The Provincetown Art Gallery Association invites you to join us for Winter Weekends in Provincetown, a series of curated events and gatherings from January through April 2025. Join PAGA and our partners at The Provincetown Commons, The Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), and others for a series of weekends of curated content, gatherings, and events. Winter makes for the perfect time to enjoy intimate opportunities for shared experiences and meaningful inspiration during the most peaceful months in Provincetown.

Join us this season as our members and partners invite you to look, listen, taste, and feel offerings from our artists, creators, and friends. Each weekend will feature a special ‘anchor’ event in addition to content from members and friends. Browse individual events below and look for updated listings monthly!

January 18-20, 2025: Martin Luther King Weekend

February 14-17, 2025: Valentine’s Day and President’s Day

March 7-9, 2025: International Women’s Day Weekend

April 18-21, 2025: Patriot’s Day Weekend in Massachusetts

Join us as we celebrate Outer Cape artists in our open-call winter show. Outer Cape artists can submit one piece. Membership is not required to participate. Images of artwork uploaded or emailed to us will be used for promotional materials to market this show. Work will be accepted if it follows submission requirements (see below).

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS:

Size: Two-dimensional work should not exceed 36”x 36". Three-dimensional work should fit within a 14 x 14” area or be ready to hang on the wall. 

*Submissions exceeding these size requirements will not be accepted.

All art must come finished and ready to hang. Please fill out the registration form if you plan to participate. Artwork must have artists name and contact information attached to the back of the artwork. The Commons reserves the right to refuse work that is over-sized, improperly presented, or unsafe to hang. Sales will be directed to the artist. The Commons does not take any percentage of sales made.

WRAPPED IN ART BY DONNA MAHAN

On Exhibit: November 26 - December 8
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 30 from 4 - 6 PM

ARTIST TALK: Saturday, December 7th from 2 - 4 PM

Donna Mahan

CHARGED ART BY JILL BENELLI

On Exhibit: November 26 - December 8
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 30 from 4 - 6 PM


Jill Benelli

Charged Art is created by running 12k volts of electricity through wood causing fractal images to be beautifully burned into one-of-a-kind art pieces. I'm a local Cape Cod gardener/farmer/waitress/artist out of Orleans. When I'm not Charging Art you'll find me hiking, road-tripping, or swimming with the seals on the Outer; and never without my best bud Boston Terrier, Pig.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Curated by Michelle Pepitone

On Exhibit: November 12 - November 24
Opening Reception: November 15 from 5 - 8 PM
Closing Reception:

VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Curated by Michelle Pepitone

Spanning his early beginnings in Provincetown to his last months in his studio at the Commons, this retrospective is a tribute to the life’s work of Richard Pepitone. Its focus will be on the major artistic themes of his five-plus decades as a Cape Cod artist and his rare ability to borrow imagery from his past work and shape it into something new. 

Given Pepitone’s longtime connection to the Beachcombers Club, it make perfect sense that this retrospective will run in conjunction with a show featuring numerous Beachcombers artists. The open-themed Beachcombers show is curated by Robert Longley and Stephen Wells and features works from various Beachcombers all of whom were close friends of Pepitone. 

The title “Variations on a Theme” originated with the artist, who over the years named several of his pieces “Variation on a Theme.” Pepitone did not like to waste anything, including ideas. His proclivity to revisit and repurpose former artistic concepts was in part due to his Depression-era childhood but was also the result of his insatiable curiosity and his unrelenting drive to constantly create.

Always looking at the world with the fresh eyes of discovery, Pepitone would inevitably see some new angle or element that previously went unnoticed. He would then borrow the principal concepts and core foundational images from this past work and incorporate them into a new concept, thereby transforming the familiar into something new.This upcoming show–titled “Variation on a Theme”–is a retrospective tribute to the life’s work of Richard Pepitone. The focus will be on the major artistic themes of his five plus decades as a Cape Cod artist and his unique ability to borrow the imagery of his past work and to mold it into something new. 

BACKGROUND

Within two years of his arrival in Provincetown, Richard Pepitone had discovered the Beachcombers, one of the country’s oldest continuous art colonies.  The year was 1971 and the union between Pepitone and this prominent Provincetown art institution, would forever alter his life and art over the decades that followed. 

For the five plus decades that Pepitone was a Beachcomber, he held many different roles, including skipper and cabin boy, as well as mentor and apprentice. He formed countless collaborations with other members, creating a vast network of fellow artists, collectors, and friends whose tendrils ran up and down the Cape and beyond.

A source of constant inspiration, the Beachcombers proved to be as critical to Richard’s evolution as an artist as it was to the establishment of Provincetown as an artists’s community. Whenever he wanted to try something new or brainstorm, all that he had to do was to walk down to the old building that was once a sail and rigging lot, and there over countless Saturday night dinners and community celebrations, he would find what he was looking for or discover something new. 

The collaboration between Pepitone and the Beachcombers has not only transcended time but also generations. Today, Pepitone’s daughter, Michelle, has both maintained and cultivated close ties with many Beachcombers, all of whom have been instrumental in her efforts to keep her father’s artistic legacy alive. 

“It is hard to imagine my father’s life in Provincetown without the Beachcombers,” writes Michelle Pepitone. “The club anchored my father in a way that only the closest family can. It was (and is) a mutually beneficial relationship that has not only defied time but also death itself.”

At the heart of this show, is the life’s work of Richard Pepitone. Almost all of the mediums that he worked with will be on display and most pieces will be for sale. Integrated within the show, will be several portraits of Pepitone done by other artists.

”Variations on a Theme” will take place in the Commons Community Room and the Beachcombers’ show will occupy the Exhibition Hall.  There will be a joint opening on Friday, November 15th from 5PM-8PM, where you will be invited to celebrate the artwork of this prominent Provincetown artist and so many of his Beachcombers friends.

THE BEACHCOMBERS

Two years after the founding of the Provincetown Art Association, a group of men, mostly artists, met the summer of 1916 in a small building on what was then Knowles Wharf and The Beachcombers was established as a social club.

Today, The Beachcombers meet in what was once a sail and rigging loft on a wharf at the foot of Bangs Street, which they bought in 1918.

So who are the Beachcombers? Think: Century Association and Skull & Bones — in a camel costume. That is, an arts organization that takes its mission and itself quite seriously, but that can’t help indulge sometimes in hijinks that would have been more or less appropriate for a boys’ summer camp. It is no coincidence that it was founded two years after the Provincetown Art Association across the street, and by many of the same people. As the art colony grew in the early 20th century, it needed both a place to exhibit its work seriously and a place to fraternize privately. Its 1916 constitution said its purpose was “to promote good fellowship among men sojourning or resident in or about Provincetown who are engaged in the practice of the fine arts or their branches” or “who are intimately connected with the promotion of the fine arts” — defined to mean painting, etching, engraving, sculpture, architecture, designing, illustrating, writing, music and acting. Officers, committees and events were given maritime names.

RICHARD PEPITONE

Born in Brooklyn in 1936, Richard Pepitone was the quintessential self-made artist. He did not come from an artistic background, far from it in fact, but that didn’t matter, Richard was a natural talent, that that rare breed of artist who neither needs formal training nor cultivation by outside influences to achieve artistic mastery.
 
At age 20, he became an apprentice to sculptor Alfred Van Loen in Greenwich Village and when he had soaked up all of the knowledge and wisdom of his teacher, he then opened his own  studio in the East village. Ambitious and restless, and always eager to improve, he traveled to Florence, Italy and returned with a newfound understanding of cast bronze and carved stone.
 
He then returned to New York, got married and eventually settled down in Provincetown, MA, whose rolling dunes, expansive seaside and openminded locals quickly claimed him as their own. On Cape Cod, the man and his art were constantly evolving and his artwork seemed to be in a state of constant motion and flux.

Always searching for a new form of artistic expression, Richard worked in just about every conceivable medium, moving from one to the other, with the confidence and ease of the familiar. While sculptural representation of the female form was a favorite theme that he would always return to–one that he perfected in marble, bronze, ceramic and resin (among others)– this was not his only source of inspiration. He made stained glass panels of wild animals, ceramic bowls reminiscent of the ancient cave dwellings of Lascaux, and wooden oars that became an homage to the town and its Portuguese settlers. He twisted castaway pipe and altered copper vessels found in thrift stores, seeing beauty in the discarded and function in the broken. 

And when his body was no longer able to keep up with his always eager, always hungry, always yearning youthful mind, he returned to a medium that he could do anywhere and anytime–drawing, printing and painting. He enjoyed this simple and often solitary form of expression until his very last days, creating gorgeous one of a kind monoprints on wood and paper, and stunning limited series lithographs.

Prompted! Second Annual Show of the Outer Cape Art Collective

October 29- November 10, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday November 1, 5-7 pm

Prompted! is the second annual show of the Outer Cape Art Collective (OCAC), a group
of artists, who came together during three years of learning from and experimenting with artists and educators Laura Shabott and Alana Barrett.

Members of the Collective present an exciting, diverse range of styles, inspired by the
prompts of their teachers and members, by the Outer Cape’s long tradition of
abstraction, its light and landscape, as well as by our travels, friends, and family.

Working together during the pandemic, most are now full-time artists who have
distinguished themselves in diverse professional lives, as doctors, architects,
journalists, scholars and educators, writers, and business leaders. All share a passion
for painting. Members of OCAC exhibit their work in galleries and shows nationally as
well as on the Outer Cape.

Jody Johnson
8mm
On Exhibit: October 15 - October 27

Opening Reception:

This series is about vintage 8mm film projectors from the early 1940’s to 1970’s.

My process starts with going to tag sales, thrift shops, and estate sales to find these mechanical beauties from a bygone era that I can then repurpose into something new and exciting.

This series is something new for me. For over 20 years I have been making lamps with these similar items. I decided to change things up and turn these same types of items into flat wall art. The photos you see are the parts that I need to take out of the projectors in order for them to lay flat on the wall. Lots and lots of parts. Some come out with the removal of screws and nuts, and others I have to cut away with a hack saw. I have so much fun just trying to figure it out.

That wording around them is from the original manuals that came with the projectors. I do not print off the internet. If it’s not original I won’t use it. It is just not my style.

The bulbs I kept from the projectors that I had made into lamps over the years and since have sold them. Each projector comes with just one bulb. The bulbs are such art pieces I knew I would use them in some other projects someday.

I hope you enjoy the work as much as I do making it.

Heather Blume
Eye to I: Personal Exchanges
On Exhibit: October 15 - October 27

“Wherever I take my eyes, they always see things from my point of view” Ashleigh Brilliant

Whatever the medium, my artwork continues to be primarily related to people. Each person’s sense of self is unique and constantly evolving, shaped by our relationships with others and our own introspection.

In this series I explore inner and outer personal exchanges through painted portraits of myself and others. When beginning a portrait I have in mind what I think it will look like; it never ends up looking that way. Each sitting involves its’ own dynamic including persona, weather conditions, time of day, time of year, location, and much more. These influences are what I like most about working from life, the serendipitous nature of being in the moment. It may seem that the one constant is the artist but upon reflection I find the experience of self-portraiture to be just as multifaceted thus inspiring a number of double self-portraits as well as the more conventional single portraits.

I hope these paintings convey the complexity and fluidity of identity and invite viewers to reflect on their own sense of self and how it is intertwined with their perceptions of others.

Artist Bio:

Heather Blume first felt the call to become an artist in Provincetown, MA. There she was exposed to an art colony by the sea engaged in multiple ways of creating, teaching, and selling art. That impression inspired her to focus her art practice on drawing, sculpting, and painting narratives of human experience.

Blume graduated with a BFA summa cum laude in Painting from the University of North Florida and an MFA cum laude in Sculpture from the Graduate School of Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Vermont Studio Center, the Higgins Galley at the Cape Cod Community College, and at Edgewood Farm at Truro Center for the Arts. Blume’s artworks are in private collections and select sculptures are in the permanent collections of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), the Cape Cod Museum of Art (CCMFA), and the Cahoon Museum of American Art. Internationally, her sculptures are included in the permanent collections of the British Museum in London and the Royal Coin Cabinet of Sweden in Stockholm. She is a recipient of several art awards and grants some of which include the State of Florida, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, and the Vermont Studio Center.

She is a select member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) , the American Medallic Sculpture Association (AMSA), the Federation Internationale de la Medaille d’Art (FIDEM), and is an Artist Member of the Board of Trustees of PAAM. Blume has been a professional artist, art educator, and lecturer for the past 30 years.

PERSISTERS BY JO HAY
On Exhibit: October 15 - October 27

Opening Reception: Tuesday, October 15 at 2 PM

JO HAY

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jo Hay is a contemporary British American portrait painter. Born in 1964 in Newcastle Upon-Tyne, England, she received her BA from Middlesex University, London, UK in 1983 and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art, New York, NY in 2012.

Hay received the Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant 2010 sponsored in part by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and was the recipient of the New York Academy of Art Portrait Scholarship 2011. Her portrait from the Benders series entitled Dodger was a semi-finalist in the BP Portrait Award 2015 at the National Gallery in London and was a finalist in Art For Freedom A Global Initiative curated by Madonna.

Hay was a subject of the documentary She is Juiced by British director Lois Norman. It was screened at Tate Modern in 2017 as part of the ground-breaking Queer Britain exhibition and the London Pride launch 2017. 

In 2017 Hay began the ongoing project titled Persisters, large-scale portrait paintings representing contemporary, trailblazing women in their pursuit of justice. In 2019, a solo exhibition of the Persisters series was shown at The Provincetown Commons. Her portraits of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vice President Kamala Harris were exhibited in the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 2020 and 2021 respectively. In February 2022 Hay was selected as the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod’s inaugural Artist of the Year.

Hay currently lives and works in Provincetown MA.

FRAN O’NEILL
FLOW
paintings on wood

AT SPIRITUS 190 COMMERCIAL STREET

OPEN RECEPTION: FRIDAY OCT. 11 | 5 PM - 7 PM

My artistic vision focuses on the connection between healing and energy. We are all energetic beings, and the wood grain in my art symbolizes this universal energy. The abstract shapes I incorporate represent the energy I channel into each piece. The shapes flow intuitively with my color choices to form a cohesive, dynamic composition. Wood itself contains energy since it was once living. When the wood grain emerges in my art, a new dimension is revealed. The abstract forms arise from a collective unconscious and integrate seamlessly with the natural wood texture. My goal is to create an intersection where the energy in the artwork, the wood, and the viewer all converge. I hope viewers will feel a resonance with the energy embedded in the artwork.

franoneillartist.com
@franionptown

MARK BRENNAN AND ABRAHAM STORER
SURFACES

On Exhibit: October 1 - October 13
Opening Reception: Friday, October 4, 5 - 7pm

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Surfaces brings together the artwork of Mark Brennan and Abraham Storer.  

Mark Brennan presents his Space in a Box paintings.  Measuring about a foot square, the pictures are extremely detailed oil paintings of the ocean. They portray the water and the sky in various weather conditions and times of day.  The paintings, all on paper, are framed in deep wooden boxes.  The boxes are made by the artist with assistance from woodworker Robert Mason in Brooklyn and are distressed, often with antique iron hardware, to evoke the wear and tear of the passage of time.

Abraham Storer lived for nine years in Israel, most of it in Jerusalem.  During that time, he produced the Soil and Sky pictures, diptychs comprised of two identical panels.  One is painted in atmospheric pastel tones suggestive of the sky.  The other is an assemblage of rock and dirt.  In each piece, the earth is taken from a specific place of historic or spiritual significance, which he gathered on site and glued to the panel.  The works are titled after the location of the earthen matter.

Both artists are residents of Cape Cod, Massachusetts now and continue to draw spiritual inspiration from the natural environment around them.  These two bodies of work share a strong affinity for each other:  both series present a strong dichotomy between two near polar forces.  One can easily infer a dialog between the immediate physical or earth bound nature of one element and the ethereal or spiritual nature of its opposite. In Brennan’s case, it is the vast expanse of the water trapped in the distressed wooden box like a soul encased in a body.  With Storer, the two elements, the physicality of the soil and the celestial atmosphere of the painted half, appear as a side by side couple. 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES 

Mark Brennan lives in Brooklyn, New York and Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass.  Stylistically he owes a debt to traditional East Asian painting in his elongated watercolors.  His small pictures encased in boxes have affinities with an array of distinctly American artists; one can draw references to William Trost Richards, Martin Johnson Heade and John Frederick Kensett, to William Harnett and John Peto, Georgia O’Keeffe, Joseph Cornell and Vija Celmins.  Like the early Hudson River School and many 20th Century abstract artists, he unapologetically experiments with altruistic and transcendent functions for art, both in his work and in his curatorial enterprises.

In the 1980s he participated in the florid East Village art scene while working for Andy Warhol in the Interview circulation department.  Shortly before Warhol’s death, he suddenly abandoned both relationships to travel North America, living in the back of a station wagon.  Upon his return to New York, he began teaching public school in District 9 (the poorest congressional district in the country) in the Bronx.  A weekend activity, painting, gradually expanded into an avocation.

Recent projects include a solo show of his Space in a Box paintings at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture and Islamic Art/Christian Space (curator) at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, both in Manhattan, attempting to build bridges between two seemingly irreconcilable parties.  The latter exhibit was the first ever show of Islamic artwork in an active Christian place of worship.    He is a member of Openings Artists Collective in New York.  On Cape Cod he showed his work at the Off Main Gallery in Wellfleet.

Abraham Storer strives to make paintings that appear simple and straight-forward, yet resonate with mystery and feeling. His landscape paintings depict observations of specific places around the world where he has lived and traveled, including Poland, Israel, New York and Cape Cod. Through the process of painting, he records external conditions, like weather and light, and the subjective sensibilities of his own thoughts, emotions, and spirituality. 

His visual language uses flattened abstract shapes and emptiness to counter the deep, atmospheric space of the landscape. He facilitates between loose painterly gestures and more realistic rendering, allowing the paint to exist as both material and illusion, while his imagery depicts a landscape with abundant natural beauty yet impinged upon by human interventions.  These tensions coalesce around a central concern about the relationship between materiality and transcendence. 

Storer currently lives in Wellfleet, MA with his family. He has an MFA from Boston University, a BA from Brandeis University and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  He has had recent solo exhibitions at Farm Projects (Wellfleet, MA) and Caldbeck Gallery (Rockland, ME). Honors include a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel and a residency through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor.   

KATHRYN LEE SMITH
CONTEMPORARY WHITE LINE PRINTS AND DRAWINGS

On Exhibit: October 1 - October 13
Opening Reception: Friday, October 4, 4 - 6 pm

This exhibition is a survey of Smith’s white line prints over many decades and includes both representational and abstract imagery: florals, Provincetown images and abstracted constructs. Also included in this show are her lyrical sumi pen and ink nudes.

Please visit my website: www.kathrynleesmithwhitelineprints.com

And follow me on instagram: KLSprovincetownprints

If you’d like to contact me directly, please email me at ksmithart@verizon.net

KATHRYN LEE SMITH - Artist Biography

Contemporary white line master printmaker Kathryn Lee Smith has been making art for
her entire lifetime. She learned the white line printmaking method of single block color woodblock printmaking, developed in Provincetown in 1915, from her grandmother, the
artist Ferol Sibley Warthen, at the age of four. After a formal education in the arts, BA
from University of Maryland, further studies at Maryland Institute of Art, University of
Colorado in Boulder, Colorado State University and graduate studies at University of
Northern Colorado in Greeley, Smith returned to her roots in Provincetown and studied
further with her grandmother as a young adult. After five years of commuting to
Provincetown she decided to move here year-round and devote her career to the
process of white line prints, both developing her own work, exhibiting, teaching and lecturing on the process in many venues, including museums and galleries both at home and abroad. In 2003 Smith was selected to bring our American (and Provincetownian) woodcut process to Japan. She has received the lifetime award from Who’s who and has been included in their biographical publications since 2006 (Who’s who in American Education, America, Women and the World). Her work is represented in permanent private and museum collections in the US and internationally.

KATHRYN LEE SMITH – Artist Statement

My work draws heavily on the sense of a particular moment in time, whether that
moment is conveyed as a representational image or an abstraction. The formal
elements of the visual language give me the tools to transform the idea; the process of manipulating these elements to support the theme bring the idea into focus.

Forty five years of technical experience inform the execution of the process. And, over
time, the marks made have repeated themselves, forming their own iconology,
becoming their own unique signature.

The inherent warmth of the wood, the use of hand tools, the physicality of pulling the
print, all are a significant part of the process which plays a part in informing the final print.

Copyright Kathryn Lee Smith