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Wellfleet Preservation Hall

    GRAVEYARD SHIFT

    The Little-Known Origins of Wellfleet’s French Cemetery

    Acadian and Portuguese immigrants built the town’s first Catholic chapel

    By

    When Father Joseph M. Finotti arrived in Provincetown from Boston in 1852, he was the first priest assigned to minister to the town’s small Catholic population, most of whom were Irish. With a flock not yet large enough to support a priest of its own, the Provincetown mission relied on visiting priests like Father Finotti to offer Mass, hear confessions, and baptize children at their homes.

    His dream that Provincetown might one day become its own parish began to take root in 1854 when he purchased a building on what is now Bradford Street for use as a parish house. It wasn’t a full-fledged church but served the Catholic community well enough until the late 1860s, when Portuguese families began arriving and it became clear a real church was needed. Finotti’s ministry ended in 1860, and it took several more years for his dream to be realized. St. Peter the Apostle Church was consecrated in 1874.

    The grave of Augustine Barrio, first wife of Joseph Barrio (also spelled Berrio), in the French Cemetery is the oldest of all the French Acadian graves in Wellfleet. (Photo by Amy Whorf McGuiggan)

    In Truro and Wellfleet, small Catholic congregations became missions of Provincetown, the priests from St. Peter’s celebrating Masses in private homes. As Truro’s Portuguese population grew, Sacred Heart Church was established in 1895. Provincetown’s young and charismatic pastor, the Rev. Manuel C. Terra, purchased a former school, had it razed, and used the lumber to build the church in Truro Center near where Sacred Heart Cemetery had been laid out several years earlier.

    Born in New Bedford to Azorean parents, the Rev. Fr. Terra had spent time as a boy with his family in the Azores, became fluent in Portuguese, and was able to offer Masses, sacraments, and counsel entirely in the native tongue of his parishioners. A second Catholic church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help (later the Chapel on the Pond and now the Pond Village Community Chapel), was built in North Truro in 1915.

    By 1900, Terra had his eyes on another one-room schoolhouse in Wellfleet. The building, across from Duck Creek Cemetery, was purchased from the town by a Catholic community member and became Wellfleet’s first Catholic church, Our Lady of Lourdes.

    In 1912, the parish built a new church on the town’s Main Street. For a time, the Truro churches became its missions, as the Catholic population in Wellfleet continued to grow.

    The stained-glass window at Wellfleet Preservation Hall honoring Mr. and Mrs. Henry DeLory came from the original Our Lady of Lourdes. It was Henry DeLory who purchased an old schoolhouse from the town in 1900 that became the first chapel. (Photos by Amy Whorf McGuiggan)

    Wellfleet’s Catholic community had its beginnings not with Irish and Portuguese immigrants but with French immigrants from Nova Scotia. Differing culturally from the French colony at Quebec, the French who arrived in Wellfleet beginning in the 1860s were Acadians whose tragic story has been absorbed the world over through Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie.

    In the 1630s, at the same time English Puritans were founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, pioneer farming families from the west coast of France began arriving at Acadia, a large region that included Nova Scotia. There they co-existed with the indigenous Mi’kmaq who lived in upland forests, establishing their farms by using an intricate system of earthen dikes to convert vast areas of tidal salt marsh into nutrient-rich meadows.

    Decades of dynastic conflict between England and France spilled over to North America, where Massachusetts Bay Colony leadership viewed the French Catholics to the north as a threat. They made no secret of their desire to remove the farmers from the land they’d now tended for generations and offer it to Protestant settlers.

    Beginning in 1755 and continuing for nearly a decade, the “Great Upheaval” became a defining event for Acadians. Wrenched from their farms, Acadians were dispersed to America’s East Coast colonies. Destitute and speaking a different language, practicing a different religion, and without their close-knit family structure, the Acadians were shunned and mistreated. A few were eventually allowed to return to Nova Scotia where, in time, they reestablished thriving communities.

    A century after the forced deportations, some arrived in Wellfleet, by then with family names altered or anglicized: Barrio and Berrio (from Barrieau), Boudro (Boudreau), DeLory (Deslauriers), DeCoste (Coste), and Frazier (Fougere).

    In Wellfleet, they found a booming fishing village and its related industries, a place that looked very much like the communities of Havre Boucher and Tracadie in Antigonish County they had come from. Here, the men found employment as boatmen, coopers, fishermen, and oystermen, and the women found work in local households.

    The same year the original Wellfleet church had been established, a small burial ground was laid out adjacent to the Duck Creek Cemetery. Still active and maintained by the diocese, Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery offers a window into Wellfleet’s French immigrants, their large, interrelated families, and their continuing presence in the town.

    The graves, sadly neglected, of Peter Boudro and his wife, Margaret, in the Boudro Cemetery — also known as the French Cemetery — off Cove Road in Wellfleet.

    Seemingly forgotten and sadly neglected is the original French burial ground, a small family plot tucked away among the pines off Cove Road. The French Cemetery, also known as Boudro Cemetery, was established before Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery and is the resting place of two families who lived at the Cove, Peter Boudro (1820-1884) and his wife Margaret (1826-1881); and Joseph Berrio (whose name is spelled Barrio on the marker but Berrio in vital records, 1832-1924) and his two wives, Augustine (1836-1880), whose grave is the earliest of all the French graves, and Elizabeth (1832-1920).

    Much later, the Main Street church fell into disrepair; it closed in 2000, and by 2011, the building had become Wellfleet Preservation Hall, a vibrant community arts center. The local Catholic community worshipped in Eastham until a new Our Lady of Lourdes was dedicated on Route 6 in 2009.

    At Preservation Hall, eight stained-glass windows from the original chapel, reinstalled when that church moved to Main Street, and now well cared for again, pay tribute to the community that was instrumental in establishing Wellfleet’s first Catholic church.

    Of special note are the windows honoring the Rev. Manuel Terra and Mr. and Mrs. Henry DeLory. It was Henry DeLory who, at the behest of Father Terra, had purchased the old schoolhouse from the town in 1900. It was said that he paid $59.

    GRAVEYARD SHIFT

    The Little-Known Origins of Wellfleet’s French Cemetery

    Acadian and Portuguese immigrants built the town’s first Catholic chapel

    By

    When Father Joseph M. Finotti arrived in Provincetown from Boston in 1852, he was the first priest assigned to minister to the town’s small Catholic population, most of whom were Irish. With a flock not yet large enough to support a priest of its own, the Provincetown mission relied on visiting priests like Father Finotti to offer Mass, hear confessions, and baptize children at their homes.

    His dream that Provincetown might one day become its own parish began to take root in 1854 when he purchased a building on what is now Bradford Street for use as a parish house. It wasn’t a full-fledged church but served the Catholic community well enough until the late 1860s, when Portuguese families began arriving and it became clear a real church was needed. Finotti’s ministry ended in 1860, and it took several more years for his dream to be realized. St. Peter the Apostle Church was consecrated in 1874.

    The grave of Augustine Barrio, first wife of Joseph Barrio (also spelled Berrio), in the French Cemetery is the oldest of all the French Acadian graves in Wellfleet. (Photo by Amy Whorf McGuiggan)

    In Truro and Wellfleet, small Catholic congregations became missions of Provincetown, the priests from St. Peter’s celebrating Masses in private homes. As Truro’s Portuguese population grew, Sacred Heart Church was established in 1895. Provincetown’s young and charismatic pastor, the Rev. Manuel C. Terra, purchased a former school, had it razed, and used the lumber to build the church in Truro Center near where Sacred Heart Cemetery had been laid out several years earlier.

    Born in New Bedford to Azorean parents, the Rev. Fr. Terra had spent time as a boy with his family in the Azores, became fluent in Portuguese, and was able to offer Masses, sacraments, and counsel entirely in the native tongue of his parishioners. A second Catholic church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help (later the Chapel on the Pond and now the Pond Village Community Chapel), was built in North Truro in 1915.

    By 1900, Terra had his eyes on another one-room schoolhouse in Wellfleet. The building, across from Duck Creek Cemetery, was purchased from the town by a Catholic community member and became Wellfleet’s first Catholic church, Our Lady of Lourdes.

    In 1912, the parish built a new church on the town’s Main Street. For a time, the Truro churches became its missions, as the Catholic population in Wellfleet continued to grow.

    The stained-glass window at Wellfleet Preservation Hall honoring Mr. and Mrs. Henry DeLory came from the original Our Lady of Lourdes. It was Henry DeLory who purchased an old schoolhouse from the town in 1900 that became the first chapel. (Photos by Amy Whorf McGuiggan)

    Wellfleet’s Catholic community had its beginnings not with Irish and Portuguese immigrants but with French immigrants from Nova Scotia. Differing culturally from the French colony at Quebec, the French who arrived in Wellfleet beginning in the 1860s were Acadians whose tragic story has been absorbed the world over through Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie.

    In the 1630s, at the same time English Puritans were founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, pioneer farming families from the west coast of France began arriving at Acadia, a large region that included Nova Scotia. There they co-existed with the indigenous Mi’kmaq who lived in upland forests, establishing their farms by using an intricate system of earthen dikes to convert vast areas of tidal salt marsh into nutrient-rich meadows.

    Decades of dynastic conflict between England and France spilled over to North America, where Massachusetts Bay Colony leadership viewed the French Catholics to the north as a threat. They made no secret of their desire to remove the farmers from the land they’d now tended for generations and offer it to Protestant settlers.

    Beginning in 1755 and continuing for nearly a decade, the “Great Upheaval” became a defining event for Acadians. Wrenched from their farms, Acadians were dispersed to America’s East Coast colonies. Destitute and speaking a different language, practicing a different religion, and without their close-knit family structure, the Acadians were shunned and mistreated. A few were eventually allowed to return to Nova Scotia where, in time, they reestablished thriving communities.

    A century after the forced deportations, some arrived in Wellfleet, by then with family names altered or anglicized: Barrio and Berrio (from Barrieau), Boudro (Boudreau), DeLory (Deslauriers), DeCoste (Coste), and Frazier (Fougere).

    In Wellfleet, they found a booming fishing village and its related industries, a place that looked very much like the communities of Havre Boucher and Tracadie in Antigonish County they had come from. Here, the men found employment as boatmen, coopers, fishermen, and oystermen, and the women found work in local households.

    The same year the original Wellfleet church had been established, a small burial ground was laid out adjacent to the Duck Creek Cemetery. Still active and maintained by the diocese, Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery offers a window into Wellfleet’s French immigrants, their large, interrelated families, and their continuing presence in the town.

    The graves, sadly neglected, of Peter Boudro and his wife, Margaret, in the Boudro Cemetery — also known as the French Cemetery — off Cove Road in Wellfleet.

    Seemingly forgotten and sadly neglected is the original French burial ground, a small family plot tucked away among the pines off Cove Road. The French Cemetery, also known as Boudro Cemetery, was established before Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery and is the resting place of two families who lived at the Cove, Peter Boudro (1820-1884) and his wife Margaret (1826-1881); and Joseph Berrio (whose name is spelled Barrio on the marker but Berrio in vital records, 1832-1924) and his two wives, Augustine (1836-1880), whose grave is the earliest of all the French graves, and Elizabeth (1832-1920).

    Much later, the Main Street church fell into disrepair; it closed in 2000, and by 2011, the building had become Wellfleet Preservation Hall, a vibrant community arts center. The local Catholic community worshipped in Eastham until a new Our Lady of Lourdes was dedicated on Route 6 in 2009.

    At Preservation Hall, eight stained-glass windows from the original chapel, reinstalled when that church moved to Main Street, and now well cared for again, pay tribute to the community that was instrumental in establishing Wellfleet’s first Catholic church.

    Of special note are the windows honoring the Rev. Manuel Terra and Mr. and Mrs. Henry DeLory. It was Henry DeLory who, at the behest of Father Terra, had purchased the old schoolhouse from the town in 1900. It was said that he paid $59.

    LEARNING

    Nauset Juniors and Seniors Polish Their Portfolios

    Members of an honors class put their creative selves on view

    By

    WELLFLEET — Three vivid works by Nauset Regional High School senior Lily Cianfaglione are on display at Wellfleet Preservation Hall: a painting with gouache, a drawing done with colored pencils, and a drawing with graphite and decorative paper. “I like to experiment with different mediums,” Cianfaglione says. “I’m a painter at heart — mostly gouache — but I like to step out of my comfort zone and use anything with color.”

    Lily Cianfaglione likes to step out of her comfort zone: she’s a painter who is also experimenting with ceramics. (Photos by Agata Storer)

    Cianfaglione is one of 17 students in Nauset’s honors portfolio class. The school offers an array of art classes from ceramics to woodworking, painting, drawing, and printmaking. Taught by Ryan Birchall, the year-long portfolio class is for juniors and seniors with a strong interest in pursuing art after high school.

    Birchall, who lives in Orleans and has been teaching art at the school for 11 years, says the intensive class is intended to help students create and fine-tune their portfolios.

    The students’ work is on view at the hall through March 30. For the show, they chose pieces that they felt best highlighted their styles. A lot of the work was the result of monthly open-ended prompts given in class, Birchall says.

    Joey Smith in front of his drawing that was inspired by Noh, a form of Japanese performance art.

    Joey Smith chose a drawing on sturdy brown paper. “The paper called to me,” Smith says, “because I knew I wanted to do something with white pencil on a dark background.” His work was inspired by Noh, a form of Japanese performance art that includes intricate costumes. “I wanted to show the patterns on the dress, the fan, and the very fancy headpiece,” Smith says. His drawing is shaded impeccably, the folds of the dress falling naturally toward the ground. The piece took “a lot of erasing and trying again,” Smith says. “But it was worth it.” A senior, he hasn’t decided yet what next fall holds; students have until May to make college decisions.

    Saffron Jalbert is another senior in the class. One of her pieces is a photograph: it shows a person clutching a pomegranate, the juice running into her open mouth. “I was thinking of Persephone,” Jalbert says. It has a “seductive element,” she says, “while also looking bloody and gruesome.” While the piece started as a photo, “I felt I wanted more texture in it,” Jalbert says, so she “broke out some bedazzling stuff” and some paint, highlighting certain features on the face and the edges of the work. She glued a white bead over the subject’s tooth, making it boldly three-dimensional.

    Saffron Jalbert with two of her high-energy artworks.

    Jalbert has a hat in the exhibition, too. It is is covered in images from a World War I military book, machine gun shells, and animal print patches. Next year, she’s heading to Savannah College of Art & Design’s Atlanta campus.

    Senior Emily Carr plans to study art history at McGill University in Montreal next fall. She has recently gotten into linework, done in pen and ink. “I feel that paying attention to detail is a way of honoring my work,” she says. Carr is inspired by nostalgia and whimsy, she says, as well as “archetypal imagery,” where certain images are universally understood as symbols for a concept or feeling.

    Carr chose works featuring animals and architecture for the show; one piece is bordered by a medieval-looking hand-drawn frame. Each drawing takes her “a few movies” to complete, she says. She often watches Disney movies while working — sometimes the film will inspire the art, she adds.

    Emily Carr’s pen-and-ink linework drawings are inspired by nostalgia and whimsy.

    In one piece, a pair of hands parts grasses, revealing an elephant at the end of a path. “It’s about exploring, when you’re younger,” Carr says. The hands were drawn from a picture of her own. “When you get older, it’s harder to be in the moment,” she says. The piece represents the feeling of being present.

    Cianfaglione hasn’t decided where she’ll be next fall. Right now, she’s present in her own work. Several of her pieces are self-portraits. “It’s the image I’m most familiar with,” she says. But one of the ceramic pieces she’s showing — “a giant head pot” — is far from an attempt at realism.

    She’s been working with clay for four years, wheel-throwing and hand-building. “I started out thinking everything had to be perfect, precise, and measured,” Cianfaglione says. As she’s grown artistically, she’s begun adding hand-built components to pieces thrown on the wheel to produce something “funky and weird — but still functional,” she says.

    From left, painter Justine Ives with Nauset students Lillian Rego, Hannah Chung, Lillian Peck, and Saffron Jalbert in front of the Funk Bus they helped paint.

    Parked outside the hall was a decorated Funk Bus — a surprise for the March 13 opening of the show, Birchall says. Last October, students in the honors portfolio class collaborated with Funk Bus painter Justine Ives as part of a workshop at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, creating their own stencils and spray-painting the bus. Ives finished it all up over the winter.

     

    Parker Mumford contributed reporting.

    PEACEMAKERS

    Art That Bridges Divides

    An exhibition honors the legacy and vision of Martin Luther King Jr.

    By

    Walking into the current exhibition at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, one is greeted by Jo Hay’s oversize painting of the country’s youngest inaugural poet, Amanda Gorman. On the opposite wall is Sheryl Jaffe’s installation of hanging pods constructed from leaves and other natural materials. The contrast between Hay’s bold, colorful painting and Jaffee’s delicate sculptures is dramatic. It encapsulates the spirit of the show, which trades homogeneity, of artists and aesthetics, for an experience that focuses on inclusion.

    The exhibit was produced by ArtPeace Makers, a local collective that “explores the connections between making art of all kinds and making peace on all levels,” according to a statement on the group’s website. Since 2003, they have been holding shows in Wellfleet to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

    “The show is as much about process and connection as it is about the finished products,” says Sara Blandford, a member of the collective and an organizer of the show. This year, the ArtPeace Makers issued an open call, and the responses came from established artists like Hay and Jaffe but also included works by children and beginners. In the past, iterations of this exhibition have focused solely on children’s artwork. Intergenerational community building is central to their mission, says Blandford.

    Themes of politics, activism, and history are obvious in some of the work, such as Robin Joyce Miller’s Homage to John Brown. Miller plays with the convention of a school bulletin board in a busy composition that incorporates text, historical images, and three-dimensional objects like chains and handcuffs.

    In Amy St. John Ramsdell’s graphic painting Daily Affirmations, the phrase “Love Hard, Fight Racism!” fills the composition. The graphic quality of the text and the bright yellow background reference signs one might see at a demonstration, but here the textured surface underneath the image slows down a quick reading.

    Daily Affirmations by Amy St. John Ramsdell. (Photos by Abraham Storer)

    Abby Fay Smith also begins with a graphic language typical of protest art. In her mixed-media piece Shoot From the Hip, an acrylic and silkscreen picture of a woman (perhaps a teacher) shows her clutching herself, surrounded by stars and six stylized heads peeking over desks. Two guns frame the scene.

    Shoot From the Hip by Abby Fay Smith.

    Smith, who works in a studio in Barnstable, employs various materials and visual strategies to position this work within the tradition of protest art: the use of silkscreen, often adopted to widely disseminate political imagery; a central, heroic figure; the color red, typically associated with revolutionary struggles. The cluster of shredded denim strips at the bottom of the composition is less politically legible, however, and shifts the artwork into a territory of greater intrigue as both an art object and a social statement.

    Current events bubble to the surface in a few of the works on display. In a 3D assemblage created this past summer, Dawn McKenzie depicts Kamala Harris walking out of the White House, striding confidently with her hand raised high. The shrubbery in the scene is made of dried lichen. Other works reference the ongoing conflict in Palestine and Israel, including a folksy painting by Farrukh Najmi titled Where Olive Trees Weep and a gestural, mixed-media painting with the word “peace” written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English by Harriet Korim.

    Will We Ever Be Ready? by Dawn McKenzie.

    Korim made her image during an earlier Middle East crisis, but it resonates with the present situation. It represents not only the ongoing, cyclical nature of the conflict but also Korim’s dedication to peacemaking and activism. She founded ArtPeace Makers in 1984. Its first public program was an all-ages “Art for Peace” exhibit following a traditional Quaker vigil in front of Wellfleet Town Hall to mark the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Since then, the group has held meditative walks, vigils, kids’ art-making projects, and exhibitions addressing issues such as human rights, anti-racism, and environmentalism.

    This year, to honor Martin Luther King Jr., the group will lead a ceremony on Monday, Jan. 20 with drumming, songs from the Civil Rights movement, and some short remarks followed by a silent walk to Wellfleet Preservation Hall, where participants can view the exhibition from noon to 1 p.m. and hear recorded speeches by King, which will be broadcast in a meditative listening space.

    A Quiet Desperation by Laurence Young.

    In connection with the theme of MLK Day, a number of works directly address the African-American experience, including some striking portraits. Hay’s piece, rendered in swirling gestures with thick paint, celebrates Gorman as belonging to a long line of African Americans contributing to literary culture. In Laurence Young’s painting A Quiet Desperation, a black man in a stark environment gazes downward. Jackie Reeves’s painting Daughter, Sister, Mother honors a Black woman for her dedication to family. It’s a striking image painted on fabric. The material bleeds out, its ephemeral effect tempered by a sharpness in lines defining the face. The woman looks directly at the viewer, confident and kind.

    Daughter, Sister, Mother by Jackie Reeves.

    Other works in the exhibition are less overt in how they address sociopolitical themes. Elspeth Slayter is represented by two small abstractions that embody a tension between light and dark colors. Jaffe’s airy and poetic installation Gathering Hope II uses corn husks, fish bones, banana stalks, and wisteria threads to create pods punctured with spiky branches that stretch outward. The pods sway gently, suggesting a sense of safety and comfort despite their fragility. According to an exhibition statement, the installation was created to honor the life of Delilah Sampson Gibbs, a healer and midwife who was considered in local lore to be the last Wampanoag woman who lived in Wellfleet.

    Gathering Hope II, detail, by Sheryl Jaffe.

    The variety in the exhibition represents the possibilities inherent in art — whether it’s the materiality of a piece or what it communicates to a viewer. Korim and Blandford appreciate art for its ability to unite people without off-putting rhetoric or the baggage of language.

    “Art is innately a way to bridge divides between people and approach the social problems we face without being boring or turning people off,” says Korim. “Our hearts are moved.”

    Martin Luther King’s Legacy

    The event: ArtPeace Makers community art exhibition
    The time: Through Feb. 4; MLK Day silent walk and gathering, 11 a.m., Monday, Jan. 20
    The place: Walk begins at Wellfleet Town Hall at 11:30; gathering at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 355 Main St., at noon
    The cost: Free

    AFFORDABLE HOUSING

    Wall-Raising Set for 4 Habitat Homes in Wellfleet

    Despite increased earning limit for participants, fewer vie for deed-restricted deals

    By

    This article was updated on Oct. 18, 2024 with new dates for the community kickoff and wall-raising.

    WELLFLEET — The winners of a lottery to become owners of four affordable houses to be built by Habitat for Humanity on Old Kings Highway were selected early last month. A community kickoff to meet the winning families, whose names have not yet been made public, has been scheduled for 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23 at Wellfleet Preservation Hall.

    The Habitat for Humanity site off Old Kings Highway is ready for construction, with foundations poured and tool sheds standing at the ready. (Photo by Parker Mumford)

    The four homes — two 972-square-foot two-bedroom houses and two 1,200-square-foot three-bedroom houses — will be built on land the town acquired in 2008 and transferred to the housing authority in 2013. The nine-year-long permitting process was delayed by three lawsuits before it was finalized last summer.

    One of Habitat’s requirements for prospective homeowners is the ability to assist in the house’s construction. Starting with a “wall-raising” ceremony set for 8 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2, all four families will work with AmeriCorps volunteers to begin building their new homes, said Kathleen Nagle, a Habitat volunteer. The construction is expected to take up to a year, she said.

    Although some property owners in the neighborhood fought the project in court, at least one couple among the abutters has volunteered to assist with the construction, said Nagle, and others are raising money to hire Harwich-based ecological restoration company BlueFlax Design to do landscaping around the site.

    The homes will be deed-restricted. In this case the initial owners can earn no more than 80 percent of area median income (AMI) for two of the homes — one three-bedroom and one two-bedroom — and no more than 60 percent of AMI for the remaining two. Resale is restricted to keep the properties affordable for future owners, who would have to qualify under income guidelines. Preference for local applicants was given for two of the four houses.

    According to the Mass. Housing Partnership, Barnstable County’s AMI for a family of four is currently $126,650; 80 percent of that is $101,300 and 60 percent is $75,990.

    There were 50 applicants for the four houses, said Tara Cronin, Habitat’s director of resource development, but only 14 qualified for the lottery, which required being first-time home buyers and being able to make monthly housing payments of $1,063 to $1,582.

    Those who qualified had a 28-percent chance of winning. In Provincetown’s latest affordable-homeownership lottery, in which a single one-bedroom condo was sold, 25 of 27 applicants qualified, and there was a 4-percent chance of winning.

    Cronin said that Habitat’s strict criteria may be partially to blame for the low number of applicants. “It can be very daunting to work multiple jobs and find the energy to fill out such a long application,” she said. The application is 22 pages long.

    Applicants are also interviewed in their homes by Habitat volunteers to ensure that they will honor their financial obligations and participate in the house’s construction. They must document “great or compelling or severe need” for affordable housing, according to Habitat family programs manager Mary Ann Mills-Lassiter.

    Another possible reason for the low number of eligible applicants is that Habitat’s desire to provide homes for families clashes with its income standard, said Jay Coburn, president of the Community Development Partnership. “They are looking for families or households with three or more people,” he said. “If you have two income earners, the family likely makes too much money to qualify.”

    “While you say that 4 out of 14 is good odds, it still leaves 2 out of every 3 applicants without a home,” Nagle wrote in an email. “It’s difficult to justify wanting to open the pool to be larger.”

    In 2022, Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod raised its maximum income standard from 65 percent of AMI to 80 percent. It was a change that Wellfleet’s affordable housing trust, local housing partnership, and housing authority had asked for.

    Habitat President Wendy Cullinan said those earning between 65 percent and 80 percent represent the “missing middle.”

    Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod has a covenant with Habitat for Humanity International to uphold the parent organization’s core values. The covenant stipulates that the affiliate will serve families that earn less than 60 percent of AMI and will not serve families that earn more than 80 percent. Originally, the Cape Cod affiliate enforced a 65-percent limit, but in 2022 it moved the upper limit to 80 percent.

    But the increased income limit hasn’t resulted in a larger applicant pool. Cronin said that the organization received 51 applications for two homes built on Durkee Lane in Wellfleet in 2019 — one more than the number of applicants received this year with the more generous income standard. In 2019, as in 2024, 14 applicants qualified for the lottery.

    Cronin and Nagle both worry that the numbers suggest that potential low-income applicants have moved away from Cape Cod between 2019 and 2024. Cronin noted that 6 of the 14 eligible applicants for the houses on Old Kings Highway made between 60 and 80 percent of AMI.

    According to the Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors, the year-to-date median sales price of single-family homes in Wellfleet was $902,000 as of August 2024. “The struggle for local families to work and live on the Cape is just getting harder and harder,” Cronin said.

    The first Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod house to use the revised income standard was built on Phoebe Way in Brewster earlier this year. According to Cronin, the first person to qualify for housing under the new standard was a nurse working for Cape Cod Healthcare.

    “It illustrates why we need to help and keep those making under 80 percent AMI here,” she said.

    SING OUT

    Mozelle Andrulot Comes Full Circle

    The Cape Cod crooner makes time for family, a corporate job, and a swinging jazz career

    By

    It isn’t much of a surprise to learn that Mozelle Andrulot was a musical child. “My mother said that I didn’t talk at first — I sang everything,” she says. “Even when I was nursing, I’d be humming. She always knew that I was going to be a singer.”

    Mozelle Andrulot will perform at Wellfleet Preservation Hall on Aug. 17. (Photos by Joe Navas)

    Andrulot’s ties to the Outer Cape run deep. She says that her father had been invited to Provincetown to play conga drums at a party and first saw her mother when he was walking past Provincetown Town Hall. “My mother was stunning,” says Andrulot. “He was like, ‘Who’s that?’ ” Her parents moved to Key West — where Andrulot was born — and performed as street musicians. “I always joke that I held the hat,” says Andrulot. “My mother’s like, ‘No, you didn’t. And that’s not funny.’ ”

    As a young girl, she bought a record of Billie Holiday’s greatest hits. The songs were sad, says Andrulot. “But they didn’t make me feel sad. They made me feel deeply. I was nine years old, singing, ‘My Man’s Gone Now.’ ” Holiday’s songs were in her range, too — Andrulot’s voice, warm and smooth, is relatively low. “I didn’t know it then,” she says, “but I was building my repertoire for now.”

    On Saturday, Aug. 17, Andrulot will perform some of that repertoire in a concert at Wellfleet Preservation Hall accompanied by the Mike Flanagan Trio. “It’ll be a mix of jazz ballads, some blues, some Sinatra” — whatever the band likes, she says. “I trust Mike so much that he calls the songs. He knows what I want to do.”

    Trust is essential when playing music with others, says Andrulot. “I need to feel safe to venture out, to riff. I need to know that if I do something I don’t normally do, they’ll catch me in the melody when I return.” That trust also leads to the moments of person-to-person musical reciprocity she so loves: the feeling that performer and audience are sharing an ephemeral experience.

    Andrulot’s parents split up not long after their move to Key West. Her mother moved back to the Cape and settled at the Penny House Inn in Eastham (now the Rugosa). Andrulot attended Eastham Elementary.

    “I can remember getting on the bus and arriving at that school, and I was the only Black person in the whole entire school,” says Andrulot. Things are different now, she says, for her five children, who range in age from 10 to 16 and include a set of twins.

    “Jazz is about trust and freedom,” says Andrulot, who frequently collaborates with Mike Flanagan.

    Throughout school, Andrulot sang in choruses, performed in musicals, and sought out talent shows. “Cut to high school,” says Andrulot. “I sang the National Anthem for all of the games.” She grew to love it, she says, and the powerful emotions it evokes. “I sing it in its purest form. I try not to jazz it up too much.”

    Instead of pursuing a degree in music performance, Andrulot earned a liberal arts degree from Lesley University in Cambridge. (“I know a little about a lot of things,” she says.) After college, she moved to London, where she recorded a demo album and, she says, “dipped my foot into the possibility of music being a career.” When she moved back stateside to New York City, she found a very different creative scene than the one she had encountered in London. “It was creepy,” she says. “Like, ‘Come with me and I’ll make you famous’-type vibes. I was like, ‘You haven’t even heard me sing yet, so I’m not going anywhere with you!’ ”

    Her joy in music was never dependent on anyone else, she says. “My goal was never fame or recognition. It was a way to express myself,” she says. “I carry this instrument around with me at all times. No one can take that away from me.”

    Andrulot returned to the Outer Cape and built a home in Wellfleet with her husband, who she’d known in high school. They had five children in six years. “When I say that, my eyes start twitching,” says Andrulot. “I can’t even believe it’s true.” Eventually, she says, “I realized I was doing everything by myself.” She divorced her partner, got a job bartending at Blackfish in Truro, then ran the Inn at Duck Creeke in Wellfleet for five years.

    On her own for the first time in 11 years, she says, “I had to reinvent myself.” She moved to Orleans and began working remotely in a corporate job — executive assistant to a senior vice president at PepsiCo. It was time to reconnect with her performing identity — something she says she had suppressed for too long.

    Andrulot met Provincetown-based Flanagan during the pandemic. While most of the performances they planned would be canceled because of Covid restrictions, they managed to maintain a recurring gig performing for people waiting in line at PB Boulangerie.

    “From then on, he’s been who I call if I need a piano player,” says Andrulot. Likewise, Flanagan, who often performs at the Post Office Café and Tin Pan Alley in Provincetiwn, calls Andrulot if he needs a singer. Through Flanagan, Andrulot has built a network of musicians with whom she regularly collaborates, including Zoë Lewis, Sarah Swain, and Fred Boyle.

    Andrulot’s music career came full circle last summer when she sang with the Cape Cod Symphony at the outdoor amphitheater in Eastham — a place where she used to stand as a child, pretending to perform. Her performance included the song “At Last,” made famous by Etta James.

    It was an “out of body experience,” she says: “It took me back to when I was a little girl in my room, listening to the song for the first time.”

    Summertime Jazz

    The event: Mozelle Andrulot in concert with the Mike Flanagan Trio
    The time: Saturday, Aug. 17, 6 p.m.
    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
    The cost: $30 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org

    Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Aug. 15, incorrectly credited the photographs of Mozelle Andrulot and Mike Flanagan. They are by Joe Navas.

    MOVIES

    Building Community One Movie and Cup of Coffee at a Time

    A three-month internship aims to lure new audiences to Wellfleet Preservation Hall

    By

    On a recent Tuesday morning at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 20-year-old intern Mia Lima made sure the coffee and water were hot and plentiful and plates of donated homemade snacks were full. A local political group met at a table in the main room. A writer worked in a quiet zone on the stage, and visitors ordered snacks to go.

    Mia Lima of Wellfleet, the first Step Up Intern at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, has run the hall’s off-season morning coffee bar and will host a four-week movie series aimed at drawing in new audiences. (Photo by Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll)

    As she had been on Tuesdays and Thursdays since February, Lima was ready at the coffee bar with a smile and thank-yous for regulars and newcomers. The donation-based café, set up while other in-town bakeries were closed, has been a main project for the hall’s first intern in a new project called Step Up to help broaden the uses and audiences for the cultural and community center.

    That’s also an aim for an upcoming spring movie series. While the coffee bar will close after May 4, Lima’s four-Tuesday series is just starting: The Birdcage, the 1996 musical comedy starring Nathan Lane and Robin Williams, will be screened on May 2 at 6 p.m.

    Lima says that’s the first film she saw after moving to Wellfleet from Haiti at age 10 to live with Ellen LeBow and Seth Rolbein, who became her godparents, guardians, and family here.

    “Even though I didn’t understand much of the language, I could get the humor in it,” she says. “I think it’s also the first movie I saw with LGBTQ representation. That is looked down upon in my culture, and it’s something I had to get used to when I moved here. It was one of the cultural shifts I experienced.”

    The other movies in the series — The Way We Were, Top Gun, and The Fabelmans — seem like unusual choices for a Gen Z arts intern until you know their meaning in Lima’s life.

    The Way We Were, screening on May 9, is a film Lima saw while waiting for her visa. It taught her some history of her new country, including political activism and anti-Semitism. She said she chose Top Gun, which is screening on May 23, after a college friend persuaded her to see it.
    But it was the more recent film The Fabelmans (screening May 16), Steven Spielberg’s ode to his own family and formative days as a filmmaker, that spoke to Lima most. For five years, she was part of the Young Company at Brewster’s Cape Rep Theatre, working both on stage and behind the scenes, and has since contemplated the possibility of a future as a performer.

    “It was cool to watch somebody else’s journey into a dream that they’d had since they were a kid,” says Lima of the film. Seeing how others “get there” is especially interesting, she says.

    Lima will introduce each film with her backstory and says she hopes her picks will speak to all ages. She says she learned English in part through watching movies.

    Lima’s three months of part-time work is part of an effort by Preservation Hall’s new executive director, Kathy Fletcher, to expand audiences. The internship program is the first one to be offered during the off-season, and Fletcher says it’s designed to teach “emerging, underserved arts professionals” about opportunities in nonprofit arts administration and “the transformational power of the arts and community.”

    While young people like Lima add “vibrant energy” to an organization, says Fletcher, she also sees the internships as a way to help Outer Cape residents from Lima’s generation. People in early adulthood “have really struggled in the past few years, particularly on the heels of Covid,” she says.
    Lima, a budding performer, seemed a perfect choice for the program. During the years that LeBow and Rolbein were helping Lima immigrate with Hernitte Riviere, her young aunt, LeBow was very much involved in the formation of Wellfleet Preservation Hall. The two girls, who grew up as sisters, spent a lot of time there. Her familiarity with the hall enabled Lima to shape the internship with her own ideas about what might expand its appeal to younger people.

    That and the fact that “she’s a go-getter and team player,” says events manager Alex Sesentón.

    The interns “have been able to jump right in and really make a difference,” Fletcher says.

    Emeline Dickinson, also of Wellfleet, started as a second intern in March and plans to create a pop-up flower shop.

    Fletcher hoped Lima’s coffee bar would be a gift to year-rounders and a new way to use the hall as a gathering space. Director of programming Emily Henderson helped Lima line up the movie series, and other youth outreach efforts include plans to have Lima visit Nauset Regional High School, her alma mater, to talk about opportunities at the hall.

    “There are a lot of kids at Nauset and on the Cape who do visual art, music, dance, and theater. I think it would be nice for them to have a place outside of school to do it,” Lima says. “We want them to know Preservation Hall exists. I’m not sure how many of them do,” she adds. She hopes the movie series might bring some first-time visitors.

    The internship has also helped Lima think about how her life might evolve.
    It’s good to get an idea of where an arts career could go in the future, says Lima. “I could see myself doing arts and nonprofit work … when I stop performing.”

    Movies at the Hall

    The event: Spring movie series hosted by Mia
    The time: Tuesdays beginning May 2, 6 p.m.
    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
    The cost: $12 (free for students under 21); see wellfleetpreservationhall.org for information

    CELEBRATIONS

    Leading With Warmth

    Janet Lesniak, Wellfleet Preservation Hall’s first executive director, retires

    By

    WELLFLEET — Even before this town’s Preservation Hall officially opened its carved and painted doors in 2011, its mission was to be, above all, a welcoming place. And when its founders — this writer included — met Janet Lesniak we knew she was the person to make it just that.

    “She was one of the warmest, most nurturing people I’d ever met,” says Marla Rice, who in 2006 with Anne Suggs and me started working on what would become a movement to create the hall as a community gathering place.

    Main Street had nearly lost the building, a former Catholic church, to neglect. And the place was slated to become a drive-through bank at one point in the town’s search for a viable taker.

    “We had watched the post office go, and the drugstore, and the Newsdealer,” says Rice. But to make a better vision work, she says, “We needed someone who could believe in that — not just someone ready to build a music venue or a theater space or an arts center.”

    A portrait of Janet Lesniak by Ellen LeBow, from her 2017 Wellfleetians series.

    “The challenge of it,” as Lesniak remembers the offer to become Wellfleet Preservation Hall’s first executive director in 2011, was “Let’s grow this thing and see what happens.”

    What has happened is a lot: concerts and art exhibitions, readings and screenings, classes and parties — hundreds of events a year. “I’ve realized I enjoy birthing things,” Lesniak says.

    Now, after 11½ years as the hall’s public face, she says she is ready to retire.

    Looking back, Lesniak realizes it took some bravery to take on a nascent institution with an as-yet-unformed trajectory, one bound to be dependent on the community’s imagination and good will to blossom into something enduring.

    “She didn’t have exactly the nonprofit leadership experience we might have been looking for,” says Rice, “But she had been a social worker and then she had been a part of a family business. She had a deep understanding of the importance of a sense of place.”

    What Lesniak remembers was that “so much love and attention and money had gone into making this beautiful building into a work of art and now was the time to figure out what to do inside it.”

    The job rooted Lesniak here in a way she had resisted for a few years before she took it on. Her family’s business was the Big Sur River Inn in California. In 2008, she and husband Paul Lesniak felt it might be time to live closer to their grown children on this side of the continent.

    They chose to settle in Wellfleet, where Paul had summered since childhood. But for Janet, it was not an easy decision. She found herself flying back and forth between the inn and Wellfleet until her 98-year-old stepfather told her to cut it out. “You’ve got to pick a side,” he told her. So, she did.

    Wellfleet offered something she and Paul had been looking for, a community small enough to be intimate, broad enough to be interesting, beautiful enough to calm the pangs of missing Big Sur, and engaged enough to make their natural talents relevant.

    “When we first moved into our house, we kept getting invitations from Nauset Newcomers for activities that sounded fun,” Lesniak remembers, until it dawned on her, “I didn’t want to be a ‘newcomer’ — at least not forever.”

    Lesniak found herself offering advice to Gigi Ledkovsky, who was preparing to coordinate weddings at the hall. “We did lots of weddings at the inn,” says Lesniak. But it was at a meeting with the hall’s programming committee that she felt the pull of the place. “I saw all this beautiful creativity, and I thought, maybe I could be the person to harness some of that,” she remembers.

    “There’s nothing quite like the beginning of something,” says Vanessa Downing, Preservation Hall’s managing director, who also joined the staff in that first year. For eight years, Lesniak and Downing shared an office no bigger than a walk-in closet. Together they built the anatomy of the venue from bookkeeping to bookings. “But,” Downing adds, “there was also magic in it. We’d be at an event we’d put together, like the sold-out first film festival with all the wires taped to the floor, and it would feel kind of magical. We’d say, ‘Wow! We’re onto something. Isn’t this great?’

    “People would come in with things they wanted to do,” Downing remembers. “And Janet, naturally warm and friendly, would make them feel not only comfortable but heard.”

    Emily Kelly-Joseph, Preservation Hall’s special projects coordinator, agrees. She remembers watching Lesniak look at artwork brought in by the young granddaughter of a volunteer. She studied the works with interest. “She makes time for people in a genuine way,” says Kelly-Joseph.

    Preservation Hall has just made an offer to a prospective new executive director, Kathy Fletcher, who moved to Wellfleet in 2019 with her husband, David Simpson. Fletcher has worked for the last three years as executive director of Silkroad, a Boston-based nonprofit founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma to bring together musicians and musical traditions from all over the world. Previously, she was the national director for Turnaround Arts from 2011 to 2019 in Washington, D.C., which started as a performing arts program created by Michelle Obama.

    Lesniak is pleased about the prospect of Fletcher joining the hall. “I’m really excited to see what happens,” she says. She likes the fact that Fletcher’s creative connections extend beyond Wellfleet. She knows Fletcher. “When she says she’s going to do something,” Lesniak adds, “it happens.”

    Lesniak is eager to resume her own creative pursuits that were sidelined by a demanding job. She is an encaustic artist, a yoga enthusiast, and, she says, “I bought a map of the United States yesterday.” She and her husband have a camper. “We plan to head south, then take a right, and see what happens.”

    Meanwhile, her personal hopes in the short run are simple. First, she admits, “I just want to know I can have coffee in the morning without checking the time every 10 seconds.” And second, she’s looking forward to attending an event at the hall without having to worry if the projector is going to work — or at least, to knowing that “I’m not going to be the one to have to fix it!”

    Bring Dancing Shoes 

    The event: A Toast to Janet
    The time: Friday, Nov. 11, 6 to 8 p.m.
    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
    The cost: $100, $150, and $200 to launch the Lesniak Community Fund

    and

    The event: More dancing, with the Rip It Ups
    The time: Saturday, Nov. 12, 7 to 10 p.m.
    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
    The cost: Free

    BOOK REVIEW

    A Clear-Eyed History of a Collective Bacchanal

    Ike Williams navigates The Shores of Bohemia

    By

    The history of the Outer Cape is notable. This narrow strip of sand has hosted wave after wave of wanderers and settlers who, since the “first encounter” with the Nauset people in what is now Eastham, called it a welcome haven. At the start of the 20th century, it became the gathering place of a cluster of “Bohemians.” The term refers not so much to those who arrived from Bohemia as those who came from Greenwich Village or the outskirts — often elegant — of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Playwrights, painters, architects, and writers thronged to Provincetown, Truro, and Wellfleet, and The Shores of Bohemia, published last month by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, chronicles their arrival and their stay.

    John Taylor “Ike” Williams. (Photo courtesy Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

    Its author, John Taylor Williams (known almost universally as “Ike”), is the perfect privileged witness to this story, and he tells it well. From 1910 to 1960, these shores hosted a clan of creative personalities whose careers are nearly synonymous with the cultural reach of “the American Century.” There were artists here before 1910, and there are artists here today, but Williams focuses on that half century as a kind of microcosm and emblem of the whole. He shows them, warts and all.

    The list of celebrated names is long. “Before he closed his village bookstore, the Parnassus, and moved full-time to Provincetown,” Williams writes, “[Frank] Shay left several legacies: the first the thickly inscribed door to his 4 Christopher Street bookstore, which … bears the signatures of 242 writers, poets, playwrights, and postwar luminaries, including Sherwood Anderson, Floyd Dell, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Susan Glaspell, Josephine Herbst, Harry Kemp, Sinclair Lewis, Robert Nathan, Upton Sinclair, John Sloan, Mary Heaton Vorse, and William Zorach.” Add Eugene O’Neill, Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, and a host of others to the honor roll, and you have some sense of how extensive was the gathering that comprised, as in the book’s subtitle, “A Cape Cod Story.”

    The Shores of Bohemia depicts the artists, writers, and intellectuals of early 20th-century Outer Cape Cod, warts and all.

    It was true as well for painters and architects. Helen Frankenthaler, Dorothy Lake Gregory, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Wolf Kahn, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollack all arrived on the scene, as did the Bauhaus architects Marcel Breuer, Serge Chermayeff, Walter Gropius, and Eero Saarinen. Two of the principal players are John (“Jack”) Phillips, who took center stage in last year’s memoir, Upper Bohemia, by his daughter Hayden Herrera, and John (“Jack”) Hall, the author’s former father-in-law.

    There were multiple marriages, multiple affairs, almost obligatory skinny-dipping and wife-or-partner swapping. During Prohibition and on either side of it, there was prodigious drinking, dancing, and alcohol-fueled rage. These people worked hard and played harder, and the portrait Williams paints of them is not always flattering; there was collateral damage in the younger generation and jealousy, both personal and professional, throughout. “Always lurking in this highly charged bohemian circle was an underlying tension based on either dangerous liaisons or unsettled intellectual battles,” Williams observes.

    Still, the overarching feel of this account is celebratory and respectful; the author watches from a calm remove while his characters cavort. There were overt gay and lesbian couples and collectives, and such figures as Tennessee Williams and Paul Cadmus play their parts. Dwight MacDonald, Alfred Kazin, and a host of political pundits would argue ideology before stripping down to swim on the beach at Newcomb Hollow or in the kettle ponds.

    A valuable component of the narrative is worth dwelling on. Throughout The Shores of Bohemia we are reminded of what is happening elsewhere, both in America and abroad. From John Reed, Emma Goldman, and Max Eastman in the time of the Russian Revolution to the various Cape Codders implicated in the “Red scare” and accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee, there was constant interaction with the issues of the day. Williams writes of the Great Depression, the New Deal, the figures of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and how these artists dealt with them, either admiringly or in opposition. He situates these private people in the public arena. Their friendships and love affairs did not exist in vacuo, and we are constantly reminded — even while they withdraw from it — of the way these celebrants related to the world. Chapter titles including “The Masses,” “The War to End All Wars,” “The Jazz Age,” “The Popular Front,” and “The Crimes of Stalin” underscore this aspect of “A Cape Cod Story,” proving that no man is an island, even if he takes a ferry or, driving, crosses a bridge.

    Still, the focus of this well-researched account is on the wharfs of Provincetown, the parties on the seashore, and the homes in Truro or on Wellfleet’s Bound Brook Island. The men are mostly broad-shouldered and tall, the women lithe and lovely, and they raise their glasses and bottles together in a collective bacchanal. Robert Browning wrote in “Home Thoughts From Abroad”: “Oh, to be in England/ Now that April’s there….” Ike Williams’s The Shores of Bohemia offers another geography, but substitute “Cape Cod” for “England” and the sentiment’s the same. His book is filled with anecdote and detail, both clear-eyed and nostalgic, and anyone who reads it will likely share that yearning for a place still present and a time gone by.

    Nicholas Delbanco is the author of 31 books. His most recent novel is It Is Enough; his most recent work of nonfiction, Why Writing Matters, was reviewed in the Independent on April 28. He and his wife, Elena, live in Wellfleet.

    Bohemian Rhapsodizing
    The event: A conversation with Ike Williams, Nicholas Delbanco, and Ed Miller
    The time: Thursday, June 23, 5 p.m.
    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
    The cost: $40 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org

    RESTORATION

    Preservation Hall’s Doors Have Come Home

    ‘Strange but magical,’ they embody stories of escape and renewal

    By

    WELLFLEET — As you walk down Main Street, past quaint shops with nautical-themed signs, you might be stopped in your tracks by the sight of the doors at Wellfleet Preservation Hall. The striking figures carved on them stand out against an intense blue background — stylized figures in gold, silver-white, bright greens, and deep reds.

    The motifs aren’t the usual New England decorations of sailboats and marshes, says Wellfleet artist Ellen LeBow. “The doors represent Wellfleet in a different way,” she says. “They’re deceptively simplified pictures of Mary, God, angels, and saints” To her, the doors are “magical.”

    Biblical stories, told by an outsider artist. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    LeBow is one of a small group of residents who first envisioned giving new life to the building that had once been Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The fact that the doors remained even when the building had been abandoned and was falling down is part of what makes them important, she says. And when the building was renovated to become Preservation Hall in 2011, the doors became symbolic of that spirit of renewal.

    The doors were put back in place on April 26 after being restored by Wellfleet conservator Debra Dickinson. As soon as they were removed two months earlier to go to Dickinson’s workshop, Preservation Hall Director Janet Lesniak started to get calls: “When will the doors be back?”

    The doors have been a landmark in Wellfleet since they were first created 46 years ago, LeBow says. Local families use them to mark their kids’ heights. Those same kids come home to the Cape to use them as the background for their wedding photos. When they have kids, they point to the doors as a way to tell Bible stories, LeBow says.

    Mark Gabriele first came across the “strange but magical” doors as a teenager on summer vacation in 1977, just a year after they were originally installed. “I wrote about them in my journal,” says Gabriele. “They had an impact on me.” Some 25 years later, he returned to live in Wellfleet and started looking into who carved and painted the doors.

    His research became a long-term project involving cross-country travel, finding letters, and delving into newspaper archives. Ten years later, Gabriele is still learning about the itinerant artists Johnathan Kendall and Charles McLeod.

    The pair had skipped bail in California and headed east, driving across a country that was busy preparing for the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence: planting trees, preserving historical documents, and preparing festivities. Father Jude Morgan, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Wellfleet, wanted to take part in the effort by sprucing up the church. The timing was perfect for Kendall and McLeod who, having landed in Wellfleet, agreed to carve the church’s doors in exchange for being allowed to pitch a tent behind the rectory for the summer, Gabriele says.

    They didn’t stay in town long. “It’s funny and fascinating,” says Gabriele. “They came here on the run. They started carving. They wanted to get everything straightened out and, before you know it, their cover was blown. They had to run again.”

    The recently restored doors at Wellfleet Preservation Hall were carved and painted by Johnathan Kendall and Charles McLeod when the building was Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    Kendall traveled across the country for decades, caught in a cycle of lawbreaking, running away, and making artworks to repay people who were willing to post bail for him. Sometimes he was joined by creative partners like McLeod. Another partner was John Kreyche, whom he married. “It was one of the first gay union ceremonies ever,” Gabriele says, “in Tucson, circa 1986.”

    Kendall died at age 65 in New Mexico. Gabriele’s research resulted in a 2007 exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in which various threads from Kendall’s life story were woven together.

    People who knew Kendall often described him as volatile or unstable, Gabriele says, “but a lot of people respected him and his talent. He could sit down and discipline himself artistically, creating some very large and beautiful pieces. He was an outsider artist, and all he really wanted to do was carve.”

    Most of Kendall’s art was religious, and after seeing many of his works in different settings across the country, Gabriele noticed that many pieces depicted scenes from the story of Jonah and the Whale.

    “Jonah was trying to escape his destiny,” Gabriele says. “Maybe that resonated with him.”

    In 1987, when the church’s new pastor, Bernard Kelly, considered replacing the doors because he didn’t appreciate their misshapen angels and gnarled saints, his parishioners resisted. The story made the front page of the Cape Cod Times. (Kelly later made his own headlines when, in 2003, during an investigation into his relationship with a murder suspect, it was discovered that he had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars in church funds in both Wellfleet and Falmouth.)

    Local restorer Debra Dickinson removed rot, replaced wood, and matched the original colors of the doors during restoration. (Photo courtesy Debra Dickinson)

    In 2000, when the Diocese of Fall River decided to close the building and sell it, many items of church property, such as the pews, went up for sale. Parishioners again insisted that the doors not be removed from the building.

    “The fact that the community did not want to see these doors gone is such a wonderful, quintessential Wellfleet story,” Debra Dickinson says.

    Her restoration process took longer than expected because preserving wood is tricky, especially if the wood is highly porous, roughly carved, and unprimed. That was the case with Kendall’s work. The challenge is greater if the wood is exposed to the elements, Dickinson says.

    With careful attention and practiced technique, and an assist from her daughter, Emeline, after a process Dickinson calls “part detective work and part balancing act,” the doors now reflect the original artists’ intent and colors.

    Dickinson aims to retain the character that comes with age while ensuring the doors are adequately protected. This was done by removing rot, treating existing wood, replacing lost wood, replacing any newer colors with original colors, and applying a protective exterior sealant.

    “The doors represent the spirit of Wellfleet that made the arduous process rewarding,” Dickinson says. “I was preserving a piece of the town.”

    EXHIBITIONS

    Portrait of an Artist on Fire

    Richard Neal unleashes his experimental side in small works

    By

    Richard Neal’s show at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, running through March 29, takes its title from an English colloquialism and album by The Who.

    “Odds and Sods” are 20 small works — bits and pieces that the painter says don’t fit in with his larger oeuvre. The show is curated by Michelle Law, exhibitions specialist at the Cotuit Center for the Arts.

    Richard Neal blends in with a work in progress. (Photo by André van der Wende)

    “They’re these little mish-moshy things,” says Neal from the space that he shares with John Cira in the Old Schoolhouse Art Studios in Barnstable Village. “They’re almost like sketches. I learn from them.”

    Born in Washington, D.C., Neil has been a mainstay of contemporary art on the Cape since he arrived here 40 years ago, the last 12 working out of the Old Schoolhouse building. Before that, he earned a B.F.A from UMass Dartmouth and an M.F.A from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.

    When he’s not busy designing and building theater sets at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, Neal works on large mixed-media paintings that take advantage of his studio’s tall ceilings and north-facing windows, from which one can catch a glimpse of Cape Cod Bay.

    Some of Neal’s “burning house” paintings. (Photo by André van der Wende)

    Lining the studio walls are some of his large “burning house” paintings — a series depicting the skeletal frame of a house engulfed in flames — including a massive canvas covered in repurposed blue jeans. “Almost everybody you know, nice guy or not, wears blue jeans. It’s this universal currency,” he says, pointing to the ripped and faded patchwork of blue.

    Neal, who calls himself an “accumulation guy,” often builds his paintings over a ground of dense material such as clothing, books, or Perspex engineered plastic. The process took a while to arrive at, but now it’s “part of me,” says Neal.

    The smaller paintings in the “Odds and Sods” show also often use a dense ground. “When I’m working on a bigger one, something I learned over there might come into play,” he says, pointing to an accumulation of canvases in the corner.

    A large “burning house” painting with a group of “Odds and Sods” to its left. (Photo by André van der Wende)

    But the smaller paintings retain their singular status. “They’re their own little thing,” says Neal. “I start thinking about them individually. I think artists tend to have pieces that we like but other people don’t care about. For me, this is almost like a show for me to put out some stuff that nobody would like. They’re so unlike the ‘burning house’ paintings.

    “Sometimes I pull between abstract and real,” he says. The small paintings err on the side of playful abstraction. “Often, it’s a concept for me. For the small ones, whatever happens, happens,” says Neal. The formal play of color, shape, texture, and line doesn’t require an armature of reality. “The other ones are more planned out.”

    Contigo is a 16-by-20-inch oil and enamel on canvas by Richard Neal. (Photo courtesy Richard Neal)

    It’s the antithesis of the precision required for his set design work. “I like the fact, when you get to the studio, you can make it wrong if you want to,” says Neal. The perspective doesn’t have to be right, and the sense of space can be ambiguous. It fulfills Neal’s interests in duality and flux, reality and illusion. It’s the “wrong” that Neal plays to — formally, metaphorically — in his “Odds and Sods” paintings with their off-the-cuff quality.

    Looking at a small mock-up of a fire collaged over a sunset sky, Neal says, “I was interested in the idea of making a painting that immediately looks like, ‘Oh, that’s gorgeous!’ It’s a beautiful sunset, but the more you look at it, you see there’s an actual fire there. It’s conceptual. It’s just something I’d like to try.”

    The work at Preservation Hall is full of those “something I’d like to try,” moments. But the role of the viewer is important, says Neal. Ultimately, “It’s just an idea until you make it real.”

    Odd Man Out 

    The event: “Richard Neal: Odds and Sods”
    The time: Thursday, March 3 through March 29
    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.
    The cost: Free

     

    NATIVE ART

    Hawk and Sierra Henries Create Beauty out of Wood

    Father and daughter are Weidlinger house residents this week

    By

    Hawk Henries has been making hand-carved wooden flutes since as long as his daughter Sierra, 34, can remember. “He’s one of a very small handful of people doing the work that he does in the traditional way,” she says. “So, his work is really precious in the world, and of course he won’t say that, but it’s important that people know about it because it’s knowledge that he’s carrying in his work.”

    Hawk Henries. (Photo courtesy Hawk Henries)

    Hawk and Sierra are staying at the Weidlinger house in Wellfleet this week as part of a residency supported by the Cape Cod Modern House Trust and the Wampanoag Arts Foundation. Hawk is performing on and talking about some of his flutes at an event at Wellfleet Preservation Hall on Sunday, Oct. 17.

    Hawk and Sierra are members of the Nipmuc tribe. They live in Sullivan, Maine, on Frenchman Bay northeast of Mt. Desert Island. Though Sierra doesn’t play the flute, she is also an artist, working mainly in birch bark. She makes intricate designs using a wood-burning tool and X-Acto knife. Sierra says she feels fortunate to have been influenced by many art shows and pow wows growing up.

    Sierra Henries. (Photo Ta Moko Ormsby)

    Though they pursue different disciplines, both Sierra and Hawk work with wood. “There’s this prevailing disconnect in the world regarding the beings that we live beside every day — birds, water, mountains, and trees,” says Sierra. “Art is a way to build on the relationships we have with these other beings and to gain a better understanding of them and more respect and desire to care for them.”

    An untitled birch bark artwork by Sierra Henries. (Photo courtesy Sierra Henries)

    Birch bark has many traditional uses, including canoes, baskets, and the walls of homes. “It has a lot of amazing properties,” explains Sierra. “It’s anti-bacterial and, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, it has been used to wrap wounds. It’s a fire starter. It’s been used for centuries for record keeping.”

    This birch bark piece by Sierra Henries was made with a wood-burning tool and X-Acto knife. (Photo courtesy Sierra Henries)

    Hawk is entirely self-taught as a Nipmuc flute player and maker. He is also a composer, having collaborated with the London Mozart Players and artists including Yo-Yo Ma. “Before the flute, I didn’t play any musical instruments, except maybe the radio,” says Hawk. “This sounds so clichéd, but one day, about 30 years ago, I was listening to a recording, and I thought, ‘I need to play this instrument.’ ”

    After a few years, Hawk was able to get his hands on a traditional instrument he could afford. “Something one day said to me, ‘Why don’t you try to make the voice of this flute better.’ I ruined it in literally five minutes. It took a half a year for me to figure out how to make it play again.” The challenge of figuring out how it worked is what started Hawk on his path.

    A falcon-shaped flute block by Hawk Henries. (Photo courtesy Hawk Henries)

    “A flute, musically, is a hollow tube, sometimes with finger holes, always with some kind of opening to allow you to put your breath into it,” he explains. “Once your breath enters the tube, the tube vibrates at a particular velocity, and you can adjust the sound with the finger holes, or by the speed with which you blow into the flute itself. That’s basically it. Any hollow tube can be a flute. It’s kind of embarrassing when you’re at Home Depot and you walk down that aisle with all the PVC pipes and you start playing them like flutes and your family looks at you like you’re silly.”

    The flutes that Hawk makes are technically “two-chambered end-blown block flutes,” Hawk explains. “A classical flute has one chamber that’s completely hollow for the length of the tube. The flutes that I play are not that way — they have two separate chambers divided by a solid wall.” The carved piece tied at the top, called a block or a bird, helps direct the air from the first chamber into the second. Hawk uses only hand tools and natural materials, including walnut oil as a finish.

    This flute by Hawk Henries is made of cypress with black walnut accents. (Photo courtesy Hawk Henries)

    Hawk views his relationship to the flute as an extension both of himself and of his culture. “But well beyond the culture, it’s a tool for expression, which is even more ancient,” says Hawk. “Music for me is a way to articulate my gratitude for life, to express how much I love looking at a bird or a tree or listening to the ocean. To oversimplify it, it’s a tool for prayer. It’s a ceremonial tool, and yet it’s none of that. Playing the flute certainly connects me with culture, but it also connects me with an understanding of my relationship to Earth and to sky and to the things that live in those places.”

     Breath by Breath

     The event: A performance and talk by Hawk Henries

    The time: Sunday, Oct. 17, 3 to 5 p.m.

    The place: Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St.

    The cost: Free

    our picks for the week of Sept 2 through August 8

    Indie’s Choice

    By

    Watch Like a Hawk (Thursday, Sept. 2)

    Truro Connections — a collaboration between Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, the Truro Historical Society, the Truro Meeting House, and Payomet Performing Arts Center — hosts the Red Hawk Singers and Dancers, an indigenous performance group, on Thursday, Sept. 2, 5 p.m. The event will take place at Edgewood Farm, 3 Edgewood Way in Truro. Registration is free at castlehill.org.

    Snakes in the Grass (Thursday, Sept. 2)

    Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St., continues its backyard concert series with the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble on Thursday, Sept. 2, 5 p.m. Founded by Ken Field, the funk-inflected brass band plays New Orleans-inspired tunes. Bring a lawn chair or blanket. Tickets are $25 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org.

    Apple of My Eye (Thursday, Sept 2-Friday, Sept. 3)

    Rebecca Bruyn teaches “Introduction to iPhoneography,” a two-day workshop at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, 10 Meetinghouse Road, on Thursday, Sept. 2 and Friday, Sept. 3, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Bruyn will teach students how to make arresting images with their devices with an emphasis on post-production. Registration is $250 at castlehill.org.

    Under the Hammer (Friday, Sept. 3)

    The Provincetown Art Association and Museum’s 34th annual consignment auction will be on view at 460 Commercial St. starting Friday, Sept. 3. Consigners will receive 80 percent of the “hammer price,” with PAAM receiving the other 20 percent. The auction, officiated by Jim Bakker, will be held online at liveauctioneers.com, closing at 7 p.m. on Sept. 25.

    Rhiannon Giddens performs at Payomet on Friday. (Photo courtesy Rhiannon Giddens)

    Banjo on Her Knee (Friday, Sept. 3)

    Rhiannon Giddens, co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and recently appointed artistic director of Silkroad, performs at the Payomet Performing Arts Center, 29 Old Dewline Road in Truro, on Friday, Sept. 3, 7 p.m. Giddens — a singer, fiddler, and banjo player — recently released the album They’re Calling Me Home with percussionist Francesco Turrisi. Tickets are $75 at payomet.org.

    Kindred Spirits (Saturday, Sept. 4)

    Heather Greene, CEO of Milam and Greene Whiskies and author of Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life, will host a live and virtual book event at East End Books Ptown, 389 Commercial St., on Saturday, Sept. 4, 5:30 p.m. The event, which includes a tasting, is $5 suggested donation at eastendbooksptown.com.

    Voices Carry (Sunday, Sept. 5)

    Hyannis Sound performs online this week as part of Great Music on Sundays @5. The award-winning collegiate a capella group of male voices from across the U.S. will present music arranged by former and current members. Watch free via YouTube on Sunday, Sept. 5, 5 p.m. Visit ptownmusic.com to donate.

    Broadway Beckons (Sunday, Sept. 5)

    The Art House presents Tony Award-winning actress and singer Beth Leavel performing one night only at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St., on Sunday, Sept. 5, 6:30 p.m. Accompanied by Seth Rudetsky on piano, the event is a fundraiser for Sandy Hook Promise. Tickets range from $50 to $150 at provincetownarthouse.com.

                                                                                   

    Branden and James perform at Pilgrim House this week. (Photo courtesy Branden and James)

    Cover Artists (Sunday, Sept. 5 – Wednesday, Sept. 9)

    Cello and tenor duo Branden and James return to Pilgrim House, 336 Commercial St. in Provincetown, from Sunday, Sept. 5 through Thursday, Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m. Their show, “Broadway Under the Covers,” celebrates music from Hamilton, Wicked, Dear Evan Hansen, Mary Poppins, and West Side Story. Masks and proof of vaccination required. Tickets are $35 at pilgrimhouseptown.com.

     

     

    Piano Men (Monday, Sept. 6)

    Jon Richardson and Todd Alsup will tickle the ivories and belt out pop hits by Elton John and Billy Joel in “Elton & Billy: Greatest Hits Live” at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. in Provincetown, on Monday, Sept. 6, 9 p.m. Tickets are $39 at onlythecrown.com.

    Fresh Air (Tuesday, Sept. 7)

    The Eastham Painters Guild will gather at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham for its second-to-last free outdoor event of the summer, “Plein Air Painting in the Cape Cod National Seashore,” on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. More information at easthampaintersguild.com.

    Manchester By the Sea (Wednesday, Sept. 8 – Friday, Sept. 10)

    The Post Office Café and Cabaret, 303 Commercial St. in Provincetown, presents “Melissa Manchester: An Intimate Night” from Wednesday, Sept. 8 through Friday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m. The Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter released her first album, Home to Myself, in 1971 and has released 20 since, including this year’s RE:VIEW. Tickets are $50 at postofficecafe.net.

    Perfect Pair at Preservation Hall

    By

    “Near and Far” is a show of paintings by husband-and-wife Elliot Paul Rothman and Martha Leibowitz Rothman at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St., running through Sept. 23. The show, curated by Megan Hinton and Susie Nielsen, contains works collected from 57 years of partnership, depicting travels to Cuba and India, as well as scenes closer to home in Wellfleet.

    The Rothmans’ backgrounds in architecture give the works structure and a robust presence born from curious minds. Martha works in pastel and watercolor, capturing Wellfleet’s unique light with an abstract specificity. Elliot is primarily a watercolorist, sometimes experimenting with charcoal. He works onsite to produce a visual diary of his travels, paying close attention to shifts in the world around him, buried in shadow or revealed through light. There will be a reception on Wednesday, Sept. 1, from 4 to 6 p.m.

    Troubadour Songs (Thurs.)

    By

    Wellfleet Preservation Hall presents “Backyard Troubadours,” featuring singer Dawn Derow, guitarist Peter Calo, and saxophonist Bruce Abbott, on Thursday, Aug. 12, 6 p.m. There will be songs by Carly Simon, Van Morrison, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and Johnny Cash. Tickets are $25 at wellfleetpreservationhall.org.

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