Provincetown Galleries: Tabitha Vevers, Andrew Bennett, Amy Arbus, Paul Stopforth
Strolling Along Commercial Street
By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 31, 2007
Tabitha Vevers and Andrew Bennett
Art Strand
August 24 through September 12
494 Commercial Street
Amy Arbus and Paul Stopforth
The Schoolhouse Gallery
August 17 through September 5
494 Commercial Street
Jacqueline Humphries: New Paintings
August 17- 30
Gallery Artists
August 31 through September 13
Albert Merola Gallery
424 Commercial Street
As one gallerist pointed out with some dismay when we visited on a Sunday afternoon there was just a trickle of foot traffic. It was overcast and not really a beach day in Provincetown. He noted that there has been an annual decline of about 10% per year in foot traffic. Adding that many of the guest houses were largely empty during the month of June. Perhaps, but try to get into a restaurant without a reservation around supper time. After dinner, just for fun, we drove up Commercial Street for a circus crawl. It seemed just as crazy as ever.
But generally there is less of the insanity and mayhem where the galleries are clustered fore and aft of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. The offerings range from serious galleries and insightful exhibitions to what one may rightly view as tourist driven art shops. So we tend to be highly selective and concentrated on a few exhibitions in established galleries.
Albert Merola, who operates a rather small space with important work, told us that he has been in business for some 20 years and 18 of those in the current location. He was showing a selection of small paintings, some with glitter, by Jacqueline Humphries. Her gestural abstractions were the subject of a major exhibition last year at the Williams College Museum of Art. The glitter was an interesting elements going along with strokes that come more from the shoulder than the wrist. It is also interesting to rummage through the bins and view prints by Michael Mazur, Maud Morgan, Jack Pierson and Lester Johnson. I was surprised that a small edition print by Jack Pierson I bought several years ago is still available at the same price. "But only in Provincetown," Merola said with some humor. Apparently works he sells rather affordably end up for a lot more immediately after on E Bay. That's one way to subsidize a week on the Cape.
The Schoolhouse Gallery and Art Strand are on the lower level of a large building which formerly housed the artist run cooperative Longpoint Gallery which showed the best artists of an older generation. While that space is no longer occupied as a gallery some of that aura lives on in these newer spaces. In recent years Schoolhouse and Art Strand have earned the reputation of being among the best galleries on the Cape. As is generally the case there is a range of work by a number of artists on view at any given time. There are mini shows within shows so to speak.
The major emphasis at Schoolhouse was a selection of large format, black and white photographs by Amy Arbus, the daughter of the legendary photographer, Diane Arbus. One noted some of the family traits. It must be in the DNA. The images from the book "On the Street" appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines from the Village Voice through the New Yorker, Aperture, People and the New York Times Magazine. She stopped people in the streets and using a large format camera made portraits. Most of the individuals represent eccentric but anonymous hipsters with a freaky side that relates to the imagery of her mother's work. One of the "portraits" represents a somewhat dressed down Cindy Sherman encountered doing errands or on the way to the studio. There is a casual manner to the images. Also a vintage sensibility as they capture the taste and fashion of a now passed by era.
It was a surprise to see new work by the Boston based, South African born artist, Paul Stopforth. It has been some time since I had seen new work. Previously he was doing polychromed sculptures among other things. This time he was represented by small scaled diptychs. Two images, side by side, on panels with a lot of elegant detail and elaborate decorated, painted borders. It was good to catch up on the work.
In Boston I saw the work of Tabitha Vevers regularly at the Audrey Pepper Gallery but this new series Eden rather surprised me. In recent years she has been painting on the insides of clamshells and pieces of whale bone. By contrast to the prior work, for Vevers, these new pieces at Art Strand on simulated rectangles of an ivory like ground, while relatively small, were Huge compared to her prior miniatures. There is a bigness to the series on every level. Not just larger work but bigger ideas and greater ambition. She is taking on the topic of the rise and fall of man from the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, to Global Warming, Evolution and our messed up environment and birth degenerations. Much of the work is both compelling and horrific. But absolutely exquisitely rendered with porcelain like surfaces and a use of gold leaf that gives the paintings an iconic medieval feeling even though the imagery is post apocalyptic. We hope to talk with her soon about these strange hermaphrodite critters with three legs and the equipment of both sexes. It is a stunning but dark vision. Good heavens.
In an adjoining space there are the smoke and soot based works on metal by the San Francisco based invited artist Andrew Bennett. He brings a new meaning to the art term sfumato in his Erased Paisley series. He creates mandala like, meditative, patterns with very delicate and enticingly rich surfaces.
The gallery season lingers on in P'Town into the early fall. When traffic but also rates fall off. It is an ideal time to visit and a lot easier to get into your favorite restaurants. We plan to be back for more surf and turf.
http://www.schoolhouseprovincetown.com
http://www.albertmerolagallery.com