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    FRAMING THE NEWS

    Mira Schor and the Art of Misrepresentation

    In a FAWC talk, she explores the role of politics in artists’ work

    By

    “This is not political,” the painting proclaims. Its flowing script, on an orangey background, is surrounded by a rectangular black frame, anchored by a vertical post. At first glance, the piece, by artist Mira Schor, could be a protest rally sign. But think again: the “not” can be read ironically, echoing surrealist René Magritte’s famous line of text, under the image of a pipe: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

    Mira Schor returns home from the Provincetown farmers market in 2016. (Photo Susan Rand Brown)

    To Schor, everything is political. And it’s fitting that the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown is using the painting to promote her upcoming virtual conversation, “Art and Activism,” with painter Anoka Faruqee, next Thursday, April 29. For both Schor and Faruqee, the role of artists in the political arena is an essential subject for discussion.

    Schor is a scholar, painter, and essayist whose books — such as Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life — and artwork have been honored with numerous awards. In 2017, she was elected to the National Academy of Design. Beginning in the ’70s, when she was a graduate student at Cal Arts, the history of art and politics, especially feminist art, has been an essential part of her artistic practice. Her work has become more public and politicized since Trump’s inauguration in 2017.

    Schor and Faruqee met at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine two decades ago. Schor was the “teacher” and Faruqee, a recent M.F.A. graduate, was the “student” — Schor, interviewed virtually by the Independent, makes air quotes with her fingers around those words. “I followed her work as soon as she began to exhibit,” the older artist says.

    The two reconnected when Schor, an associate professor at Parsons School of Design, saw Faruqee’s “Walk the Walk” fundraising project (@walktwalk2020) on social media. Faruqee, now director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at Yale, targeted maneuvers aimed at voter suppression.

    This painting by Mira Schor was part of the exhibit “Tipping Point” at Lyles & King in New York City. (Photo courtesy Lyles & King)

    “Our conversation will be about how politics enters her more abstract artwork, and I will present my own artwork over the last four years — and work that I don’t actually consider art, such as New York Times ‘interventions,’ ” Schor says. “I am interested in exploring what it means to be a political artist. Anoka and I have different paths, but I think there are similarities.”

    Schor’s “interventions” grew out of her frustration with the way the Times reported momentous events. A lifelong New Yorker and daily reader of the paper, she started annotating its front page. “I corrected and altered their coverage,” she says. “Sometimes, it was as simple as taking a marker and circling the words they were using. Other times, it got pretty elaborate.”

    During the 2020 Republican convention, a page she posted online on Trump’s violation of the Hatch Act went viral. “Probably 12,000 people saw it — people who did not know who I was,” Schor says.

    A gallery in Berlin, gathering work for a show titled “This Is America,” is exhibiting some of these interventions. Schor’s Manhattan gallery, Lyles & King, will show them alongside recent figurative paintings. Under consideration is a soft-cover book the size of the Times with several dozen of her best word-rants.

    “I don’t want to sell them,” Schor says. “They are part of a historical record I want to keep intact.” She hopes, at some point, to have them become part of the archives of the New York Public Library or New-York Historical Society.

    Archiving her work, as well as the artwork of her parents, has been much on her mind lately. That’s because a student researcher associated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland contacted her about a podcast on women who went there, including Schor’s mother, Reisa. Schor shared biographical material on Reisa, and on her father, Ilya — her parents, both artists, met as students at the academy in the 1930s.

    This “intervention” by Mira Schor, a marked up front page of the New York Times, went viral on social media. (Photo courtesy Mira Schor)

    Fleeing war-torn, Nazi-dominated Europe in 1940, the couple moved to New York, where Ilya, a painter and engraver, created artwork in the spirit of Eastern European Jewish culture. When he died, at age 57, Reisa, with two young girls to care for, “picked up his tools,” Schor says. “She had been an abstract painter, and quickly learned to make objects in her own style — not as refined as his, but more muscular, more sculptural, and, at the time, very contemporary.

    “Her artwork, her jewelry, and the satisfaction she got from it was a major element in our lives,” Schor continues. “It gave her the confidence to buy a house in Provincetown. She would bring her tools from New York and spend long seasons in town.” The compact East End home that Reisa bought in the early ’70s has been in the family ever since.

    Provincetown has been a source of inspiration for Schor. As a young child, she says, “I loved the beach, I played with the sand. You know how the sand in Provincetown goes from tan, to rust, to black? These are the colors I use in my work. The landscape, those skate egg cases, gave me forms that entered into my work.”

    When she comes to Provincetown, “spending two months, on average, it’s like I push a reset button,” Schor says. “Over 50-plus years, painting in Provincetown probably accounts for more than 50 percent of my artwork.”

    While she’s here, she also goes for daily swims in the bay, gathers vegetables and flowers at the Ryder Street farmers market, and sees old friends. But perhaps most of all, she lives surrounded by objects from her family’s history, and embodies her parents’ legacy of art and activism.

    In These Times

    The event: “Art and Activism,” a conversation between Mira Schor and Anoka Faruqee

    The time: Thursday, April 29, 6 to 7:30 p.m.

    The place: Virtual presentation of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; register at fawc.org

    The cost: $25 minimum donation

    ARTISTS

    Jane Lincoln Has Had ‘Enough’ of Gun Violence

    Her paper creations are powerful and visceral

    By

    “Enough is enough, and it’s time for us to take action,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse after the March 22 shooting at the King Soopers grocery in Boulder, Colo.

    At the time, Jane Lincoln was preparing for her show, “Enough,” at the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Hearing Neguse’s words was eerie, she says — almost like déjà vu. The yearning for action was why she embarked on the project in the first place.

    A detail from SunTrust Bank, the first work that Lincoln made in her “Enough” series. (Photo courtesy Jane Lincoln)

    “Enough,” with 43 mixed media works, is on view from Thursday, April 8 through May 30. Originally, it included 41 pieces. But after the March shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, Lincoln had to make two more.

    Lincoln grew up in New Hampshire. Her father was a nuclear physicist with NASA, and her mother was a librarian. In the ’80s, she studied color theory with Henry Hensche in Provincetown. From 2009 to 2011, she got a master’s degree through a combined MassArt/Fine Arts Work Center program (that has since been discontinued), studying with Jim Peters in Provincetown. Her thesis was about the grid.

    “Grids were the first totally abstract art. They’re everywhere,” Lincoln says. Their structure fascinates her.

    Lincoln was originally a representational painter. “Early on, I was tagged as the ‘cranberry queen,’ ” she says, because her favorite subjects were cranberry bogs. But a series of “personal puzzles” she created — based on Sudoku grids — drew her into the abstract. Another series, called “color zones,” is made of painted paper on archival boards with fluorescent paper on the back, creating a sort of halo effect. She also makes abstract white line wood block prints that evoke Provincetown for her — a place she loves.

    In her East Falmouth studio, Lincoln explains the creative process for “Enough.” She started making the pieces in January 2019. She’d been working with punctured paper for the show “Pushing Forward,” at the Kingston Gallery in Boston. Then, the SunTrust Bank shooting in Sebring, Fla. happened. She realized she was making what looked like bullet holes.

    Pulse Nightclub is a 20-by-12-inch work by Jane Lincoln. The shooting happened in Orlando, Fla. on Sunday, June 12, 2016. 49 people were killed, 53 injured. (Photo courtesy Jane Lincoln)

    She made SunTrust Bank first — it’s 8 by 12 inches, with five angry orange holes. Since then, she has made Sandy Hook, Pulse Nightclub, Virginia Tech, and others.

    For the background, she uses black pastel paper, which is thin enough to puncture, but thick enough to hold up. On two sheets of this, she glues smaller pieces of colored paper in mirror images of one another. Then, using a hammer and large nail, she pokes holes in one of the sheets. It’s done on a grid. “As you can see, I like grids,” she says.

    The black paper rips and frays to reveal the color underneath in a way that’s visceral. Indeed, there is something almost violent about Lincoln’s artistic process. It’s a real contrast to her sweet, friendly demeanor. When being photographed for this article, she insists on not smiling too much, reflecting the seriousness of the subject.

    Making the pieces requires obsessive information gathering, she says. All of them are 12 inches wide, because “they should all have the same attention,” she says. The height depends on the number of victims. On the labels, in addition to the name of the shooting, the place, and the victims, she includes the day of the week. That detail is important to her.

    King Soopers, for example, consists of 10 holes in a black background. The holes are red, yellow, and white — the colors of the King Soopers logo. “The composition goes with the sequence of events,” she says. Two men were killed outside, represented by two yellow holes. Then a police officer was killed, represented by a white hole. Inside, seven people were killed, represented by red holes for women, yellow holes for men.

    Massage Parlors consists of eight holes, seven that are hot pink to represent the women who were killed in Atlanta, and one that’s lilac to represent the man who was shot dead with them.

    One could argue that there is something dehumanizing about representing human lives lost by holes in paper. But maybe that’s the point. The total number of victims defies empathetic comprehension. The smallness of the works — something that doesn’t come across in photographs — evokes the fragility of human life.

    As an exhibit, “Enough” is indeed powerful, but its strength is in its implied limitations: the numbers must stop growing.

    Bullet Points

    Jane Lincoln in her East Falmouth studio. (Photo Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    The event: “Enough,” an exhibit of artwork by Jane Lincoln

    The time: April 8 through May 30; reception Thursday, April 15, 4 to 7 p.m.; hours, Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.

    The place: Cape Cod Museum of Art, 60 Hope Lane, Dennis

    The cost: Reception, free; regular hours, $10; seniors 62+, $8; teens and students 19+, $7; members and children 12 or under, free

    SEASCAPES

    With an Eye on the Surf, Colin McGuire Paints Provincetown

    A local artist contemplates the Outer Cape’s past and present

    By

    “The ocean is both beautiful and terrifying to me,” says Colin McGuire. An emerging local artist, he finds “limitless inspiration” in the seascapes of the Outer Cape and their “variety of moods and effects of surface and light.”

    McGuire’s Reflecting Light, a 9-by-12-inch oil on cradled wood panel, is one of his recent small-scale works, done in a single session. (Photo courtesy Colin McGuire)

    McGuire has recently been focusing on small works on cradled wood panels (panels backed and raised by a frame). Using bold colors and broad, expressive palette-knife strokes, he seeks to capture the energy of the waters surrounding Provincetown.

    “I’m trying to say more with less, allowing texture to speak,” McGuire says. “There are so many facets to explore: the waves, currents, winds, clouds, atmosphere — all of which are fleeting. There is something about the pure vastness and depth of the ocean in relation to our human existence that presents an existential crisis, which I welcome and seek in my work. I find that in their small scale, my paintings are best capable of capturing a glimpse of this.”

    He’s the son of painter Michael McGuire, who owns an eponymous gallery in Provincetown, where Colin shows his work. Though he was born in Boston, his family relocated to the highlands of North Truro when he was in elementary school, to be closer to Provincetown’s art scene. “I feel lucky that I saw the beach and the ocean with fresh eyes when I moved out here as a young kid,” McGuire says. “I was enchanted — I fell in love.”

    Although he liked to draw, McGuire spent his youth surfing and didn’t begin painting until his late teens, when he picked up a brush during a trip to Mexico with his father.

    “My first paintings were of waves, because I had drawn them obsessively my whole life,” he says. “Painting nonstop for a month, I felt the same kind of joy I did surfing.”

    Many of McGuire’s paintings examine the ever-changing moods of the ocean, such as Entering the Sea, a 16-by-20-inch oil on panel. (Photo courtesy Colin McGuire)

    Surfing still informs his work as a painter. “I consider my experiences as a surfer similar to the studies of J.M.W. Turner, who, I believe, tied himself to a ship’s mast in a storm to better understand the force of the sea,” McGuire says. “I remember one day surfing in the winter in Truro, looking back to shore once I had made it through the massive breakers. I realized how far I had drifted, and it was clear to me that I was not in control of the situation — the ocean was.”

    After taking his first degree at Montserrat College of Art, where he now teaches, McGuire went for an M.F.A. at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design. During his studies there from 2016 to 2018, he further explored the Provincetown environment.

    “I always felt a particular connection to the town as an old colony fishing village,” he says. “Much of the history of our country began there.”

    McGuire’s series of “Settlers” paintings, done while in graduate school, contemplates the experience of the Pilgrims upon their arrival here. “I imagined what it must have been like to sail into the wild unknown: the fear, the doubt, the danger, the excitement,” he says. “Many of the scenes I painted show groups gathered in a circle around a central glow — a place to shelter in camaraderie, to come together to share ideas.”

    Migration, a 24-by-24-inch oil on panel, is part of McGuire’s “Settlers” series, re-imagining Provincetown 400 years ago. (Photo courtesy Colin McGuire)

    The lives that were uprooted and destroyed by the settlers’ arrival are equally important to McGuire. “I tried to imagine this happening today — an alien civilization appearing on the horizon with plans to destroy our way of life,” he says. “These paintings show groups gathered together, migrating to safety, or distantly observing another group.”

    The “Settlers” paintings are a marked shift from his usual vibrant palette. “I was questioning making a living from painting a place that was once natural and untouched, wondering what my role was and whether I could feel good about it,” McGuire says. “I would start by painting a bright scene, which I then covered over entirely in black. Then I would use a reductive process to find the painting within.”

    McGuire’s recent work, an ongoing “Serenity” series, reflects the deeper connection he now feels to the Outer Cape he has loved since his childhood. It embraces the tranquility of the ocean, and, with it, a lightness he needs at this time and hopes to pass on to his viewer.

    Truro artist Colin McGuire is inspired by the beaches of his Outer Cape home. (Photo Susannah Elisabeth Fulcher)

    Many of his new works are painted in a single session, hoping to capture the energy of the moment. “I am bold in my application,” he says. “I take risks in the studio that present challenges I try to resolve that day. My paintings have become much more minimalist, just this transition of color across the canvas. What I am trying to convey is a state of being.”

    McGuire enjoys teaching and is offering two-hour online evening classes this winter on his website. He also hosts single-session virtual workshops via Wellfleet Preservation Hall, including one on Tuesday, Dec. 8.

    “I speak to approaching a painting that is not coming out as you intended and reacting to that,” McGuire says. “You have to learn not to worry, but instead trust that that will be a good thing.”

    Different Strokes

    The event: “Paint Night: A Virtual Workshop With Colin McGuire,” presented by Wellfleet Preservation Hall

    The time: Tuesday, Dec. 8, 6 to 8 p.m. (single session)

    The place: wellfleetpreservationhall.org

    The cost: $25 per person, not including materials

    EXHIBITIONS

    Mimi Gross Reframes the Mayflower Story

    Her PAAM installation depicts the Pilgrims’ arrival from the Wampanoags’ point of view

    By

    “It’s historical; it’s interactive; you walk through it,” Mimi Gross says. She is describing how museum-goers will experience The Arrival, 1620, her site-specific installation that is opening on Friday, Oct. 2, at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Theatrical staging leads viewers through scenes representing the first contact between the indigenous people who farmed the Outer Cape for eons and the Pilgrims who were escaping religious persecution — and carrying muskets.

    Mimi Gross stands with some of the plywood figures of Wampanoag women that will be part of her PAAM installation, Arrival, 1620. (Photo Breon Dunigan)

    “You’ll walk through the gallery, passing the figures, and then, there’s the Mayflower, crashing from the wall,” Gross says. “The Wampanoag people were planting, cooking, and fishing, standing around, when, suddenly — this shock.”

    Gross, the daughter of sculptor Chaim Gross and Renee Gross, was a young girl when her family bought their hilltop home in Provincetown’s West End, which was built by painter George Elmer Browne, founder of the West End School of Art. Its spacious, windowed studio is now Mimi’s seasonal retreat. She spoke as the numerous life-size figures that she first sketched, made into maquettes, then shaped in plywood, and painted in her exuberant style were readied for their installation at PAAM, where Gross first exhibited a painting at age 16.

    A precocious artist while still a student at Bard College, Gross was invited to show in Provincetown’s legendary Sun Gallery, a mecca for painters working in a loosely gestural, figurative style. Considered risqué in its time, the Sun was censored by local officials for the nudes it included in an exhibit.

    “I loved the people who showed there,” Gross says. “I was just a teenager, and happy to be participating. It was the first gallery where I showed, in Provincetown or anywhere.” Red Grooms also showed at the Sun. They married, traveled together, and have a daughter, Saskia Grooms. Collaborators from 1960 to 1976, Gross and Grooms famously created Ruckus Manhattan, a circus-like installation dramatizing the hubbub of the times.

    A Wampanoag fighter created for Mimi Gross’s installation, Arrival, 1620. (Photo courtesy Mimi Gross)

    At age 80, Gross has a résumé that lists filmmaker, sculptor, painter, and educator, as well as set and costume designer for the Douglas Dunn dance troupe, for which Gross continues to explore movement and rhythm. She also creates low-relief group portraits that read as dimensional paintings. The Arrival, she says, is her most technically advanced, multi-dimensional piece.

    Gross is also a habitué of Herring Cove Beach. For as long as she can recall, she sketched there, with her father and with friends. “I recently did a lot of dimensional pieces, made of wood, based on those beach sketches,” she says. They were shown at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the exhibit “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland.” Gross arranged her almost two dozen multi-racial figures in congenial groups that filled 36 square feet.

    “Pieces for The Arrival are more sculptural,” Gross says. Some figures are five feet high and four feet wide. Attached to a base, they appear even taller and are painted on both sides. “These are a lot more varied than the work I did for the Coney Island show,” she says.

    The journey leading to The Arrival began three years ago, when Breon Dunigan, sculptor and member of PAAM’s exhibition committee, met Gross at Herring Cove. “It was late September, and Mimi was swimming,” Dunigan says. “I knew who she was. We have friends in common, but I didn’t really know her work.” Gross invited Dunigan to visit her studio that very afternoon.

    Dunigan was immediately smitten. She proposed a show of Gross’s work to PAAM, its exact nature undetermined. As 2020 loomed, Christine McCarthy, PAAM’s CEO, was looking for an exhibition marking the arrival of the Mayflower.

    A young Pilgrim with musket and ammo. (Photo courtesy Mimi Gross)

    “It was totally up to Mimi,” Dunigan says of the Mayflower idea. “I didn’t want her to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with. But I did think it would be amazing, and I was right.” Dunigan laughs. When it was time to collect the artwork from Gross’s Manhattan studio, she drove a large van to the city with her son, Liam Bailey, during a rainstorm. They assisted with wrapping the delicate cargo and transported it to the Cape.

    The finished pieces went to PAAM, and others, in various stages of completion, went to Gross’s hilltop workspace. Gross’s skill in portrait painting, and the historical research underpinning the installation, is everywhere evident: figures are individualized, assigned a personality. Dark-skinned Wampanoag men are painted in reds and yellows. Garments and accessories are never purely functional: a love of pattern and bright color is reflected in feathered headdresses, shields, and neck ornaments. Women till the land, their hair neatly braided and deerskin dresses fringed. A black-hatted Pilgrim, in knickers and buckled shoes, carries a musket. His smile is tentative, as if asking what comes next.

    McCarthy made her own pilgrimage to Gross’s studio. “Mimi’s narrative is crafted through the lens of supporting the Wampanoag people, challenging the history books, and bringing a new awareness to something that happened 400 years ago,” McCarthy says. “Each figure has its own personality, and seeing them in real life, as opposed to digital images, is astounding. The message delivered through the installation will go way beyond the actual artwork.”

    The daughter of an immigrant artist who made a home in Provincetown, Gross provides a complex, contemporary interpretation of the Outer Cape’s — and the country’s — foundational history. “These peaceful people had been living here for thousands of years, and along came others looking for their own freedom, who couldn’t have cared less about those here already,” Gross says, giving voice to a narrative, through dimension, color, and gesture, of a people whose descendants continue to be silenced.

    A model of the site-specific installation, Arrival, 1620, opening at PAAM on Friday. (Photo courtesy Mimi Gross)

    Culture Clash

    The event: “Mimi Gross: The Arrival, 1620,” a site-specific installation

    The time: Friday, Oct. 2, through Nov. 29; Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; time-slot reservations required at paam.org

    The place: Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St.

    The cost: $12.50; members free

     

    Reporting for this article was supported by a grant from the Provincetown Cultural Council, a local agency supported by the Mass. Cultural Council.

     

    ARTISTS

    A Show of Bill Evaul’s ‘Expressions of Life’

    The Cape Cod Museum of Art puts on a retrospective

    By

    “That’s the life force we get from being present in the moment, experiencing what is happening around us,” says Bill Evaul in his North Truro home, leaning forward in an elegant, antique armchair, his eyes alive with excitement. “The job of the artist is to let that energy flow through them without messing it up. If I can capture this in some way, that’s a big success.”

    Artist Bill Evaul plays the trumpet, guitar, and bass with a number of bands on the Outer Cape. (Photo Susannah Elisabeth Fulcher)

    Perhaps nowhere in Evaul’s work is this life force more evident than in his many studies of musicians performing and, more recently, dancers jiving to their tunes. A musician himself, Evaul says that when he listens to music, he can see, hear, and feel the raw energy emanating from the performance. His art based on music, he says, makes up “the largest body of work based on one subject that I have.”

    The space where music and art intersect has been an inspiration for Evaul since he was a young boy. Growing up first in Philadelphia, then in South Jersey, he and his sisters were often taken by his mom to museums. “I remember when I was maybe five or six years old and she took me to the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” Evaul says. “As we were leaving, I saw Picasso’s Three Musicians from the landing on the grand staircase. I was transfixed. My mother said, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ but I couldn’t move. That’s when she realized that I loved art.”

    Now, the Cape Cod Museum of Art is celebrating Evaul’s artwork on the theme of music and movement with the retrospective exhibit “Song and Dance: Expressions from Life.” On view through Nov. 30, the show includes sketches, oil paintings, and Evaul’s renowned white line prints.

    Biggie, a portrait of the rapper Biggie Smalls, was painted by Evaul in 2005 and put away for 15 years. He added some final touches to it for the exhibit “Song and Dance” at the Cape Cod Museum of Art. (Photo courtesy Bill Evaul)

    Each one of the white line prints is based on a number of sketches and paintings. Everywhere he goes, he fills sketchbooks with his impressions of “life as it unfolds before my eyes,” a practice he developed as a young artist inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. Evaul stores his sketches and cutout images in what he calls his “morgue,” i.e., filing cabinets and boxes, until the right time comes along.

    Working from a vision or dream, Evaul will use the sketches to realize what he sees in his mind’s eye. “When I have a vision, the formal decisions have already been made,” he says. “I have all the laws of painting inside me. I don’t have to think about them. I just feel them and know them.”

    Just as Evaul is inspired by the energy of one captured moment, he likes to paint “as much as I can in one sitting,” he says. “When you work fast, your strokes are freer. So, you get a fresher, more spontaneous result.” One of the paintings in the Cape Cod Museum show, Club Dancers, was done in a fury of creativity during the days leading up to the opening. “The paint on it is still wet,” Evaul adds with a smile.

    He has been part of the Provincetown art community since the early ’70s. As a former director of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, gallerist, educator, local musician (performing with the Broke Brothers at the Old Colony), and, together with his wife, Skipper Swords Evaul, owner of the Moorlands Inn, a North Truro bed and breakfast, his generosity of spirit and support of the creative endeavors of others is well known.

    Chorus Line (Dancing Draggers), an oil on canvas by Bill Evaul, is a tribute to Provincetown’s drag queens. (Photo courtesy Bill Evaul)

    As Evaul sees it, he’s just giving back what he has received. After dropping out of Syracuse University, where he was supposed to be pre-med but ended up spending all his time studying art, Evaul joined a friend on a night drive “to see the sun rise in Provincetown.” There, he met artist Ron Shuebrook, who got him to apply to the Fine Arts Work Center’s then-brand-new fellowship program. Evaul was accepted, spent two years as a fellow (from 1970 to 1972), and was hooked on the Outer Cape.

    In those days, money mattered less than community, he says, and young artists were welcomed by those more established. Evaul remembers invites to the home of Tony Vevers and Elspeth Halvorsen, and he counts Myron Stout; Fritz Bultman and his wife, Jeanne; Jim Forsberg; and Robert Motherwell among those who supported him.

    “It’s important to be there in your life, and to be receptive to the energy that’s all around you. That energy comes from other people, comes from situations, from nature, from the universe,” Evaul says. “You just have to be there for it, welcome it, and take it in without screwing up as much as possible.”

    Club Dancers is a last-minute addition by Bill Evaul to his Cape Cod Museum show. (Photo courtesy Bill Evaul)

    Top Billing

    The event: “Song and Dance: Expressions of Life,” an exhibit of artwork by Bill Evaul

    The time: Through Nov. 30, Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.; meet the artist, Thursday, Oct. 1 (and Nov. 5), 3 to 7 p.m.

    The place: Cape Cod Museum of Art, 60 Hope Lane, Dennis

    The cost: $10; seniors, 62-plus, $8; students, 19-plus with ID, and teenagers, 13-18, $7; children, 12 or under, free; meet the artist Thursdays: all day free

    GALLERIES

    Edie Vonnegut Paints to Elevate the Everyday

    Giving Renaissance grace to portraits of essential workers

    By

    The painter Edith (“Edie”) Vonnegut sits in the sand on Mayo Beach in Wellfleet, gazing at sailboats floating by in the sunshine. Her slender figure and natural beauty defy any guess at her age. “At 70, I have never felt better in my life,” she says. “I’m just getting started, and I finally feel relevant, especially in what I am painting right now: heralding the unheralded, the essential workers.”

    McDonald’s Madonna, a 20-by-16-inch oil on linen by Edie Vonnegut, is the painting that inspired a series on essential workers. (Photos courtesy Kobalt Gallery)

    Vonnegut, who lives in a renovated barn on family property in Barnstable, stopped to speak with the Independent on her way back from delivering paintings to the Kobalt Gallery in Provincetown for her show, “Essential Frontline Workers 2020,” opening on Friday.

    “Edie has given the everyday essential worker their glory day through these portraits,” Kobalt’s owner-director, Francine D’Olimpio, says. “They’re not only masterfully painted but charged with a clear message of the times.”

    In 2017, Vonnegut embarked on a personal marathon to do a painting a day during the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. One was intended to be a portrait of Ivanka Trump as a McDonald’s worker. “I thought it would make Ivanka more empathetic if she had a minimum-wage job,” Vonnegut says.

    She went to McDonald’s to take a photo of a female worker as an Ivanka stand-in but had a change of heart. “I looked at this woman for the first time, and I saw a softness in her face,” Vonnegut says. “She was so sweet and beautiful as she let me take her picture. I thought, I’m not going to cut her head off and put Ivanka’s on it. I’m going to paint her just as she is.”

    Sasha (Gulf Station) is a 24-by-20-inch oil on linen by Vonnegut. The subject is “risking her life to sell basically useless stuff: energy drinks, Marlboro cigarettes, and scratch tickets,” Vonnegut says.

    Vonnegut’s aim to celebrate the unrecognized resonates with aspects of her own life. Born in Schenectady, N.Y., the daughter of writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and his high school sweetheart, Jane Marie Cox, Edie spent most of her childhood on Cape Cod. In 1951, when she was two, her father rented a home in Provincetown for the summer and fell in love with Cape life. “There are many photos of me in the water, eating seaweed in Provincetown Harbor,” Vonnegut says, laughing. The family moved here full-time in 1952 — first to Osterville, then, in 1956, to Barnstable Village, where Vonnegut now lives.

    “My father wrote his books while my mother took care of everything and kept the quiet for him,” Vonnegut says. “Everyone loved her. It was a fun, free house.” When Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969, turning Kurt into a best-selling sensation at 50, he left Cox and moved to New York. “A lot of people don’t take the fame curve very well,” Vonnegut says. “But my mother was never bitter.”

    Ten years ago, Vonnegut found a box of 96 love letters written by her father to her mother when he was a young man and World War II soldier. “He kept saying, ‘I’m really not very bright. I don’t know why you believe in me,’ and after he went through the firebombing in Dresden, he wrote, ‘Now, I know what I have to write about, and I can’t do it without you,’ ” Vonnegut says. The letters, edited by Edie, will be published by Random House on Dec. 1 (Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945). “To me, it’s not about him,” Vonnegut says. “It’s about finally putting my mother where she really belongs.”

    Edie Vonnegut paints in her studio in Barnstable Village. (Photo courtesy Edie Vonnegut)

    In her own life, Vonnegut took decades to go public as an artist. It all started when her parents gave her a book on art masterpieces. “I was five, and it was magic,” Vonnegut says. “I knew that I wanted to be a painter.”

    When she was 18, Vonnegut spent her first summer away from home, studying with abstract expressionist Irving Marantz. “He was a very nice man, but he wasn’t teaching what I needed,” she says. “All I ever wanted is to paint like Titian or Michelangelo or Raphael. It’s my own little wheelhouse, but it’s enough to sustain me for a lifetime.”

    Edie moved to New York City in 1971. “I knew Andy Warhol and all those people, but I never presented myself as an artist,” she says. “I felt people thought that because I was Kurt’s daughter, I was like a cheap souvenir and they weren’t going to give me credit for who I was.”

    Ainsley (Shaw’s Shelf Stocker) is an oil on linen by Edie Vonnegut.

    She returned to Barnstable in 1985 with her second husband, a carpenter and friend from her youth. “When I had my children, I realized that what mothers do is unbelievable,” she says. Many of her works since then depict women in roles denied to them throughout art history, but unlike her essential worker series, they feature angels, mermaids, and cherubs in everyday scenes. “I tend to mess with reality the way Renaissance masters did,” Vonnegut says.

    To honor essential workers, she knew she had to play it straight. “That was a shift for me,” she adds. Now that the series, with 15 paintings, is complete, she intends to do more portraits and focus on eco-activist subjects. “I have so much more that I want to say and do,” she says. “I want to be the court painter to common people, to glorify them the way the masters glorified royalty. Marie Antoinette had over 200 portraits painted of her, and she was a useless woman. I’m sick of people thinking they are more important than others. Everyone is beautiful when you look on them with love.”

    Pandemic Portraits

    The event: Edie Vonnegut, “Essential Frontline Workers 2020”

    The time: Friday, Sept. 18, through Oct. 1

    The place: Kobalt Gallery, 366 Commercial St., Provincetown

    The cost: Free; a percentage of sales will be donated to support Cape Cod Covid-19 relief

    PROVINCETOWN 400

    Varujan Boghosian’s Art Is the Stuff of Poetry

    A mini-retrospective in Berta Walker’s ‘Unity’ show

    By

    Locked Trunk — Lock Out, by Varujan Boghosian, 2008. (Photos courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

    “Unity: Exploring Freedom and Democracy in 2020,” an exhibit on view at Berta Walker Gallery at 208 Bradford St. in Provincetown through Election Day, includes about 20 works by Varujan Boghosian, who is now 94. Also in the show are works by Selina Trieff, Paul Resika, Romare Bearden, and other gallery artists and guests. Visitors should make an appointment for Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 4 p.m., at calendly.com/bertawalker.

    Many of Boghosian’s works relate in some way to this concept of freedom. For instance, Locked Trunk — Lock Out is a sort of visual pun. Could it be about freedom of speech? The Republican elephant? Maybe, but it is also just funny.

    Breaking Through, by Varujan Boghosian, 1998.

    Berta Walker compares Boghosian’s work to a haiku of found objects. In some ways, this really gets at the heart of it. His work is certainly poetic. But haiku is perhaps too simple.

    Observing Boghosian’s work, one gets the same chill that one sometimes gets in an antiques shop. There is evidence of time passing, rust, history. It is like looking at an old doctored photograph, the kind people used to claim gave evidence of ghosts. There is sensibility in its assembly, but also a feeling of fate or inevitability.

    Heartfelt, by Varujan Boghosian, 2000-2010.

    Breaking Through, for example, rips open the back of a canvas to reveal a copper, statuesque head. The face is so stoic, despite having burst out of a painting, that it is hard not to be amused. At the same time, however, there is something affecting about it — the effort it takes to construct a work of art?

    Varujan Boghosian helps install a 2017 exhibit at Berta Walker Gallery.

    Heartfelt takes a sepia-toned photograph of a man in a suit and tie, tight around the neck, and replaces the head with two cartoonish hands in a mystifying gesture, and a dry, heart-shaped leaf. There is something Magritte-like in the assemblage. The faded photograph echoes the lifeless foliage. It is hard to say what it all adds up to, but it coheres nonetheless, and it means something.

    This is the case with all of Boghosian’s work. It is heavy with meaning, even if it makes you chuckle at first. And in the context of 2020, it couldn’t be more relevant. —Saskia Maxwell Keller

    THEATER OF ART

    Kahn & Selesnick’s Performance of a Lifetime

    A PAAM show documents their work on the Outer Cape

    By

    The art of Kahn & Selesnick — otherwise known as Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, who met at Washington University in St. Louis in the ’80s, moved to the Cape in 1988, and have been collaborating as a creative team for more than 30 years — is difficult to categorize.

    Starting out as photographers and printmakers, Kahn & Selesnick have evolved into the realm of narrative and performance, and the show commemorating their careers at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, opening Friday, Sept. 18, through Nov. 15, is more than just a few prints hung on the wall.

    Instead, the exhibit, “Theatre of Operations: Kahn & Selesnick on the Outer Cape, 1989-2019,” curated by Mark Adams and Maura Coughlin, is filled with artifacts — panoramic photographs, wall installations, maps, text, costumes, and props — of performances that no longer exist. The museum’s write-up explains it best: “Kahn & Selesnick may be viewed essentially as filmmakers whose final output includes all the elements of filmmaking other than the actual film itself.”

    In these artifacts, the Outer Cape is the backdrop for environmental dramas enacted by Kahn & Selesnick and their theatrical cast, sometimes known as the Truppe Fledermaus. The photographic imagery that documents these performances (and are sold to collectors) evokes commedia dell’arte and the eerie Americana photographed by Diane Arbus. It’s an exhibit of unnatural history.

    PAAM is open Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., but admission ($12.50; free to members and those 16 or under) is by reserved, hour-long time-slots only, available at paam.org. Kahn & Selesnick are represented in Provincetown by the Schoolhouse Gallery. —Howard Karren

    Ship of Fools, by Kahn & Selesnick, is an archival print, 10 by 72 inches, part of the exhibit of their work at PAAM. (Photo courtesy Schoolhouse Gallery)

    GALLERIES

    Deb Mell Paints With Objects

    Exuberant and iconoclastic, her art is a symphony of expression

    By

    “I love processes,” Truro artist Deb Mell says. “I keep thinking of more complicated and time-consuming ones. That makes me happy.”

    Which is not to say that Mell’s work appears ordered. She uses found objects and paint, sculptural forms and drawing, non-Western iconography and a trained sense of color and balance, and she fuses them together into a riot of detail and narrative.

    Included in Deb Mell’s Berta Walker Gallery show are some older works, such as the spectacular Daddy O. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

    But that love of process is manifest in all her work. Pieces will have hundreds of needles, thousands of beads, layers of sequins, feathers, stickers, and whatnot. She uses a multitude of figurative forms: dolls’ heads and miniature men, bones and animals. Objects are meticulously glued and accumulated.

    “I’m always collecting things that I think are interesting,” Mell says, and her basement studio is stacked with drawers and boxes that are filled with such treasures. “I’ll just get an idea: I want to go to Lieutenant’s Island and get a hundred crab legs. They don’t have to be recycled. They can be anything.”

    There’s an intensity to her obsession that goes beyond a mere arts and crafts project. “I always use found objects as my palette,” she says. “I try to transform something to make it into something that’s mine. I never find this bone that looks like a seal and make it into a seal. I think of myself as a painter. I don’t think in terms of shape, form, as sculptors do. There are tons of artists who just make things.”

    But there aren’t tons of artists who get to show at Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown. Mell joined the gallery this year and is part of a three-person show (with Lucy Clark and Joseph Diggs) that opens on Saturday, June 20, and is on view through July 11, seen in the window of Walker’s Bradford Street gallery or by appointment.

    In her decade-plus of living on the Outer Cape, Mell has shown pieces at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and was part of a group exhibit at the experimental AMP Gallery in 2017. Having her work at Walker’s gallery, a luxurious space that showcases the masters of the Provincetown art colony, is an unlikely yet marvelous fit. Walker has always championed women artists and radical visionaries, and Mell, despite her irreverence and shirking of pretension and categories, wants her art to be seen and taken seriously.

    Deb Mell takes a selfie at her Truro home.

    “When I first encountered Deb Mell’s studio,” Walker says in a late-night email, “I was mesmerized by the grand scale, grand humor, and grand disregard for the formal artworks revealed. Her totems and beaded figures distort the human form while enveloping the spirit of their ancestors, just as African art does.” Walker references Mell’s Native American roots and also her “kinship with the Chicago Hairy Who — in particular, Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt — who were known for grotesquerie, surrealism, and complete un-involvement with New York art trends. They, and Deb Mell, are fantasy-based art makers.”

    Mell herself openly acknowledges the influence of the Hairy Who and many others, such as the feminist movement artists Miriam Shapiro, Joyce Kozloff, May Stevens, and Joan Semmel, whom she met when she was studying at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in the ’80s. “They were amazing,” Mell says. “Joan was so upset that I was married. ‘Why did you do that?’ Then I had kids, and she said, ‘Why would you do that?’ ”

    Mell smiles. “I get inspired by all different things. I just borrow the shit out of every culture. I’m unabashed — just borrow, take, steal. I see nothing wrong with it. Nothing is completely new. You make it new by how you transform it into your voice.”

    The painting-on-panel Sister Dance is a new work. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

    Growing up in Collinsville, Ill., Mell was a square peg in a repressive small town. “Most girls played with girl things,” she says. “I built Frankenstein models. I started painting with a group of adults when I was in sixth grade. Who does that?” She met her husband, Greg Taylor, in high school. “Only five percent went to college. My dad said, ‘You’re not going to college.’ I was just stubborn and strong-willed. I just wanted to be an artist.”

    She was a scholarship student at Illinois State University, then came to New York City, then moved to Maplewood, N.J., where she and Taylor raised their three kids, now grown. All the while, Mell taught art, did residencies, showed when she could. Here, on the Cape, she devotes herself completely to creating art. She works continuously and is quite prolific. For Mell, that’s the point.

    The sculpture Talk to Me is part of “Specimens,” a new series by Mell. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

    “I hate these artists who don’t make much work,” she says. “Not every piece is going to be good. You have to make a lot of it. Sometimes a piece just doesn’t work. So, I’ll try to rework it, or, sometimes, I’ll throw it away. You have to be able to do that. That’s the problem with people who don’t work a lot. Everything becomes precious.”

    It’s all about process. “I enjoy making art so much, if I don’t make it, I get angry,” she says. “I have to. It’s like air to me. I need the art to breathe.”

    Beautiful, Twisted Fantasies

    The event: Exhibit of Deb Mell’s work at Berta Walker Gallery

    The time: June 20 through July 11

    The place: Berta Walker Gallery, 208 Bradford St., Provincetown; gallery open by appointment only: calendly.com/bertawalker

    The cost: Free

    PLAYERS

    Spencer Keasey’s Lifelong Quest

    From porn to Provincetown with the Bakker Gallery’s manager

    By

    Spencer Keasey photo
    Spencer Keasey surrounded by the work of William H. Littlefield at the Bakker Gallery in Provincetown, which he manages. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    When Spencer Keasey picked his porn name, Spencer Quest, it was because he felt as if he were actually on a quest — for sexual and spiritual freedom.

    For a man who had been in a monogamous relationship from the age of 18, freedom from shame and fear during the age of HIV did, at the time at least, feel like a spiritual journey. But he’s been out of the porn business for more than a decade now, and looking back, he realizes that calling his four years as a gay porn star “spiritual” was not entirely accurate.

    “That would be pushing it,” Keasey says, chatting about his life at the Bakker Gallery, an emporium of classic Provincetown art that he has managed for the last seven years. “It was more like an adventure. It really was.”

    Titan Man video cover
    The box cover of a film from Keasey’s career as Spencer Quest — he’s the shirtless one at center. (Photo courtesy TitanMen)

    Keasey, who is tall, square-jawed, and still buff at 51, came to porn relatively late in life — he was 36. He had already been an English teacher at an inner-city Pittsburgh high school. He was living in the Northeast Kingdom, the most rural and poorest region of Vermont, where he had moved with his longtime boyfriend. But when that relationship was coming to an end, he decided that “I was too young to retire to the Northeast Kingdom.”

    He was ready for a change — he wanted to pursue a creative career, maybe be a writer. But his next move was radical.

    His longtime partner had often told him that, if the two split up, Keasey should become a porn star. Keasey had never quite understood why he said that. “I don’t know if it was that I was too body-conscious or if I stared in the mirror too long,” he says. Whatever the reason, it gave Keasey an idea.

    “My partner was a poet,” Keasey says. “He’d been struggling for years to get a book out.”

    Not wanting to be in the same position, Keasey liked the idea of having a gimmick. Being a porn star might be a way to stand out.

    The next day, Keasey’s partner took some photographs of him and sent them off to TitanMen, a gay porn video company with a strict safe-sex policy. A week later he was in Palm Springs, Calif., for an audition. And two weeks after that he had an exclusive contract.

    This was in 2004, a few years before the internet turned the porn industry into a streaming free-for-all in which “everyone became a porn star,” Keasey says.

    And so the adventure began.

    The change was fun at first, but it filled him with conflicting emotions. He was still reeling from his breakup, and Palm Springs strangely reminded him of South Africa, where he had spent three years with his family when he was a boy. “It felt like home, which was weird,” he says, “though I quickly figured out it was not the place for me.”

    He tried to find a way to make his porn experience a springboard for a creative pursuit. He spent a month in Joshua Tree trying to write a book between shoots.

    As Spencer Quest, meanwhile, he grew into a porn sensation, winning Best Threesome at the GayVN Awards for his performance in Titan’s Cirque Noir in 2006 and Best Supporting Actor for Lucas Entertainment’s La Dolce Vita in 2007. (GayVN magazine is a publication of Adult Video News.) TitanMen even created a series based on his character — Spy Quest I, II, and III.

    During his porn years, Keasey learned that people who worked in the industry are not all that different from ordinary people, except maybe better looking. One man he worked with had a regular job at Microsoft.

    And he learned that the trick to becoming a star in porn — to create a persona that people are into — is skillful acting. Another technical note: Viagra is key. It allows men to perform on camera despite all of the distractions and interruptions of filming. And there are other tricks, Keasey says, such as not having sex for a week prior to a shoot.

    Another outcome of his porn years: during some dark times off-camera, Keasey contracted HIV.

    As his career came to an end — and he lasted longer than most — “I became filled with shame,” Keasey says. “I thought everyone would see me as a washed-up porn star. In fact, no one has treated me like that.”

    Quite the opposite. His porn fame turned into the gimmick he had hoped it would, leading to an offer to headline Naked Boys Singing off-Broadway in 2006. In the show, he had to perform the solo “Perky Little Porn Star,” and was working alongside kids who had spent their entire lives preparing for a theater career. “That was a surreal experience,” he says.

    Keasey’s own acting and singing résumé until then was limited to high school shows and some jazz singing in Pittsburgh nightclubs. Not surprisingly, being naked onstage was the least of his fears.

    His work in the theater brought him to Provincetown, where he was in a 2009 production of the play 2 Boys in a Bed on a Cold Winter’s Night, produced by Adam Weinstock at the Art House. It was directed by David Drake, now artistic director of the Provincetown Theater. This is why Keasey likes to say he’s partially responsible for bringing Drake to Provincetown.

    In Provincetown, Keasey found a new home and career. The AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod hired him as director of its Men’s Health Project, where he worked for four years. “One of the reasons ASGCC hired me is that I’m positive and a porn star, and I can make it mean something,” Keasey says.

    He was named king of Carnival in 2008, where he wore a loincloth and an “HIV Positive” tattoo on his chest. “I was a bit of a poster child,” he says.

    Though he has continued acting while working at Bakker Gallery, it’s become harder to accommodate the hours. This has led him farther offstage than he’d like. Keasey says his happy place remains singing at his piano with his ginger cat, Ruby, “who is obsessed with me.”

    He remains a little conflicted about his porn-star past.

    “Would I do it all over again?” he asks himself. “I’m not sure. I’m not going to say I regret it. I just wish I’d have been able to integrate it into my life and not have it start as a secret” — there were many people whom he didn’t tell at first — “because then it has a negative connotation. I want people to know me for my role working with Jim Bakker, as someone who runs the gallery and auctions and who cares about the history of art. And I think that’s happening.”

    classifieds

    Indie Classifieds November 27 – December 5, 2019

    Neighborly connections about all kinds of stuff

    By

    LOCAL COLOR

    Hopper House Tours Gift Certificates. A great holiday gift solution. $69 per person. Tour takes you to hidden places to see more than 50 locations painted by Edward Hopper in Truro in the 1930s. Hopper House Tours continue daily from 10 a.m. to Noon until snow flies. www.hopperhousetours.com. [12-26]

    INVITATIONS

     Salty Market invites you to a pre-Thanksgiving Tasting: Wednesday, Nov. 27. Come sample impressive selections of wine to pair with your Thanksgiving meal and take advantage of our 20%-off yellow dot wine sale and holiday discounts on selected items. 2 Highland Road, North Truro. [11-28]

     SERVICES

     Calligraphy & event-planning services by Janscript Elegant Calligraphy, now in North Truro! 30 years in business with happy clients who appreciate my unique attention to detail. Etiquette expert, too! Visit www.janscript.com or call Jan at 617-750-1530 to discuss your needs. No job is too big or small! [1-23]

     Marrying? Make it official. Rev. Vernon Diannah Porter, Provincetown’s own wedding specialist, would be honored to be a part of your special day. Officiating with love, respect, and optimism, whether your marriage is gay or straight. Also known for her WOMR role as DJ “Lady Di,” Vernon is a minister and a certified professional life and recovery coach. Tel: 508-487-7198; email: [email protected]. [12-26]

    PROVISIONS

    Salty Market offers casual catering for family get-togethers, office parties, team-building brunches, and more. We offer anything from sandwiches and salads to house-made bagel platters and pies. We also offer discounts on bulk wine and liquor purchases. Email catering inquiries to [email protected]. Email wine and liquor inquiries to [email protected]. [12-26]

     DO GOOD

    Share the warmth. Seamen’s Bank is collecting new and lightly used coats, jackets, ski pants, hats, gloves, and boots. These much-needed items will go to Mass Appeal in Wellfleet and be given, free of charge, to the communities of the Outer Cape. Bring yours to any Seamen’s Bank location. Drive goes until Sat., Nov. 30. [11-28]

     Walk or run for HOW. Join us Thanksgiving morning for the 8th Annual Provincetown Pilgrim 5K Trot, a fundraiser for HOW. On-site registration starts at 7:30 a.m., race starts at 9 a.m. at the Sandcastle Resort. Register in advance for $25 at pilgrimtrot.webstarts.com or on site for $30. Sponsored by Cape Cod 5. [11-28]

    ART

    Is your old easel calling out to you? Looking for a reason to treat yourself to some quality time with color? Truro artist Jakki Kouffman, with over 25 years of teaching around the country, offers private/small group art instruction. All media, styles, and skill levels. Inquire at [email protected]; see www.jakkikouffman.com. [1-2]

    Art for giving. Art for the New Year. Sculptural drawings and installations that reflect the ever-changeable nature of our Earth. Artist Phyllis Ewen, on the web at phyllisewen.com. [1-2]

    MUSIC

    Irish and old time music at The Well Tavern and Kitchen in Wellfleet. Denya LeVine and friends with local and visiting instrumentalists and singers. Friday, Nov 29, 7-9 p.m. with co-host Tim Dickey. Songs, tunes, and dancers. Learn more at www.denya.us. [11-28]


    SUMMER RENTALS

    Truro summer house. One to 4-month summer lease. Available June thru September. $5,000-$14,000, or best offer! 3 BR, sleeps 5. Minutes to Provincetown, Wellfleet. Parks 3 cars. Washer and dryer. Strong and reliable cell phone signal. Optional TV and internet. Quiet and private. Near beaches, beautiful surroundings. Contact Shaun:  508-514-1095 [email protected]. [12-19]

    YEAR-ROUND RENTALS

    Live year-round in North Truro. Year-round rental, 2 bedrooms, hardwood floors, and large kitchen. No Pets. First month’s rent, last, and security deposit required. Call: 508-274-5201. [12-19]

    FOR SALE

    Wellfleet, modern house on Indian Neck. Stunning views from wrap-around decks, overlooking Fox Island. Light-filled, unique floor plan contains two separate units, a one-bedroom affordable accessory unit and a two-bedroom “upside-down” unit, easily converted back to a 3BR single-family. PV & SHW. $650,000. Email: [email protected]. [12-26]

    Wheels. Hard to find 5-speed manual Mazda 3. Looks and drives sporty in spite of its age and experience. (2008, 172K). Wife is over it. Husband is not. Help us out here. $1,000. Teresa, 917-363-0339. [11-28]

    SEEKING

    Winter garage needed. Looking to rent an indoor garage space for one car for the winter. Truro car, but happy to garage it in any town on the Outer Cape. Tel: (314) 609-8300. [12-5]

    RIDE SHARING

    Looking to coordinate ride shares to attend the Safe Communities Act hearing on Beacon Hill Monday, Dec. 2, 10 a.m. Join the fight for immigrant justice! Email Betsy Smith, [email protected] [11-28]

    classifieds

    Indie Classifieds November 21 – 27, 2019

    Neighborly connections about all kinds of stuff

    By

    INVITATIONS

     Salty Market invites you to two Grand Holiday Tastings: Friday, Nov. 22 and Wednesday, Nov. 27. Come sample impressive selections of wine to pair with your Thanksgiving meal and take advantage of our 20%-off yellow dot wine sale and holiday discounts on selected items. 2 Highland Road, North Truro. [11-28]

    SERVICES

    Calligraphy & event-planning services by Janscript Elegant Calligraphy, now in North Truro! 30 years in business with happy clients who appreciate my unique attention to detail. Etiquette expert, too! Visit www.janscript.com or call Jan at 617-750-1530 to discuss your needs. No job is too big or small! [1-23]

     Marrying? Make it official. Rev. Vernon Diannah Porter, Provincetown’s own wedding specialist, would be honored to be a part of your special day. Officiating with love, respect, and optimism, whether your marriage is gay or straight. Also known for her WOMR role as DJ “Lady Di,” Vernon is a minister and a certified professional life and recovery coach. Tel: 508-487-7198; email: [email protected]. [12-26]

    PROVISIONS

    Organic turkeys for Thanksgiving. The East End Market at 212 Bradford St. in Provincetown is taking preorders for Mary’s Organic Turkeys for Thanksgiving. We have limited birds. Sign up today before they are all gobbled up! Vegetarian options, sides, and pies are also available. 508-487-2339. [11-21]

    Salty Market offers casual catering for family get-togethers, office parties, team-building brunches, and more. We offer anything from sandwiches and salads to house-made bagel platters and pies. We also offer discounts on bulk wine and liquor purchases. Email catering inquiries to [email protected]. Email wine and liquor inquiries to [email protected]. [12-26]

    DO GOOD

    Holiday specialties, local artists. Please join members of the Christian Union Church at 27 Shore Road in North Truro for our annual Harvest Festival. This Saturday, Nov. 23 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The festival is an opportunity to shop a variety of delicious sweets and gifts created by local artists. [11-21]

    Share the warmth. Seamen’s Bank is collecting new and lightly used coats, jackets, ski pants, hats, gloves, and boots. These much-needed items will go to Mass Appeal in Wellfleet and be given, free of charge, to the communities of the Outer Cape. Bring yours to any Seamen’s Bank location. Drive goes until Sat., Nov. 30. [11-28]

     Walk or run for HOW. Join us Thanksgiving morning for the 8th Annual Provincetown Pilgrim 5K Trot, a fundraiser for HOW. On-site registration starts at 7:30 a.m., race starts at 9 a.m. at the Sandcastle Resort. Register in advance for $25 at pilgrimtrot.webstarts.com or on site for $30. Sponsored by Cape Cod 5. [11-28]

     ART

    Is your old easel calling out to you? Looking for a reason to treat yourself to some quality time with color? Truro artist Jakki Kouffman, with over 25 years of teaching around the country, offers private/small group art instruction. All media, styles, and skill levels. Inquire at [email protected]; see www.jakkikouffman.com. [12-19]

    Art for giving. Art for the New Year. Sculptural drawings and installations that reflect the ever-changeable nature of our Earth. Artist Phyllis Ewen, on the web at phyllisewen.com. [1-2]

    MUSIC

    Irish and old time music at The Well Tavern and Kitchen in Wellfleet. Denya LeVine and friends with local and visiting instrumentalists and singers. Friday, Nov 29, 7-9 p.m. with co-host Tim Dickey. Songs, tunes, and dancers. Learn more at www.denya.us. [11-28]

    SUMMER RENTALS

    Truro summer house. One to 4-month summer lease. Available June thru September. $5,000-$14,000, or best offer! 3 BR, sleeps 5. Minutes to Provincetown, Wellfleet. Parks 3 cars. Washer and dryer. Strong and reliable cell phone signal. Optional TV and internet. Quiet and private. Near beaches, beautiful surroundings. Contact Shaun:  508-514-1095 [email protected]. [12-19]

    YEAR-ROUND RENTALS

    Live year-round in North Truro. Year-round rental, 2 bedrooms, hardwood floors, and large kitchen. No Pets. First month’s rent, last, and security deposit required. Call: 508-274-5201. [12-19]

    FOR SALE

    Wellfleet, modern house on Indian Neck. Stunning views from wrap-around decks, overlooking Fox Island. Light-filled, unique floor plan contains two separate units — a one-bedroom affordable accessory unit and a two-bedroom “upside-down” unit — easily converted back to a 3BR single-family. PV & SHW. $650,000. Email: [email protected]. [12-26]

    Wheels. OK, this is getting competitive. Somebody “kind of” wants our 2008 Mazda 3 Hatchback. Speak now or miss out on this hard-to-find 5-speed manual transmission. Tried and true (172,000+ miles). Husband cannot let go for < $1,000. Teresa, 917-363-0339. [11-28]

    WANT TO RENT

    Winter garage needed. Looking to rent an indoor garage space for one car for the winter. Truro car, but happy to garage it in any town on the Outer Cape. Tel: (314) 609-8300. [12-5]

    RIDE SHARING

    Looking to coordinate ride shares to attend the Safe Communities Act hearing on Beacon Hill Monday, Dec. 2, 10 a.m. Join the fight for immigrant justice! Email Betsy Smith, [email protected] [11-28]

    classifieds

    Indie Classifieds November 14 – 20, 2019

    Neighborly connections about all kinds of stuff

    By

    PROVISIONS

    Organic Turkeys for Thanksgiving. The East End Market at 212 Bradford St. in Provincetown is taking preorders for Mary’s Organic Turkeys for Thanksgiving. We have limited birds. Sign up today before they are all gobbled up! Vegetarian options, sides, and pies are also available. 508-487-2339. [11-21]

    Salty Market offers casual catering for family get-togethers, office parties, team-building brunches, and more. We offer anything from sandwiches and salads to house-made bagel platters and pies. We also offer discounts on bulk wine and liquor purchases. Email catering inquiries to [email protected]. Email wine and liquor inquiries to [email protected]. [11-21] 

    SERVICES

    Calligraphy & event-planning services by Janscript Elegant Calligraphy, now in North Truro! 30 years in business with happy clients who appreciate my unique attention to detail. Etiquette expert, too! Visit www.janscript.com or call Jan at 617-750-1530 to discuss your needs. No job is too big or small! [12-5]

    Marrying? Make It Official. Rev. Vernon Diannah Porter, Provincetown’s own wedding specialist, would be honored to be a part of your special day. Officiating with love, respect, and optimism, whether your marriage is gay or straight. Also known for her WOMR role as DJ “Lady Di,” Vernon is a minister and a certified professional life and recovery coach. Tel: 508-487-7198; email: [email protected]. [11-28]

    INVITATIONS

    Salty Market invites you to two Grand Holiday Tastings: Friday, Nov. 22 and Wednesday, Nov. 27. Come sample impressive selections of wine to pair with your Thanksgiving meal and take advantage of our 20%-off yellow dot wine sale and holiday discounts on selected items. 2 Highland Road, North Truro. [11-28] 

    DO GOOD

    Casino Night Returns. Helping Our Women’s popular Casino Night returns to Montano’s on Saturday, Nov. 16 from 6 to 10 p.m. Join HOW for an evening of fun and gaming! Try your luck (or skill) at the roulette wheel, poker, and blackjack and win CASH prizes while raising money for HOW. Montano’s is located on Rt. 6 in North Truro. $10 at the door includes raffle ticket. Cash bar. [11-14]

    Rock to Stop Homelessness. A fundraiser for the Homeless Prevention Council featuring live music with awesome ’60s cover band The Broughams. $20 donation includes entertainment and snacks. Cash bar. All proceeds go to HPC programs. Nov. 16, 6 p.m. at Hog Island Brewery, 28 West Rd., Orleans. Details at hpccapecod.org. [11-14]

    Walk or Run for HOW. Join us Thanksgiving morning for the 8th Annual Provincetown Pilgrim 5K Trot, a fundraiser for HOW. On-site registration starts at 7:30 a.m., race starts at 9 a.m. at the Sandcastle Resort. Register in advance for $25 at pilgrimtrot.webstarts.com or onsite for $30. Sponsored by Cape Cod 5. [11-28]

    TALENT QUEST

    Winter Wednesdays is looking for instructors. Share your hobbies, skills, or passions with the community. To apply: send your name, contact info, a brief overview of your proposed course, syllabus, and short bio to [email protected]. Application deadline: Nov. 18. Instructors receive a stipend for teaching. Learn more at www.winterwednesdays.org. [11-14]

    ART

    Art Awaits. Even after the galleries close for the season. Sculptural drawings and installations that reflect the ever-changeable nature of our Earth. Artist Phyllis Ewen, on the web at phyllisewen.com. [11-28]

    MUSIC

    Irish and Old Time Music at The Well Tavern and Kitchen in Wellfleet. Denya LeVine and friends with local and visiting instrumentalists and singers. Fridays: Nov. 15 and 29, 7-9 p.m. with co-host Tim Dickey. Songs, tunes, and dancers. Learn more at www.denya.us. [11-28]

    FOR SALE

    Wellfleet, modern house on Indian Neck. Stunning views from wrap-around decks, overlooking Fox Island. Light-filled, unique floor plan contains two separate units — a one-bedroom affordable accessory unit and a two-bedroom “upside-down” unit — easily converted back to a 3BR single-family. PV & SHW. $650,000. Email: [email protected]. [11-28]

    Wheels. People this 2008 Mazda 3 Hatchback has got a can-do soul, a hard-to-find 5-speed manual transmission, and gets 30 mpg. Experienced (172,000+ miles), but well-maintained, with good tires and new brakes. $1,000. Teresa, 917-363-0339. [11-28]

    WANT TO RENT

    Winter Parking. Earn money doing nothing. We need an indoor garage space for one car for the winter. Truro car, but any town on the Outer Cape would be fine. Tel: (314) 609-8300. [11-28]

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