Performances

Friday September 24, 12:00 - 6:00 pm +
Saturday September 25, 12:00 - 6:00 pm
Sunday September 26, 12:00 - 6:00 pm
At your leisure

Berta Walker Gallery

$15
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Orpheus in the Galleries

by Six Local Artists

Private Gallery Stroll

Provincetown

Orpheus in the Galleries is a gallery tour inspired by the myth of the poet who visits the underworld and returns with a vision of loss and love.  Audiences are encouraged to follow Orpheus in the Galleries by making their own paths between three neighboring galleries.

Provincetown boasts the longest-running arts colony in America. This September, history-making art installations are being created especially for the Tennessee Williams Festival. These works will be shown at the Berta Walker Gallery, DNA Gallery, and artSTRAND, where between noon and six, the galleries will welcome ticketed Festival-goers to view the private installations of paintings, sculpture, video, and other media created by some of Provincetown’s defining masters.

The participating artists include: Varujan Boghosian, Jay Critchley, Jim Peters with Kathline Carr, Sky Power, Gilbert Franklin, Salvatore Del Deo and John Choly.

The identification of Varujan Boghosian's art with myth of Orpheus was the cover article of Provincetown Arts 2009, taking as its key to understanding  these lines from Tennessee Williams great poem titled “Orpheus Descending” written five years before the play of the same name.

          "...for you must learn, even you, what we have learned, 
          that some things are marked by their nature not to be 
                    completed 
          but only longed for and sought for awhile and abandoned."
                    -- Tennessee Williams, "Orpheus Descending" (excerpt*) 

Varujan Boghosian, Orpheus in Hades, 1999, Construction, 10.5 x 15.25"

          “The very things that were once desired and later abandoned are precisely the 
          objects that Varujan Boghosian selects for his constructions and collages. 
          Throughout his fifty-year career, Boghosian has scoured junk shops, antique 
          offerings, small-town dumps, and urban wrecking yards, seeking what is worn, 
          distressed, or otherwise diminished by the passing of time. Never does he use 
          anything new, save perhaps for the glue that holds together the elements he has 
          rescued for redemption.”  
                    -- Chris Busa, Provincetown Arts

The Berta Walker Gallery will put together a selection of Boghosian’s Orpheus sculpture. This will be a historic show, as  he has made many important pieces on this subject throughout his incredible career. Also showing oils on paper  by Salvatore Del Deo and small bronze "sketches" by Gil Franklin.

Gilbert Franklin, Maquette for Orpheus Ascending the Fountain, unique bronze, 7 1/2 x 9 x 4"

*The excerpt from the poem “Orpheus Descending” is taken from The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams, published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, copyright 1954 by The University of the South.

This program is produced by

Participating Galleries: