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Provincetown Community Compact

    PROJECTS

    Provincetown V.F.W. Awaits Transformation

    Jay Critchley’s art installation evolves through crisis

    By

    Jay Critchley at VFW
    Jay Critchley stands outside the V.F.W. front entrance, at a spot where he was hoping to produce performance events during the project’s 10 days. With gatherings of more than 25 people now restricted, whatever happens may appear only online without an audience. (Photos Jane Paradise)

    PROVINCETOWN —Jay Critchley invited members of the community — artists, writers, veterans — to join him on Wednesday, March 11 for a walk-through of the Veterans of Foreign Wars building at 3 Jerome Smith Road. A dozen or so people appeared. They were there to explore ideas for a Provincetown Community Compact project that had been green-lighted a week before by the select board: to turn the building, which will soon be torn down, into a 10-day community-wide art installation, from April 3 through 12. The idea was to transform the V.F.W. into a starlit shrine: filled with artifacts, with no electricity, a “vessel of aspiration,” said Critchley, who, as an artist, has orchestrated several of these kinds of installation-performance projects over the years.

    By March 11, however, the coronavirus pandemic was already a threat.

    The Independent asked photographer Jane Paradise to record the moment. But moments, at this time of crisis, are particularly evanescent. The fate of the project within the building is up in the air.

    “I think that it’s probably going to be canceled,” said Critchley on Monday, March 16. “But it’s not official. We’ll have to see about that. At this point, I want to get artists in the building, working with resilience in the middle of the plague.”

    If they can’t work inside, Critchley may have them work outside. “We’re still accepting ideas for the project,” he said, “whether they are virtual or physical. Regardless of what happens, we’ll create an online presence for the project and the community. This is a time when many artists, writers, and other creatives are making art. The project is morphing into what’s going on in the world. That’s the challenge: to see how it will show itself.

    Inside the V.F.W. hall’s main room, Critchley (center, with a black baseball cap and a hand to his heart) asks those assembled to remain six feet apart. Behind him at left, looking at her camera, is the Mosquito Story Slam’s Vanessa Vartabedian; then, beyond Critchley, left to right: artist Nick Thorkelson, veteran Paul Mendes, activist Char Priolo, Relish owner Frank Vasello, and his husband, actor-director Nathan Butera. “There was great energy,” Critchley said. “People were excited to be in the building. They shared a lot of great stories. It was very emotional, very forward-looking.”

    The V.F.W. basement was open for artists to transform. The place holds lots of memories — dances, wedding and funeral receptions, both straight and gay. Currently, the plumbing is not functioning, and though lights were on during the walk-through, Critchley hopes to keep the project electricity-free.

    “My Pilgrim Barbie!” Critchley said. He also brought “gold” necklaces for the attendees to wear as symbols of power. As planned, the building would be filled with personal artifacts brought by the community.

     

     

     

     

     

    Though the town has mostly emptied the building, on March 11 the kitchen of the V.F.W. still had boxes of books and a bunch of beautiful old doors, which photographer Jane Paradise judges to be too large and too old to be from the V.F.W., which was built in 1959. “They’ve parceled out objects of historic value,” Critchley said. “I’m not sure what will end up there.”

     

     

    PUBLIC ART

    Compact to Turn P’town VFW Into Art Installation

    Jay Critchley invites veterans and members of the community to participate

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — It’s a project Jay Critchley had been contemplating for a while: he knew that the town had bought the Veterans of Foreign Wars building at 3 Jerome Smith Road in 2013 and was planning to tear it down. The hall was built in 1959 by the veterans, and is a place that evokes fond memories for many locals who had spent time there. Last week, the select board approved Critchley’s plans to turn the building into a community-wide art project.

    He has done projects like this before. Critchley memorialized the old Herring Cove Bathhouse, to spectacular effect, before the Cape Cod National Seashore tore it down in 2012, with dozens of artists turning all the building’s various spaces into installations. Now, with the VFW Hall, he isn’t interested in repeating that effort.

    “The more I thought about it, this is a totally different time we’re living in,” Critchley says. “Look at what’s happened in eight years — in the town, in the world, in the environment. I had the idea of darkening the interior of the hall and, as people entered, they would be given solar lights. I’m inviting not just artists, but veterans and people in the community to bring in and install art and artifacts that have personal meaning. It will be like a starlit shrine — a vessel of aspiration.”

    The event will be held under the auspices of the Provincetown Community Compact, which Critchley directs. The first organizational meeting will be on Wednesday, March 11, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the site on Jerome Smith Road. Participants can register at thecompact.org. The installation will be open to the public for 10 days, from April 3 through April 12, including the night or nights of the annual town meeting, which begins Monday, April 6.

    Jay Critchley, AMP
    One of the prints by Jay Critchley in his upcoming show in May at AMP Gallery. Each cow is colored with sand from Critchley’s collection. (Photo courtesy Jay Critchley)

    Critchley has included the VFW project in his “Democracy of the Land” campaign, a subversive twist on Provincetown 400, and added the subtitle “reflections on nature and civic society.” He has two other “Democracy of the Land” art projects unfolding in Provincetown in May: an exhibit at the Fine Arts Work Center and a show of prints at AMP Gallery.

    For the FAWC show, on view May 8 through May 31 and subtitled “The Mayflower Compact Untethered,” Critchley is inviting artists of all media to propose a more “inclusive” compact and to explore decolonization. Applications (at fawc.org) are due by March 27 and should include a budget — some funding may be available.

    The AMP exhibit, which is subtitled “The Moo Moo World,” will feature prints by Critchley of a “re-rooted” cow, an idea that began at a residency he did at Williams College in the ’90s. Each cow print is adorned with sand of unusual hues from exotic locales, part of Critchley’s collection. The cow, he says, is “symbolic of the invasion of Europeans in the Americas and the ecological disaster that followed. Barnyard animals brought diseases,” devastating the indigenous population. The prints are part of a group show at AMP from May 1 through May 23.

    It’s hard to know what the VFW project (unlike the AMP show) will look like. “I’m not orchestrating the project,” Critchley says. “It’s more like baking without a recipe.”

     

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