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    GALLERY

    What’s Your Number?

    House numbers reveal Provincetown’s style is its own

    By

    “Meet me at 517 Commercial St.,” we say, or “I work at 186,” without a second thought about the complexity behind the system of numbers that guides us though our towns.

    When house numbers began to replace more individualistic signs in the 18th century, the reasons were administrative — and not always purely friendly. Numbers would make it easier to deliver messages but also to keep tabs on people.

    Now that we’re used to offering up all sorts of information about ourselves, and not just for neighboring townspeople but for the entire internet to behold, house numbers are decidedly quaint by comparison. Handy for the rescue squad and the postal service. Practical for wayfinding. And even an opportunity for self-expression.

    In San Francisco, the 1930s sculptural designs of Anton Fazekas are now an attraction. His tiny iron frames, each with a tiny lightbulb inside, set off the house numbers there in style. Venice has distinctive painted numbers on whitewashed backgrounds dating back to the time of Napoleon.

    On a walk through Provincetown, the individuality of house numbers reveals something about us. Some are carefully chosen to suit the structures they identify. Some are purely practical. Many are whimsical. There isn’t one style here — ours are idiosyncratic. —Sofia Cabanas

    MIXED MEDIA

    Siân Robertson Maps Out the Year 2020

    A box a day keeps an artist inspired

    By

    There’s an obsessiveness to the art of Siân Robertson — multiple objects are organized, following rules and patterns. But an opposite impulse is also manifest — a relentless creativity.

    #75: March 15, 2020. (Photos Siân Robertson)

    It’s kind of a paradox, a dialectic: Robertson says her organizing principles are “freeing,” and she sets them up whenever she feels blocked. “You have to have a structure,” she says. “There needs to be some boundaries. That frees you to be creative within the boundaries.”

    Robertson’s preferred medium is used maps — they must be used because it gives them individuality, a story. She also likes stamps (used stamps), vintage photographs, pushpins (the kind used with maps), and other printed material, such as color charts, figurative images, pop designs. She likes to take the work into the third dimension, giving it depth — in books, boxes, or blocks of acrylic.

    “I’m drawn by the colors and shapes and lines,” Robertson says. “That’s what attracts me to maps. They might be of Provincetown or Wales” — Robertson was born in Wales and raised in a small village there; she came to the U.S. at the age of 29 — “or of somewhere I had a vacation I enjoyed. But I never choose them because of the geography.”

    #241: Aug. 28, 2020.

    For Robertson’s current project, “Around the World in 366 Boxes,” she created a new, 3.5-inch-square box, one inch deep, for every single day of the year 2020. “It had to start on January 1st,” she says, obsessive as always. And there are three rules: “They have to be three-dimensional; everything has to fit in the box; and there has to be some sort of cartographic element.”

    The entire year of boxes will be on view (and for sale) at Adam Peck Gallery in Provincetown, starting on Tuesday, Dec. 22. Actually, the entire year won’t be seen until Jan. 1, when those last days in December are done. Then the show closes on Jan. 3.

    “For me, seeing them all laid out is the most important thing,” Robertson says. “They’re laid out exactly like a calendar — an American calendar, Sunday to Saturday. British calendars start on a Monday.”

    She’s coming off a residency at the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College, where she created a giant wall collage of map routes, cut out and reconnected like a maze. Such projects are challenging and exciting to Robertson, who only recently has come to define herself as an artist.

    #15: Jan. 15, 2020.

    “I was always a very crafty kid,” she says. “I used to make these collages and decorate my bedroom. I would knit and do embroidery. It never felt like art.”

    When the local school system sent students on a career path, “I couldn’t draw, so I didn’t take art,” she says. “When I went to college, I trained to be a teacher for young kids, five to nine. But I never actually went into it. I had a few different jobs, mostly in nonprofits and the trade union sector. I was always interested in art. I just never saw myself as someone who created it.”

    When Robertson came to America, it was supposed to be for a few months. She toured the country by rail. Then, in San Francisco, she met her husband, Nick.

    “We came to Provincetown as part of our honeymoon,” she says. “ ‘This place is fantastic,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to move here.’ We did, about five years later.”

    They had a gift store, Traders Village, at 220 Commercial St. (later home to Wa and Map), which they eventually sold and got jobs — Nick at town hall, Siân at Kobalt Gallery.

    #265: Sept. 21, 2020.

    “All this time, I’m doing my little collages on the kitchen table,” Robertson says. She credits Provincetown with her transformation from crafter to artist: “There was a very accessible artist community here, a community that’s very encouraging, if you have any artistic inclination.” She became part of the conversation, joining the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, finding mentors, submitting pieces to members’ shows. When she and Nick built a home for themselves in Truro, she got her own studio.

    Robertson says she used to make collages by altering other artists’ work: she was inspired by the series of paintings Picasso made that were based on Velázquez’s Las Meninas. But she slowly gained the confidence to follow her own aesthetic impulses. She loved and collected maps, so she turned her trusty X-Acto knife on them, isolating the details that attracted her.

    She started showing in galleries here in 2015. “My first show, at A Gallery, nearly sold out on opening night,” she says. “I was a changed person after that.” She did her first year-long, every-day-a-new-piece project soon after. Her “excavated” maps got deeper — layered page by page in a book, in between sheets of clear acrylic, rolled up into balls.

    Robertson says she’s comfortable with abstraction and no longer feels the need to tell stories in her work. She appreciates the metaphorical aspects of maps — the connectivity, the symbols standing in for the real world. But the heart of her work is the sensuousness of her constructions. She speaks rapturously of the “sound” an X-Acto knife makes while cutting paper, even though she always works with the radio on and “hears” through her fingers.

    Siân Robertson stands beside the first wall of her exhibit at the Adam Peck Gallery in Provincetown, “Around the World in 366 Boxes.” (Photo Howard Karren)

    “I make stuff because I can’t not make it,” Robertson says. “I don’t have any other purpose.”

    All in a Day’s Work

    The event: “Around the World in 366 Boxes: A Daily Art Project for 2020,” an exhibit of artwork by Siân Robertson

    The time: Tuesday, Dec. 22 through Jan. 3; call gallery for hours, 508-237-1840

    The place: Adam Peck Gallery, 142 Commercial St., or sianrobertsonart.com/around-the-world-in-366-boxes

    The cost: The exhibit is free; the boxes, $250 each

    GALLERY

    Holiday Planters That Bring the Winter Landscape Home

    Foraging etiquette and design tips from a pro

    By

    Flower designer Kate Formichella is known for making bouquets and installations that are naturally beautiful. She uses local flowers and plants, mostly from her own flower farm in Orleans. She also forages — an act she takes seriously because, she says, it’s got to be done responsibly.

    Kate adheres to the less-than-10-percent rule: removing just a small percentage of growth when harvesting. “To forage sustainably,” she says, “do not strip any tree or shrub of all its prime.” And she never removes plants — even fallen ones — from conservation or National Park lands.

    A view of this year’s lineup: ilex, bayberry, rose hips, twisty willow, red twig dogwood, leyland cypress, juniper, cedar, white pine, pitch pine. (Photo Kate Formichella)

    At this time of year, Kate’s work moves from bouquets for weddings and outdoor parties to garlands, pots, and planters that play up the color and life the winter landscape offers.

    Do you have a window box of mums? It’s time to pop them out and replace them with fresh greens for the holidays. You’ll push cut stems directly into the soil, and don’t forget to water them — your arrangements will last well into winter if you keep the soil watered to hydrate the greens. You can also keep them looking fresh by removing and replacing the occasional exhausted bough as the season progresses.

    The “extras” in your arrangement might include chokeberries, rose hips, or even perennials like dusty miller — its soft silver leaves offer bright contrast to the greens. (Photo Milisa Moses)

    Collect your cuttings. If you don’t have a yard, this might be an opportunity to offer a friendly neighbor some pruning in return for their greenery. Sharp loppers and pruners are key for this project. While collecting branches and greens, keep them in the shade and, if possible, in buckets of water.

    Include varied textures. Eastern red cedar, which is actually a juniper, offers beautiful contrast to the deeper greens found in pitch pine, while the wispy branches of white pine can soften the arrangement. The long, arching branches of Leyland cypress bring natural movement and scale. American holly adds texture and depth.

    “Step back,” says Formichella, “to see where your arrangement needs more height and color and drape.” (Photo Kate Formichella)

    Next, look for a few extras that will bring in a pop of color: twisted willow, red twig dogwood, winterberry.

    When it comes to designing the arrangement, Kate offers some tips: Once you begin filling in your pot or planter with greens, make sure to walk around and check it from all views. Start with the greens, holding back on the colorful extras to add in last. Nix the red bows — just as with red mulch in landscaping, that becomes all the eye sees. Nature will speak beautifully when you keep the composition about the various greens, the structure of winter branches, and the color the extras provide.

    BENEFIT AUCTIONS

    Ptown Gallery Stroll Launches ‘Hope Project’

    Display of hope-filled artwork starts Friday

    By

    The Ptown Gallery Stroll, a nonprofit organization of more than 30 art galleries in Provincetown, was formed in the spring in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the threat it posed to the art community of the Outer Cape.

    The Stroll is named after the traditional “art walk” or “gallery stroll” that would happen on summer Friday evenings in Provincetown’s East End, when galleries would have exhibit openings and welcome patrons to their premises to meet the artists and see the work. During the pandemic, live openings were mostly canceled and the few that remained had restricted access or went virtual. So, the Ptown Gallery Stroll, and its website, ptowngallerystroll.com, were meant as a free online substitute.

    In late summer, a new initiatives committee was formed to create a fund-raiser to help with administrative expenses. Marla Rice, of Rice Polak Gallery; Jill Rothenberg-Simmons, of On Center Gallery; and Chris Nagle of Outermost Designs came up with the idea of having an auction of artwork from any gallery that wanted to participate.

    “We decided on having pieces be displayed, either in the windows or outdoors, unique to that gallery, to give ‘hope.’ ” Rice says. “The idea is to literally ‘stroll’ around the galleries, if you’re in town, or do it remotely, if you’re out of town.”

    The Hope Project has its own web page, accessed through the Ptown Gallery Stroll or the Provincetown Commons sites, through which the Stroll operates. Bidding on pieces starts on Friday, Oct. 2, and will continue through Oct. 12. A sampling of some of the works offered can be found on this page. —Howard Karren

    Always Forever, an oil and graphite painting by Karen Cappotto, is at AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial St. Estimated value: $3,200. (Photos courtesy Ptown Gallery Stroll)

    Have Hope, an archival pigment print by Jane Paradise, is at Alden Gallery, 423 Commercial St. Estimated value: $650.

    Out of Darkness, an ink and acrylic painting by Gaston Lacombe, is at Studio Lacombe, 237 Commercial St., Whaler’s Wharf. Estimated value: $275.

    Hope, an acrylic on paper by Rebecca Doughty, is at Schoolhouse Gallery, 494 Commercial St. Estimated value: $1,200.

    Required Reading, an oil on panel by Pete Hocking, is at Four Eleven Gallery, 411 Commercial St. Estimated value: $1,400.

    Hope I, a terra cotta sculpture by James Tyler, is at Rice Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St. Estimated value: $2,500.

    GALLERIES

    Dave Laro Celebrates the Mystery of Found Objects

    He returns to Provincetown with new pop constructions

    By

    “We’re here to communicate,” says Dave Laro. “We are all trying to make sense of this world we were born into.”

    As an artist, Laro tells stories by collecting old wood and discarded objects and using them to create pop art constructions with subtle layers of meaning, leaving space for a deeply personal response.

    “I feel that the artist and the viewer share in the creative experience,” Laro says. “It’s a collaboration. If somebody asks me what a piece is about, my response is, ‘Tell me what you think.’ ”

    Vermont artist Dave Laro also works as a stonemason. A show of his assemblages is at the Kobalt Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo Leon Rogers)

    Laro has honed his skills since childhood. “Building out of wood is in me,” he says. “To me, it’s home.” His grandfather made furniture in a small workshop in Vermont, where Laro grew up. As boys, Laro and his brother first crafted wooden swords, then go-carts. After contemplating becoming a boatbuilder, Laro apprenticed under furniture maker and designer Charles Shackleton. “I didn’t stay there for long,” Laro says, “but the experience gave me an education in using tools and machinery.”

    Laro began to design and create furniture on his own. “For a long time, I felt that what I was making had to be functional,” he says. “Art was not in my family or history, so it took me a long time to make something that would just go on somebody’s wall. I had to get comfortable with that, because it felt very personal.”

    Looking back over the pieces Laro has been creating for nearly 20 years, a progression from implied, distorted functionality to increasingly pure and bold pop art expression is clear. From July 24 through Aug. 6, Laro’s most recent work will be part of a two-person show at the Kobalt Gallery in Provincetown, “D & D Construction,” along with fellow Vermont woodworking artist Duncan Johnson. Included in the exhibit is a collaborative piece, Over the Top, a first for both artists and an opportunity, Laro says, that he found “very exciting, because I was asked to let go — something I am working on.”

    On Second Thought combines two oil paintings, both found at flea markets, where Dave Laro collects most of the objects used in his art. (Photo courtesy Kobalt Gallery)

    Laro’s process is usually solitary and contemplative. He spends a great deal of time wandering through flea markets, searching for everyday objects and old discarded pieces of wood. These unlikely treasures, unique in the ways in which they have been used, loved, worn out, transformed, and broken over the years, fill Laro’s workshop and home, waiting to reveal “their own mystery,” he says. Only when he has figured out which objects and pieces of wood fit together, thereby suggesting “an opportunity for a story to be told,” does he begin to construct one of his artworks.

    “Usually it starts with color,” Laro says. “There is a visceral response in us to certain colors.”

    Take, for example, the genesis of Little Liar, one of the works in the Kobalt show: “I started with an old toolbox,” Laro says. “It was originally pink, then somebody had painted it blue, but the pink was showing through in areas where it was worn. Then, I found part of an old Coca-Cola sign with pink paint on it that matched perfectly. So, I put the two next to each other and thought, how can I add something to this to make it relevant? I walked through my house looking for colors that worked. There was the little girl with that same pink, and the white of her skin matched the Coca-Cola. I started playing around, thought of facing her forward, but facing her backward was more intriguing.”

    A piece like Little Liar evokes obvious, societal questions as well as hidden memories and histories. “I try to give the viewer agency to interpret,” Laro says. “The first person who saw this piece was a dear friend of mine. A member of her family had drowned, and what she saw was her relationship to the fear of water. She saw the little girl as herself.”

    Dave Laro’s Little Liar invites multiple layers of interpretation. (Photo courtesy Kobalt Gallery)

    Laro carefully considers each piece’s impact. “There are times,” he says, “when I have laid something out and I just can’t do it. Everything works, but it’s just too sensitive to me right now. Our society is pretty polarized, and a lot of what is happening in our world is not good or healthy. So, I have to ask myself, ‘Is this going to help?’ And even though the piece works as art, sometimes the answer, to me, is no.”

    He asked himself the same question after creating On Second Thought, a piece in the Kobalt show that uses part of a painting that had already found its way into a much earlier work. “The woman [in it] is very mysterious,” Laro says. “I knew that I wanted to do something compelling with what was left of her. After six years, I found this other oil painting with the same hue and put them together. I saw that there were many implications. It’s heavy stuff, you know? And it was one of those pieces where I asked, ‘Do I make it?’ ”

    To Laro, in the end, creating art is a celebration of this life in all its complexity. “Every time I build something, I hope to learn something new,” he says. “I’m learning about myself, and I’m growing. That’s what this whole thing is about to me.”

    Over the Top is a collaboration between Dave Laro and Duncan Johnson, the two woodworking Vermont artists in the Kobalt Gallery show “D & D Construction.” (Photo courtesy Kobalt Gallery)

    Wood to Go

    The event: “D & D Construction,” an exhibit of artwork by Dave Laro and Duncan Johnson

    The time: Friday, July 24, through Aug. 6; gallery hours: Sunday-Tuesday, noon to 5 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday, noon to 8 p.m.

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

    The cost: Free

    GALLERY

    Gardens That Contain Summer’s Charm

    Three secrets for planting winning window boxes

    By

    A window box filled with flowers can give a plain clapboard exterior a season’s worth of charm. Settie Dixon, owner of Gardens by Settie, has good advice about planting container gardens that really work. “Always look at proportions,” she says. “In a container, you want thrillers, fillers, and spillers. Something falling over the edge will soften the look of the window box, and the filler provides color or texture. If you have the room and won’t be blocking a view, go for a thriller — a statement piece that draws the eye.”

    Settie is particular about color, careful to choose flowers that don’t clash with the planter or colors around the house. It’s also important, she says, to know how much sun the window box will get and plan the planting accordingly. Make sure the box has drainage. Deadhead annuals to keep them looking fresh. She also suggests that you seek out four-inch pots of flowers instead of six packs, so the flowers are in their full expression right away. Don’t delay gratification when summer is so short. Enjoy every bloom right now. —Molly Newman

    Robbie Connolly chose a window box that would anchor his little garden space. Surrounded by showy clematis, the geraniums keep the look contained. (Photo Molly Newman)

    Simple yet dramatic color contrasts draw the eye. (Photo Molly Newman)

    Spot the thrillers, fillers, and spillers in Settie Dixon’s floral composition. (Photo Settie Dixon)

    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

    GALLERY

    Redecorating Isn’t Just for Grownups

    Designing a room of one’s own helps kids cope

    By

    Leaving Wellfleet for her freshman year at UMass Amherst, Kenna Valli packed hundreds of pictures of family and friends, painstakingly arranging them in her dorm room with the approved adhesive. Spring break coincided with the first wave of quarantine closures. She decided to play it safe and haul the photos home with her. As the break became a permanent stay at home, Kenna recreated her college photo wall above her bed.

    In other households, kids are moving furniture, painting walls, and hanging string lights. Alyia Vasquez, 13, created a “Zoom nook” and painted her walls lavender. Niev Witnauer is gradually taking over an underutilized guest room across the hall. Stuck with parents for seemingly interminable hours at a time, young people are controlling what they can: their own space. —Molly Newman

    Alyia’s Zoom nook provides both comfort and bling. (Photo Liberty Schilpp)

    When Kenna recreated her college photo wall at home, she used foam board so she can transport it more easily back to school, she hopes, in the fall. (Photo Sandy Valli)

    Missing their jewelry making class with Jody Craven at Nauset High, Bella and Lili Hay created a jewelry design work station in their room. (Photo Traci Harmon-Hay)

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