Concrete
Winter

Four days without power.

Wind tearing down Johnson Street. Downed lines across the road. Snow piled so high it erased the edges of everything. Trapped guests from other states demanding freedom. Did I open a closed road to free them? The answer lost to history.

I stayed at the Ellery Hotel and watched the storm eat the town in small bites. Cold rooms. Flashlights. Layers. Listening to the building hold while the storm worked it over. Fences fell, pipes froze.

Across the street, the White Porch Inn ran a generator, the only real light on the block. To get there we literally stepped over fallen power lines. Slowly. Intentionally. As safely as could be.

The White Porch opened their rooms to the Fine Arts Work Center Fellows on a whim for free. No spectacle. Just come in.

We gathered. Established artists. Fellows. Neighbors. Sitting together while the wind tried to rearrange the town.

That's Provincetown.

Galleries shuttered. Streets empty. Joe's Coffee closed, five foot drifts in places, a Nespresso machine on generator and still we are here.

Artists don't disappear when the lights go out.

We walk into the storm. Into the feeling of the storm.

We feel the sea spray strip the breath from us.

We stand in it.

We absorb it.

Because later it becomes something.

Another painting.

Another song.

Another body of work that carries the memory of this exact wind.

I'd shovel people out, dig cars and neighbors, then walk the dark streets just to feel it all. Then cross back over and sit with everyone again. Cold to warmth. Silence to conversation.

When I checked on my studio it was sealed in ice. Snow packed hard against the door. Frozen salt crusting the frame. Spectacular in its ugliness.

Inside were the thirteen paintings that make up the Concrete Winter series.

Built in the cold. Finished in the cold. Closed by the storm itself. I was cold all winter, this made sense.

So this is official:

Concrete Winter series is complete.

It ended the only way it could.

And now, something else is forming. Slowly.

The town is starting to drip. The snow is loosening. Rooflines softening.

We are still here.

Even when the wind is blowing sideways.

Even when the galleries are dark.

Even at the end of the world.

Especially then.

We come here for different reasons, each of us. Mine was to follow the footsteps of the NY School Painters from generations past and to create something new. To chase Jackson Pollock through the dunes, into the A House, and carve a unique path of my own.

This weekend I was with my own Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, and I was given coffee by Lee Krasner as Jackson Pollock himself drank Bourbon at the table. Gorky brought his dog to the party, and we all watched toilets freeze.

We are still here. Not the greats of yesterday, but just as memorable.

This was everything Provincetown is.

The absolute best of it.