The Alden Gallery presents “Mike Wright and Paul Kelly: New Work”
Opening on Friday, July 11, 2014, 7–9pm
Provincetown sculptor Mike Wright has had quite a year since her debut show at the Alden Gallery in 2013. She was awarded a prestigious Pollock-Krasner grant, had her work exhibited in “All About sEVEn” at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, curated several shows at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and to top it all off, had a short film about her artistic process, “Inside Motherwell’s Dumpster,” included in the Provincetown International Film Festival. Wright, who has created a series of wall-hangings for her upcoming show at the Alden, explains it thus: “I walk the beaches and town streets searching for painted pieces of Provincetown, carry the wood to my studio, pull old nails, sort and stack according to color. I then wait for the wood to tell me what it wants to be. My subject matter – the sea, fishing vessels, architecture, natura morta – along with inspiration from early Provincetown Modernists Blanche Lazell, William Freed, and Lillian Orlowsky, place me on the artistic continuum of Provincetown.”
Some time last year local artist Paul Kelly decided to paint landscapes from a different point of view—i.e., Google Maps. His new show at the Alden Gallery includes several works from this “Above It” series, as well other oils and drawings. Kelly studied architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and fine arts at Syracuse University, and set up his studio in the very house and gardens where the legendary Henry Hensche once taught his students. Despite this historical setting, Kelly’s “preference for clean-edged shapes and a muted gold, ochre, gray and tan palette places his art apart from the jewel tones and loose brush strokes of what today is considered the Cape impressionist tradition,” writes Susan Rand Brown in the Provincetown Banner.
The gallery is open daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 6 to 10 p.m., throughout the summer season.