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Fostering Creative Participation

Mid-winter a year ago, a few of us were having dinner and a friend expressed frustration and even desperation over family members supporting policies that hurt other close relatives, himself included. We debated the sources of the world problems and what -if anything- we could do to address the divisive echo chambers across this country. My partner suggested channelling that frustration into something positive.

Over this past year, we were able to do accomplish just that! In partnership with the Provincetown Commons, we built on a simple idea.

Artists can succeed at connecting people when other attempts fail. Whether it’s music, a performance or participatory workshops, these are powerful shared experiences that bring people together. If tolerance is to be the keystone salvé, what conversations, ideas and perspectives might participants carry home?

With invaluable guidance from The Commons’ director, Lesley Marchessault, we welcomed four southern artists to Provincetown during the week of May 8-16th 2026. During their stay, they led workshops, connected with the community as well as finding space to rest and create. Thus, A/Part was born – we hope that it becomes a way to bring together parts of the larger whole.

We opened the week with Eve and Trekker Sibley’s ecological card game, Steward, an inventive and evolving game in which players build micro-ecologies before trophic cascades collapse!

Finally, the two Solidarity Fish workshops, hosted by the Center For Coastal Studies, raised awareness around water health and quality (note the skeleton fish- we don’t want those). Together, we painted about 50 fish, and need about another 150 more! Looking at you this summer, Ptown!

The artists were also warmly greeted by integral leaders of the art community, Alice Gong, Director of Twenty Summers, the incomparable artist Mark Adams, and Gene Tartaglia, Curator from the Provincetown Arts Society. Alice led them through an amazing colleague’s project, Media Diet (by my friends Heidi Boisvert and Amar Bakshi), which reflects the very different media consumption between Americans by walking you through their various living rooms.

Mark Adams led an outdoor low tide walk. Our cohort dressed warmly, but I heard even New England-hardened Ted Cormay almost froze!

With Gene, they spent time relaxing in the beautiful Mary Heaton Vorse house discussing Vorse’s legacy from journalism to advocating for labor unions. Thanks to Gene, the Vorse house also features incredible displays of art on a rotating basis.

Friday was a banner day for Eve and Trekker! They played their game with 5th graders from the local school, and Provincetown’s own shellfish constable, Steve Weisbauer. Steve also gave them a fascinating but also very cold afternoon walk over the breakwater! Those purple marsh crabs are bad news! However, a great antagonist for Eve and Trekker to integrate into the local version of Steward (coming soon!).

I’m deeply excited to continue supporting these artists and their projects. It is our hope that A/Part bridges divides and can help to knit us together in a hyperlocal way, strengthen our local connections, and then onto our broader communities.

Thank you to Lesley and Ted for “keeping our eyes on the prize,” as John Lewis once said (by-the-way, I got to work for him over the summer of ’90) and Alice, Mark, Gene and the gang at Center for Coastal Studies for giving this cohort some southern hospitality up north.

Stay tuned for more workshops for Solidarity Fish and for Steward!

Thank you team for your wonderful photos here that I’ve sampled as well as my own.

“The Solidarity Fish Project is truly a community arts activism projects. It has the power to stop traffic, raise awareness and inspire stewardship. It was the privilege of a lifetime to bring the Solidarity Fish project to your A/Part artist residency in Provincetown. “ — Janeen Mason

“I was able to not only dedicate my time and energy into my practice, but also connect on a deeper level around art, culture, and the history of Provincetown. Bringing people together for thoughtful discussions, new ideas of inspiration, and opening doors to future possibilities was truly special and an inspiring time” — Royce Soble

“Trekker and I left this residency feeling deeply nourished. Our eco-card game prototype was incubated, tested, and embraced by Provincetown naturalists and kids alike. We are incredibly gung-ho about bringing the finished version of this educational game back to Provincetown — and rolling it out across ecosystems around the globe. Thank you so much for your support, Cindy, Lesley, Ted, and the entire Provincetown community!” – Eve and Trekker Sibley

and what does that mean in the topsy-turvy world we are living in? a creative practice can seem insignificant given what is happening any given day in the news. Still, creative ways of looking at the world mean allowing one’s mind to wander and play with any given perspective. Doing so may seed ideas that crack open hardened patterns that benefit our daily mindset and perhaps those of others.

Painting with watercolors are hard. I have challenged myself to paint my beloved pets with varied success. Watercolors are unforgiving; even with a white gouache to hide some mistakes, oils can often forgive an enlarged ear or tucked hindquarter far better than spreading a semi-opaque white over white wet paper.

I’ve grimaced in advance upon yet another iteration; whatever my goal, it may or may not go as planned. Loud and clear is the vulnerability I feel trying something new, to not be particularly good at something. But, one must perservere to add another tool in the toolbelt. I reflect: Painting, Photoshop, Porcelain, Python, XR, machine learning, you name it. None of it was particularly easy, but it became much more so the more I stuck at it. Now those tools and techniques are in my back pocket. And how awesome it is to know the broad array of tools I may bring to a project!

So therefore, I stay the course. I attend to matters of the day, I do what I can in my own small way for the world, and then I get back to pushing my abilities further, even if I don’t see the evidence of mastery just yet. Let’s keep at it.

here we are in a new world. our country is changing in so many ways, it’s hard to keep up. I try to focus on what I can control and what I can do in my small place in space and time. In what ways can we be creative and proactive about the changes we do and do NOT want to see in our world? How do we help others do the same?

What excites me is the ability to create something that could be an agent for change. Anything is possible! I cling to this when it feels that my personal signal-to-noise ratio shrieks through the trees and drowns out everything. We humans are embodied with opposable thumbs and a powerful brain; we can DO Shit. So, what’s stopping me?