana.” Young Forrest was artistic — “the teacher would let me decorate the bulletin board” — but had no idea that art would become his life’s work.

    “That person, to me, is like a separate person,” Williams says of his young self. “So much was tamped down. That muffled expression is a gay male thing, and it still informs my work. If you see two figures, they’re isolated.”

    He went to Davidson College, not far from his home in North Carolina. He made his big move in his junior year, which he spent abroad, at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His eyes began to open. “I remember my father saying, ‘Why would anybody go to a country where they’ve never been and don’t know anybody?’ I said, ‘That’s the point. You’re free to have an adventure and be closer to whoever you’re going to become.’ Growing up in North Carolina, I never went to any art museums. There are things like Titians in the Scottish National Gallery.”

    Williams studied literature in college and was involved with theater, and after graduating, he moved to New York City and interned at the storied Circle Rep theater company and cater-waitered. That’s when he came out.

    Night Bar is a 26-by-58-inch oil on panel by Forrest Williams, a fantasia of gay cruising and astronomy. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    “I met all these people who were fashion designers,” he says, “and I started working for them as an illustrator. That got me to a place where I was drawing a lot.”

    He decided to take art courses at local universities. “I went straight for a course in painting from the nude in oil,” Williams says. “It was great! I learned a little about oil paint. I wouldn’t have touched it, otherwise.” A professor suggested he get serious, and he did, earning an M.F.A. in painting at the New York Academy of Art, which has a traditionalist graduate program.

    He was 30 when he finished and “mature enough to be a little wiser about my time.” He continued freelance illustrating, painting on the side, and, through a connection, got into a show of New York artists at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Ore. At his first solo show there, Williams says, “Everything sold out. It hasn’t happened since.”

    His career was launched. He got picked up by a gallery in San Francisco, and once he was in Provincetown — he fell in love with the place as a visitor, and bought a home in the East End — he spent time at galleries and got to know Debbie Nadolney, who invited him to show at AMP.

    Flame Bar is a 29-by-49-inch oil on panel by Forrest Williams, part of his show at AMP Gallery opening Friday. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    “One of the most enjoyable things in life is looking at images,” Williams says. “If I walk into a room, the first thing I’ll look at is the picture of a person. We’re looking for ourselves. I feel like my work is about the self, but what does that mean? The self as apart from other selves and the environment.”

    A small graphic element Williams has observed somewhere can be the creative spark for one of his paintings. For example, the fiery wallpaper in the painting Flame Bar, in the AMP show, was inspired by a miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, a portrait surrounded by flames, that he saw in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (Williams loves Baroque-era art.) From the various elements of Flame Bar arise multiple points of view: those of the shirtless man with a drink, the woman in a painting on the wall, the absent person whose drink is on the counter, and the artist (and viewer) who observes head on.

    “The way I compose something is to get at the psychological underpinnings of the paintings,” Williams says. “The thing that the painting is about, and the way that it is made, have to be of a piece. That’s really a lifetime project for me as a painter.” And, as fate would have it, as a gay Provincetown artist.

    Raising the Bar

    The event: New work by Forrest Williams, part of a group show with Susan Bernstein, Karen Cappotto, Marc Van Cauwenbergh, Jackie Lipton, and Rick Wrigley

    The time: Friday, July 31, through Aug. 25; opening reception (4-6 people at a time) Friday, July 31, 6 to 9 p.m.

    The place: AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free

    PAINTING

    In Her Painting, Midge Battelle Thinks Outside the Box

    A life in art finds fulfillment in a palette knife

    By

    Midge Battelle
    Midge Battelle, unmasked. (Photo Susannah Elisabeth Fulcher)

    Painting is the sole focus of artist Midge Battelle’s work these days. Known as a photographer and respected curator in the Provincetown art scene, she considers her current artwork the culmination of all else she has done.

    “If you put my photographs next to my paintings,” she says, “there’s an aesthetic that was always there. While my photographs were black and white, they were about composition and light.”

    Battelle’s paintings are similarly “about balance, about harmony and lightness,” she says. Part of a group show at AMP Gallery in Provincetown that runs through July 29, they draw inspiration from the sky and the ocean, philosophy, poetry, and the spirituality of medieval chants.

    Thoroughly embedded in Provincetown’s art scene, Battelle’s connection to the town runs deep. She visited for the first time in 1966, when she was 20. “Worcester, where I come from, is an old, post-mill-town city,” she says. “I always knew that I was gay, and I never could fit in. I was anxious all the time. Then I came here, and I felt my whole body relax. It was that remarkable.”

    Battelle returned the following spring, just before her 21st birthday. “Provincetown was dead,” she says, “but I ended up staying. This place has saved me so many times, there’s no place like it. I’ve lived in other places over the years, but I always came back here. Now,” she adds, “I’m not leaving until it’s my time to go.”

    When it comes to art, Battelle says that she was “a late bloomer.” After working for many years as a cook and going through recovery — “I had done the whole ’60s thing, alcohol and drugs” — Battelle decided to enroll in art school. “I was 38 years old. After high school, I never wanted to go to school again, it was such a traumatic experience,” she says. “But I took to it and excelled.”

    Midge Battelle's painting Easter Sunday, 1953
    Battelle titled this 36-by-36-inch oil on canvas Easter Sunday, 1953. “The phrase kept popping into my head while I was painting,” she says. “In 1953, I was seven. My dad had just died that February, so the title was perfect, because it was like a folk tale from somewhere in my history.” (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    Battelle spent three years at Greenfield Community College in western Mass., where she took classes in color theory, design, photography, printmaking, and art history. She followed that with studies at MassArt in Boston, focusing mainly on photography. “Coming from a very working-class background,” she says, “I decided to study a practical subject so that I could go out in the world and get a job, which never happened.” She laughs. “Throughout this time,” she continues, painting was “all I wanted to do, all I wanted to learn.”

    A year after she returned to Provincetown, she was working as a cook when the painter Hilda Neily, who had been Battelle’s friend since 1968, suggested a different path. “One day Hilda said to me: ‘I want to start a gallery. Will you do it with me?’ I didn’t hesitate,” she says. “I replied yes and never went back to cooking.”

    Neily says she couldn’t have opened her gallery without Battelle: “Midge has been there for me all our lives. There’s a lot I couldn’t have done without her.”

    Through her work with Neily and other gallery projects, including at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Battelle discovered her talent for curating while at the same time working as a photographer.

    “I did a lot of things in the arts as well as being an artist,” she says. “Then, I finally decided I would give myself permission to paint. I moved all else out of my studio — printmaking, photography, everything that I was doing — and that was it. I have not looked back. I’m older. I just turned 75 in May, so I’ve got maybe 10 more good ones. I figured it’s time to really focus.”

    The Poet's Chamber by Midge Battelle
    “Often, I am inspired by a phrase, or a line of poetry,” Midge Battelle says of her painting The Poet’s Chamber, currently on display at AMP Gallery. This one is a homage “to the collective of all poets.” (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    Battelle’s first painting, now in a friend’s collection, happened almost by accident. “I started by drawing a grid on paper with a graphite pencil,” she says. “Then, I used thinned gesso over the lines to soften the hard black. I stared at the grid, and I liked it, but I didn’t know what it was about.”

    Having seen this grid, Battelle’s friend, the artist Pasquale Natale, brought a 36-by-36-inch double-wide piece of plywood to her studio. “He could barely lift it,” she says, laughing. “He said, ‘Paint this.’ So, I did. I put Hildegard of Bingen’s chants on, and the energy was like poetry, like a state of high consciousness that gets through the muck.”

    Painting has become for Battelle a meditative, spiritual practice. Drawing from Stoic philosophy, she defines her grids as Logos and the colors and movement within them as Eros. She will take a long time, often as long as a year, to complete each work. “I work with a teeny tiny palette knife,” she says. “So, if you look closely, you’ll see little feathery strokes in the squares.”

    Battelle’s work as a curator has honed her eye in the art of placing pieces side by side, a skill that she now uses to consider each square as it relates to the others within each grid. As she mixes colors on pans and plates — her preferred palette — deciding carefully which hues to add, Battelle tries to “keep my ego out of the way and follow an intuitive feeling.

    “The kind of painting I do is not everybody’s slice of pie,” she adds. “But there’s this group of people who really get it, and I’m so grateful.”

    Square Peg

    The event: Midge Battelle’s paintings, on view as part of a group show with Diane Ayott, Barbara E. Cohen, Ann Corrsin, Phyllis Ewen, Kathi Robinson Frank, Nancy Rubens, and Judith Trepp

    The time: Through July 29

    The place: AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free

    Arts Briefs and Listings

    Arts Briefs for July 9 through July 15

    By

    Singing by Nancy Rubens
    Singing is a work in mixed media by Nancy Rubens, inspired by her time in India, at AMP Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Nancy Rubens)
    Farm Stand by Barbara Cohen
    Barbara E. Cohen’s mixed media Farm Stand, part of the new group show at AMP Gallery, came out of her coronavirus lockdown experience. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    Show of Eight Women Artists at AMP

    A group show of eight artists — Dianne Ayott, Midge Battelle, Barbara E. Cohen, Anne Corrsin, Phyllis Ewen, Kathi Robinson Frank, Nancy Rubens, and Judith Trepp — will have an opening reception on Friday, July 10, from 6 to 8 p.m. at AMP Gallery at 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown.

    Only four to six people wearing masks will be allowed in the gallery at one time. The exhibit is on view through July 29.

    Audra McDonald
    Catch Audra McDonald live online as part of the Seth Concert Series. (Photo Allison Michael Orenstein)

     

    Audra McDonald Meets Up With Seth Rudetsky

    Broadway legend Audra McDonald, a six-time Tony winner (for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, A Raisin in the Sun, Ragtime, Master Class, and Carousel) and world-class opera singer, will join host and accompanist Seth Rudetsky for a live virtual concert and conversation on Sunday, July 12, at 8 p.m. at thesethconcertseries.com. Tickets are $25.

     

     

     

    Seaside by Paul Ballmer
    Seaside is a 40-by-40-inch oil on canvas by Paul Ballmer. (Photo courtesy Kobalt Gallery)

    Paul Ballmer Shows ‘Night and Day’ at Kobalt

    South Africa-born, Australia-trained, Connecticut-based artist Paul Ballmer will have a show of new work, “Night and Day,” at Kobalt Gallery at 366 Commercial St. in Provincetown, opening Friday, July 10, and on view through July 23.

    Ballmer’s still lifes and skyline paintings have been influenced by a range of traditions, from impressionism and expressionism to tribal art.

    The gallery is open daily except Wednesday from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment at 617-893-0110.

     

    Ebb by James Frederick
    Ebb is a 16-by-16-inch acrylic on canvas by James Frederick. (Photo courtesy Frederick Studio Provincetown)

    James Frederick Has a Chill Virtual Opening

    James Frederick will host a virtual opening of his new show, “Vivid Tranquility III,” online at Frederick Studio Provincetown’s Facebook page on Friday, July 10, at 7 p.m. The exhibit is Frederick’s third installment of abstract paintings inspired by the calmness of Cape Cod.

    The gallery, on the first floor of Whaler’s Wharf at 237 Commercial St., is open Fridays through Mondays from noon to 5 p.m., by appointment (508-247-7900), or by chance.

     

    Shimmer by Helen Grimm
    Shimmer is a 12-by-12-inch oil on canvas by Helen Grimm at the Four Eleven Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Four Eleven Gallery)

    Helen Grimm Returns to Four Eleven

    “Shimmer,” an exhibit of new paintings by Helen Grimm, will be at Four Eleven Gallery at 411 Commercial St. in Provincetown. It’s Grimm’s tenth annual show at the gallery, opening Friday, July 10, and remaining on view through July 23.

    Grimm, in the gallery announcement, says that “shells, the bones of the sea, are still my muse, though in 2020, I am increasingly charmed by water and the play of light across its surface. That shimmer and sparkle has stirred me beyond the edge of representation, and I find I am plunging more deeply into the abstract.”

    The gallery is open Thursday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment, or online at fourelevengallery.com.

    Varla Jean
    Varla Jean gets down to business, with “Superspreader,” at the Crown & Anchor poolside. (Photo Public Theater)

    Crown & Anchor Offers Poolside Entertainment

    The Crown & Anchor poolside is opening, with real live performers appearing outdoors.

    First up, from Thursday, July 9, through Sept. 12, on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9 p.m., the stage and screen sensation Varla Jean Merman stars in “Superspreader,” her latest drag comedy act. Tickets are $39-$49.

    Starting Monday, July 13, the drag revue Illusions will perform “Time Machine” Saturdays and Mondays at 7 p.m. Tickets are $34.

    Starting Wednesday, July 15, catch “The Judy and Varla Show,” featuring comedian Judy Gold and drag diva Varla Jean, with Gerald Goode on the piano. It was conceived by Mark Cortale. Tickets are $39-$49.

    Tickets can be purchased online at onlyatthecrown.com.

    Armando Pedroso portrait
    A portrait by Armando Pedroso, part of a two-person exhibit at William Scott Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy William Scott Gallery)

    New Work by Armando Pedroso and Michael Costello

    From Friday, July 10, through July 22, the William Scott Gallery at 439 Commercial St. in Provincetown will have shows of work by Armando Pedroso, “Portraits of My Imagination,” and Michael Costello, “Flora and Fauna.”

    Pedroso’s new work explores the abstraction of the figure in playful geometric versions of imaginary portraits.

    The Boston-based Costello has been exhibiting his work in Provincetown for over 30 years. His show at William Scott is a collection of nudes and florals.

     

    Shores by Bert Yarborough
    Shores is an acrylic, gouache, ink, and watercolor on canvas by Bert Yarborough. (Photo courtesy Farm Projects)

    Bert Yarborough Installed at Farm

    The work of artist Bert Yarborough will be on exhibit at Farm Projects at 355 Main St. in Wellfleet through July 19.

    The show, “Time Being/s,” presents printed matter, a sculptural installation, paintings, and drawings that, according to a Fine Arts Work Center announcement, “document both human thought and spiritual application.” (Yarborough was a FAWC fellow from 1976 to 1978.) The installation Materia Prima: Signs and Portents presents a collection of painted and found objects in “an attempt to transform matter into spirit.”

    Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment. Social distancing and masks are required. Private viewings with the artist are offered by appointment for groups of six or fewer. For information, call 617-650-9800.

     

     

     

    Arts Briefs and Listings

    Arts Briefs for June 25 through July 1

    By

    Doorway, a 48-by-32-inch oil on panel by Forrest Williams. (Photo courtesy AMP Gallery)

    AMP Gallery Reopens With Group Show

    AMP Gallery is opening its first show of the season with a reception on Friday, June 26, 6 to 8 p.m. at 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown. Four to six masked people will be allowed in at a time.

    The exhibit features a new series of Moo Moo World prints by Jay Critchley, and work by Karen Cappotto, Anne Corsin, Barbara Hadden, Jackie Lipton, Zammy Migdal, Lori Swartz, Forrest Williams, and Rick Wrigley.

     

     

     

     

     

    Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Jane Paradise

    Staring, Provincetown, 2019 by Jane Paradise. (Photo courtesy Jane Paradise)

    Provincetown photographer Jane Paradise has received an honorable mention for her street photography at the 15th edition of the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards.

    Elizabeth Avedon was the juror. A total of 910 photographers from 63 countries submitted nearly 7,000 works for consideration. The Julia Margaret Cameron Award is meant to further the careers of women photographers. Work will be exhibited online and at a biennial in Barcelona.

     

    David Drake, artistic director of the Provincetown Theater. (Photo Tom Cover)

    David Drake’s The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me

    The Provincetown Theater will live-stream free of charge David Drake’s The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, a 20th-anniversary performance of the play from 2013 that was a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, on Sunday, June 28, at 7 p.m. To watch, go to provincetowntheater.org or the theater’s YouTube channel.

    The long-running and celebrated play was written by and starred Drake in a series of seven monologues. The benefit performance was adapted for 12 openly gay actors, including BD Wong, Anthony Rapp, Andre de Shields, Robin de Jesus, and Aaron Tone, and was directed by Robert La Fosse.

     

    An exhibit of new work is on view at Longstreet Gallery in Eastham. (Photo Longstreet Gallery)

    Longstreet Gallery Kicks Off With Two New Shows

    Check out the new Longstreet Gallery, at 4730B Route 6 in Eastham, opening Saturday, June 27, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. with two new exhibits: “No Vacancy,” by Chris Kelly; and “Float,” by Keith MacLelland.

    Kelly, a graphic designer at the Independent, plays conceptually with branding in his artwork. MacLelland uses found material collages in his mixed-media pieces.

     

     

    Lupri stands beside Daemons of Inner Primordial Mirror. (Photo Matthias Lupri)

    Matthias Lupri at Gallery 444

    Boston-based painter Matthias Lupri has a solo show at Gallery 444 in Provincetown with an opening reception on Friday, June 26, at 6 p.m. at 444 Commercial St. The work is on view through June 30.

    Lupri, who grew up in Alberta, Canada, performed widely as a jazz vibraphonist, training with Gary Burton, before discovering the visual arts. His large abstract oil paintings, achieved using a palette knife, have a musical quality to them — their geometric shapes dance across the canvas.

     

     

     

     

    Wellfleet Coast, an oil on panel by Pete Hocking. (Photo courtesy Four Eleven Gallery)

    ‘Vagrant Wildness’ at Four Eleven Gallery

    Four Eleven Gallery will present a show of new landscape paintings by Pete Hocking, “Vagrant Wildness,” from Friday, June 26, through July 2 at 411 Commercial St. in Provincetown.

    Artwork can be viewed by appointment or online at fourelevengallery.com.

    Hocking’s new series investigates and communicates a love of the wild Cape Cod landscape with people who may not be able to visit this summer because of Covid-19.

     

    Author Steven Rowley. (Photo courtesy East End Books Ptown)

    Rowley Reads of Jackie O.

    Steven Rowley, the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, will give a virtual reading of his latest book, The Editor, via East End Books Ptown on Wednesday, July 1, at 5 p.m. Pre-registration for this free Zoom event is required; visit eastendbooks.com to get the link. Signed copies can be purchased online.

    Rowley’s new novel tells the story of James Smale, a writer in 1990s New York City who sells his book to a publishing house that offers him none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as his editor.

     

    A painting by John Dowd on view at William Scott Gallery. (Photo courtesy William Scott Gallery)

    John Dowd and Daphne Confar at William Scott Gallery 

    From Friday, June 26, through July 8, the William Scott Gallery at 439 Commercial St. in Provincetown is presenting a show of new work by John Dowd and Daphne Confar.

    The exhibit will be viewable virtually, or you can schedule an in-person appointment at williamscottgallery.com.

    Dowd’s work, influenced by German romanticism, depicts isolated landscapes with an emphasis on color and luminosity. Confar’s show, “Objects of My Affection,” is a series of intricately painted houseplants on top of sheet music, evocative of the work of John James Audubon.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    ART SEEN

    Strolling by Scrolling: Provincetown Galleries Launch Website

    Ptown Gallery Stroll is their response to a potentially dismal season

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — As of this week, art lovers can stroll past many of Provincetown’s galleries without getting up from their living room couches.

    A new website, ptowngallerystroll.com, was launched by a coalition of 28 galleries that are working together to plan for the future of America’s oldest continuous art colony. The site is named for the beloved Friday night event that was popular before the days of Covid.

    The idea first came out of a board meeting of the nonprofit Provincetown Commons, headed by Jill Stauffer, whose mission is to buoy the Provincetown arts community through shared workspaces and economic initiatives. The Stroll group started with five galleries: Four Eleven, Stewart Clifford, Adam Peck, On Center, and Rice Polak. Those reached out to others.

    Now the group has three working committees: safety, website, and marketing. Jill Rothenberg-Simmons of On Center, who is head of the safety committee, said its members are developing guidelines for capacity, crowd control, sanitization, and mask-wearing. They are planning bulk purchases of disinfectant, hand sanitizer, gloves, and masks. Because “every gallery is different” in terms of size and layout, it will be up to the individual galleries to determine exactly how many people they allow in at one time. Debbie Nadolney of AMP Gallery has designed a sign for the galleries to put up showing safety rules.

    As retail businesses, galleries fall under phase two of Gov. Baker’s plan for restarting the economy. The earliest they may be able to reopen is June 8, and they will need to heed government protocols.

    Gallery owner Greg Salvatori designed the group’s logo and website. The landing page is a “virtual stroll,” updated every Friday night with photographs and videos of artwork for sale by the participating galleries. Another part of the website facilitates in-person visits, listing galleries and their contact information.

    Mike Carroll of the Schoolhouse Gallery explains that “the website committee deals with the nuts and bolts, while the marketing committee is the bigger picture.” The Ptown Gallery Stroll will have a strong presence on social media and has a small budget for advertising.

    “We want to communicate that we are still in business,” Stewart Clifford, co-chair of the marketing committee, said, “leveraging our collective voice to build a virtual audience.”

    As with anything, there is a learning curve, and in some ways an age gap, in terms of the gallery owners’ comfort with online platforms. Liz Carney of Four Eleven Gallery has proposed hiring high school interns to help out, who in turn would gain experience in arts administration.

    Why did it take a pandemic to create this kind of collaboration among galleries?

    “In my 30 years of owning a gallery,” said Marla Rice of Rice Polak, “we have tried and failed to form this type of thing many times before.” She suggests that the group’s success this time is related to the Commons taking the lead.

    Carroll said that, while there have been some previous collaborations, including an effort around 20 years ago called Campus Provincetown, this new group formed “because there is a real threat of there not being a season this year.”

    Some gallerists remarked that the Ptown Gallery Stroll has introduced them to galleries outside their bubbles. “We never get to meet because during the summer we are stuck in our boxes,” said Salvatori.

    While joining a mutually beneficial collective sounds like a “no brainer,” in the words of Marla Rice, there are a handful of Provincetown galleries that are not involved. The $100 entry fee is unlikely to be much of a deterrent.

    James Balla of Albert Merola Gallery wrote in an email to the Independent that, while he initially participated in the group, he decided to leave because “we didn’t feel like we were adding anything to the stated goals, and did not feel in agreement with ideas about PPE, and special signage or common hours.” While he is making his own decisions about safety and reopening, he is staying in touch with the other galleries.

    Regarding the art market this summer, Marla Rice said, “I am extremely worried, but then again, I am always a worrier.” Greg Salvatori, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about online sales and the international art market: “Until last year, my online sales were less than 10 percent. The Covid situation changed and refined my understanding of this. I have actually had better April and May sales this year than last year.”

    Pete Hocking of Four Eleven Gallery, who is vice chair of the Commons, said that 30 percent of his sales are online. It is also possible that, as people spend more time in their homes and less money on travel, restaurants, or clothes, the art market may not suffer too much this summer.

    Many are confident about the group’s future and believe it to be a valuable model for other types of arts organizations. Jill Rothenberg-Simmons said, “Hopefully, this is a group that will survive the pandemic.”

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