The Gallery at WHAT
The Gallery at WHAT celebrates the breadth and diversity of creative expression on the Outer Cape through exhibitions of local artists, curated and coordinated by the artists themselves. The gallery is open prior to scheduled events, during regular box office hours, and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, or to learn more about the gallery, please contact us at 508-349-9428 x102.
DIANE MESSINGER
March 17 – April 29, 2023
“I create my work in my studio, located next to my house in Truro, MA. Using skills gathered through 50 years of painting, this body of work came together within the last 4 years. My training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts gave me the foundation upon which I am able to create with confidence. My work comes from inner emotional experiences and is influenced by opera, nature, friendships, loves and hates. Recently my work has been highlighted at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, at the National Figure Show at the Lore Degenstein Gallery in Pennsylvania, and a one woman show at Five Points Gallery in Torrington CT.”
DONNA MAHAN & JAMES RYAN
May 5 – 30, 2023
DONNA MAHAN
I view my surroundings as a vehicle to personalize my artistic expression as a creative, intuitive artist. These influences lead me to transform found objects into visual designs that captures history. The sculptures can include textiles, glassworks, metals and textiles. Striking colors and textures swirling around in my studio guide me down unknown paths. The journey heightens my energy and curiosity which brings new life to the vast variety of treasured findings.
JAMES RYAN
James Ryan is a painter carrying a torch in the historic art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts. He works in 2-d drawing, collage, and found object arrangement and uses universal symbols from nature, media, and dreams to satisfy the picture plane.
AMY FORD & GRACE HOPKINS
June 2 – 29, 2023
AMY FORD
Amy Ford is a Truro based figurative artist. She has studied the human form for over twenty years, beginning as a student of Maestro Silvestro Pistolesi in Florence, Italy. Since that time, Ford has developed her own, more emotion driven artistic voice, expressing her deep interest in poetry and philosophical questions with what Artscope Magazine described as “rich, exuberant color.”
Ford studied at the University of New Hampshire with Rick Fox. Bob Henry, Jo Hay, Dusty Knight and Joan Pereira have also been valued teachers and mentors along the way. Her work has been shown in multiple solo shows throughout New England as well as being juried into exhibitions such as Concord Art Association’s Roddy Competition and UNH’s Wayfaring Stranger. Recent highlights have been her fall 2022 two person show at Boston’s Beacon Gallery and her solo show in Provincetown at The Commons in July.
GRACE HOPKINS
Grace Hopkins has been creating photographs since 1991. In her work, Hopkins builds a highly energized visual image from a tiny piece of reality, without the aid of effects or filters. As Susan Rand Brown wrote in The Provincetown Banner, Hopkins is “a photographer with the eye and soul of a painter. She creates an image by isolating a fragment of something larger, perhaps a wall, textured and brightly lit, or flickering in shadow, and seeing the smallest detail, something we would rush past, as something unexpected, marvelous.” In addition to her tireless pursuit of photopainting, Hopkins continues to educate in the arts, curate impactful exhibitions for emerging and established artists, and direct the Berta Walker Gallery.
DONNA POMPONIO & DANA DEMERS
September 2 – 29, 2023
DONNA POMPONIO
Donna Pomponio is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Painting & Art History. She has been a practicing oil painter for over three decades. Most recently her work was juried into a digital show at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston as well as the current juried show at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum show.
“I find the figure, primarily, my most compelling subject,
DANA DEMERS
“To me a portraits of individual don’t have to be a typical framed facial sitting it can just as much be a headless nude. The crook of a neck, the slight of a wrist, an obtuse elbow reveal to me much more of an individual and their being than that of any typically framed portrait. During my undergraduate studies I engrossed myself in the history of painting and in particular that of the old master style of lucid painting. Where, through the application of many transparent layers flesh becomes alive, radiant and palpable My process is the same; it starts with silver leaf applied to my canvas and then many transparent glazes of oil paint I hand craft most of my oil paint from dry loose pigments and crushed semi-precious stone like lapis lazuli and pearls mixed with vehicles like linseed oil, babassu oil and copal resin. Making my own oil paint allows me to create transparent, prismatic colour.”
Dana Demers started his art lessons and love of art at 9. He studied Art History, Women in Art, and Painting at Notre Dame. He received his Masters in Curatorial Studies and Museum Management from Boston University.
LENNIE ALICKMAN & NANCY BERLIN
October 2 – 27, 2023
LENNIE ALICKMAN
Lennie Alickman attended Syracuse University where she majored in Fine Arts and pursued a minor in painting. Alickman’s approach to her work uses simplified representations of woodland animals, ocean creatures and the natural wonders that surround us, overlapping them again and again in a multitude of flat colors, creating a rich and complex palette. The artist describes her particular approach to painting as an ongoing search. “I always think that art is an exploration, Says Alickman, “What you do builds on what you’ve worked on in the past. It is a continuous process of learning and discovery.”
NANCY BERLIN
Nancy Berlin was born in New York City and, after graduating from Barnard College, received her MA in painting and printmaking from Hunter College. She has received grants for her drawings from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. She has had residencies at the American Academy in Rome, at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington, and at the New Pacific Studio in Mt. Bruce, New Zealand. Her work is in the collections of the Cape Cod Museum of Art, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Boston Public Library and many corporate and private collections. She has exhibited her drawings, prints and paintings in one-person and group shows at galleries she has been affiliated with in New York City, Boston, Seattle and Charleston, West Virginia. She currently lives and works most of the year in Truro, Massachusetts. Her work has long been concerned with mapping change.