Provincetown Arts Varujan Boghosian - Mary Oliver

After almost a quarter century, Provincetown Arts has created a written and visual memory, year by year, of the contemporary creative activity that lives on in America’s oldest continuous art colony. For the fourth straight year, the cover pairs a visual artist with a writer, the sculptor Varujan Boghosian and the poet Mary Oliver, illuminating the surprising dialogue the two mediums enjoy when they have the occasion to share their modes of perception. The iconic tableaus assembled by Boghosian and the guides to experiencing the natural world in the poems of Oliver have a lot in common, despite their alternative mediums.
VARUJAN BOGHOSIAN appeared on the cover of Provincetown Arts in 1991 in a group photograph showing the totem of faces that comprised the artists of the legendary Long Point Gallery. He is professor emeritus at Dartmouth College and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work inhabits the afterworld that is a memory, expressed in enduring myth, and in particular the ancient story of Orpheus descending into the underworld to rescue his deceased beloved, Eurydice. Boghosian makes the dark meanings come alive by animating its relics. His art is inspired by poetry, and his evocative work has the visual impact of a poem.
MARY OLIVER’s poetry, which has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, banishes any nostalgia for the underworld. Not for nothing is she the most widely read poet in America: people turn to her poetry for guidance in their lives, especially in times of need. Oliver’s morning ritual is a daily saunter along the shoreline, through woods and meadows, or circling ponds, observing mute signs. She will find a satisfying stump to sit on and write the notes that become her poems—giving voice to the owl, bear, leaf, or cloud. Oliver is pictured here with her powder-white bichon frise, whose coal-black eyes provide another source of inspiration.
Material in every issue of Provincetown Arts draws upon the creative activity fostered by the key cultural organizations in the area, especially those that share our mission in art, writing, and theater: the Fine Arts Work Center, the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Provincetown Theater Company, the Provincetown Public Library, the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro, the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, and WOMR radio in Provincetown. Adding a lucky synergy to the missions of these nonprofit organizations is the flourishing network of commercial galleries that exhibit a wide range of outstanding work.
If one purpose of a magazine is to identify a community, another is to identify the individuals who support it. Signatures on a modest check are votes for our continued existence. Provincetown Arts prints the names of those who contribute $25 or more on the Supporters Page of each issue. This growing list contains the core people who value the publication.

Supporters will receive a copy of the 2009 issue, and are invited to our
Publishing Party on Friday, July 10, from five to seven p.m.
at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial Street.