Shaped like a forearm making a fist, the outer Cape is divided by a single highway. If you live and work on the Cape, you drive this stretch of road many times a day. With Provincetown as the fist, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham follow south down this long, solitary stretch of road. Most of the land in the four towns is part of the National Seashore, almost 44k acres preserved and protected. This arm out at sea, only about two miles wide, is flanked by the waters of the Atlantic and Cape Cod bay.
A few times a week, I make the drive north where the land ends to work at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. The sky and clouds are never the same as the day before; there is always something to see in the way the light lands on the dunes and the trees. It is the light in Provincetown that has attracted so many artists to this place. So many, in fact, that it is thought to be the oldest continuing art colony in the United States. Charles Webster Hawthorne opened the Cape Cod School of Art in the summer of 1899, and then went on to establish the Provincetown Art Association in 1914 with a group of artists and locals; it would later go on to become the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
When I park my truck and enter the building, I sometimes have to pinch myself. Walking the galleries often gives me goosebumps. The archives and permanent collection house art and artifacts from the last 100+ years. I am surrounded by history and inspiration and work with people that are passionate about preserving the importance of a space to observe and interact with art.
We all need more art in our lives.
PAAM’s permanent collection includes pieces from artists that have worked in Provincetown and Cape Cod and often showcases new work that has been added to its growing collection. Most recently, PAAM was gifted works by Jo Sandman. The exhibition spans her long career as an artist and explores her work in painting, collage, photography, and sculpture.
Beginning with a residency at Black Mountain College in 1951 where she studied painting with Robert Motherwell and worked alongside then-students, now well-known artists Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg, she was exposed to and worked with unorthodox materials that would shape her 60+ year career of experimenting with mediums and materials.
She has worked with roofing tar, foil insulation, dropcloths, automotive hoses, as well as photograms, x-rays, and alternative photography methods.
“Using found materials, the artist isolates the formal elements of art making, rendering us conscious of our basic need to give form and structure to the chaos which surrounds us.” - Paula Allara Assistant Professor of Art History Tufts, 1983
In the summer of 1952, Jo Sandman came to Provincetown to study with Hans Hofmann at his School of Painting. She continued studying with both Hofmann in his New York school as well as Robert Motherwell at Hunter College in NY. She met Walter Gropius in 1956 and went on to become a mural designer and color consultant for Gropius’, TAC - The Artists Collaborative, from 1956-1958.
Black Mountain College, along with Hofmann, Motherwell, and Gropius were pivotal in shaping modern art at that time as well as growing young artists into the names we know today.
Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in Germany; a legacy in art and design that continues today, although it only ran from 1913 through 1933. With the closing of the Bauhaus and the exodus of artists and creatives fleeing Europe for America, Gropius, as well as former Bauhaus masters, Josef + Anni Albers would go on to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, which opened serendipitously in 1933.
Walter Gropius first visited Wellfleet in the early 1940’s, through ‘Brahmin Bohemian’, Jack Phillips, who inherited land on the outer Cape. This meeting would be the beginnings of the avant-garde influx. Marcel Breuer, Serge Chermayeff, Gyorgy + Juliet Kepes, just to name a few, would go on to live, work, and create during the summer months; a new Bauhaus was fostered in the woods of the Cape. Today, the Cape Cod Modern House Trust works to ensure this history is not forgotten.
Both Hofmann and Motherwell were also connected to and inherently part of the creative culture on the Cape. In addition to Jo Sandman, Hofmann taught many (+more) world famous artists we know today: Lee Kranser, Helen Frankenthaler, Wolf Kahn, Fritz Bultman. These artists, including Hofmann and Motherwell, have works included in the Provincetown Art Association and Museum permanent collection. Motherwell’s painting studio, the Sea Barn, (where Frankenthaler also worked during their relationship) was on Commercial Street, about a mile away from where the PAAM is today. I drive by it every time I head to work.
It is not lost on me: this place, it’s light, it’s history.
I am in awe and grateful every single day.
On Saturdays at PAAM during the school year, I spend the mornings making art with a group of kids in the Art Reach program. Free for residents, they’re bussed from all parts of the Cape to hang out in the Museum School. They learn, create, and mostly, we laugh a lot. It’s the highlight of my week.
One recent project we did was capturing the light on Cape by creating solargrams. We made pinhole cameras from aluminum cans and slipped a sheet of light sensitive paper inside before sealing them shut with duct tape. The cameras were placed outside on Museum grounds as well as the roof of the building to expose over a period of 6 weeks. The sun painted lines of light on the paper over the days and weeks the cameras were exposed. What appears as marks made by the sun is in actuality a visual recording of the earth’s movement around it.
Once the paper is removed from the camera, the image is scanned and inverted through photo editing software, avoiding the need to use a darkroom or photo processing chemicals.
To create your own solargrams you’ll need:
- a tall aluminum can (not the regular sized cans)
- duct tape
- sewing pin
- sandpaper
- 5” x 7” light sensitive darkroom paper
- can opener
Use the can opener to remove the top opening of the can. Mark a spot about 1/3 of the way down on the can and use the pin to prick a very small opening in the can, then use the sandpaper to buff away any rough edges, both on the inside and out. You can choose to paint the inside of the camera black to prevent light from reflecting onto the paper for better image quality.
Slip a sheet of darkroom paper inside the can, making sure the pinhole is not covered, but is facing the middle of the paper where the image will be projected. Cover the opening of the camera with duct tape or another aluminum can cut in half. Make sure it is watertight. Place a small piece of tape over your pinhole on the outside of the camera to prevent exposing the paper until your camera is in place.
Find a spot outside where the camera will get a good view of the sun and secure the camera in place with more duct tape or zipties. Once it’s in place, remove the small piece of tape covering the pinhole and allow to expose as long as you’d like: weeks, months, or even a year. The longer the camera is exposed, the more lines will appear on the print.
Once you’re ready to make your print, place tape over the pinhole opening and remove the camera. Bring it inside out of direct sun and remove the tape or can covering the camera opening. If it’s very damp or wet from moisture, use a hair dryer on low to dry it, then remove the paper and immediately place it in a scanner to scan the image. (If you don’t have a scanner, you can also take a photo with your phone; you may need to tape the print down to keep the edges from curling.)
From here, the editing is up to you! You can choose to invert the image or not. But at this point, you’ll want to keep the original print out of direct light, as it will continue to expose and your image will eventually disappear.