VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Curated by Michelle Pepitone
On Exhibit: November 12 - November 24
Opening Reception: November 15 from 5 - 8 PM
Closing Reception:
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Curated by Michelle Pepitone
Spanning his early beginnings in Provincetown to his last months in his studio at the Commons, this retrospective is a tribute to the life’s work of Richard Pepitone. Its focus will be on the major artistic themes of his five-plus decades as a Cape Cod artist and his rare ability to borrow imagery from his past work and shape it into something new.
Given Pepitone’s longtime connection to the Beachcombers Club, it make perfect sense that this retrospective will run in conjunction with a show featuring numerous Beachcombers artists. The open-themed Beachcombers show is curated by Robert Longley and Stephen Wells and features works from various Beachcombers all of whom were close friends of Pepitone.
The title “Variations on a Theme” originated with the artist, who over the years named several of his pieces “Variation on a Theme.” Pepitone did not like to waste anything, including ideas. His proclivity to revisit and repurpose former artistic concepts was in part due to his Depression-era childhood but was also the result of his insatiable curiosity and his unrelenting drive to constantly create.
Always looking at the world with the fresh eyes of discovery, Pepitone would inevitably see some new angle or element that previously went unnoticed. He would then borrow the principal concepts and core foundational images from this past work and incorporate them into a new concept, thereby transforming the familiar into something new.This upcoming show–titled “Variation on a Theme”–is a retrospective tribute to the life’s work of Richard Pepitone. The focus will be on the major artistic themes of his five plus decades as a Cape Cod artist and his unique ability to borrow the imagery of his past work and to mold it into something new.
BACKGROUND
Within two years of his arrival in Provincetown, Richard Pepitone had discovered the Beachcombers, one of the country’s oldest continuous art colonies. The year was 1971 and the union between Pepitone and this prominent Provincetown art institution, would forever alter his life and art over the decades that followed.
For the five plus decades that Pepitone was a Beachcomber, he held many different roles, including skipper and cabin boy, as well as mentor and apprentice. He formed countless collaborations with other members, creating a vast network of fellow artists, collectors, and friends whose tendrils ran up and down the Cape and beyond.
A source of constant inspiration, the Beachcombers proved to be as critical to Richard’s evolution as an artist as it was to the establishment of Provincetown as an artists’s community. Whenever he wanted to try something new or brainstorm, all that he had to do was to walk down to the old building that was once a sail and rigging lot, and there over countless Saturday night dinners and community celebrations, he would find what he was looking for or discover something new.
The collaboration between Pepitone and the Beachcombers has not only transcended time but also generations. Today, Pepitone’s daughter, Michelle, has both maintained and cultivated close ties with many Beachcombers, all of whom have been instrumental in her efforts to keep her father’s artistic legacy alive.
“It is hard to imagine my father’s life in Provincetown without the Beachcombers,” writes Michelle Pepitone. “The club anchored my father in a way that only the closest family can. It was (and is) a mutually beneficial relationship that has not only defied time but also death itself.”
At the heart of this show, is the life’s work of Richard Pepitone. Almost all of the mediums that he worked with will be on display and most pieces will be for sale. Integrated within the show, will be several portraits of Pepitone done by other artists.
”Variations on a Theme” will take place in the Commons Community Room and the Beachcombers’ show will occupy the Exhibition Hall. There will be a joint opening on Friday, November 15th from 5PM-8PM, where you will be invited to celebrate the artwork of this prominent Provincetown artist and so many of his Beachcombers friends.
THE BEACHCOMBERS
Two years after the founding of the Provincetown Art Association, a group of men, mostly artists, met the summer of 1916 in a small building on what was then Knowles Wharf and The Beachcombers was established as a social club.
Today, The Beachcombers meet in what was once a sail and rigging loft on a wharf at the foot of Bangs Street, which they bought in 1918.
So who are the Beachcombers? Think: Century Association and Skull & Bones — in a camel costume. That is, an arts organization that takes its mission and itself quite seriously, but that can’t help indulge sometimes in hijinks that would have been more or less appropriate for a boys’ summer camp. It is no coincidence that it was founded two years after the Provincetown Art Association across the street, and by many of the same people. As the art colony grew in the early 20th century, it needed both a place to exhibit its work seriously and a place to fraternize privately. Its 1916 constitution said its purpose was “to promote good fellowship among men sojourning or resident in or about Provincetown who are engaged in the practice of the fine arts or their branches” or “who are intimately connected with the promotion of the fine arts” — defined to mean painting, etching, engraving, sculpture, architecture, designing, illustrating, writing, music and acting. Officers, committees and events were given maritime names.
RICHARD PEPITONE
Born in Brooklyn in 1936, Richard Pepitone was the quintessential self-made artist. He did not come from an artistic background, far from it in fact, but that didn’t matter, Richard was a natural talent, that that rare breed of artist who neither needs formal training nor cultivation by outside influences to achieve artistic mastery.
At age 20, he became an apprentice to sculptor Alfred Van Loen in Greenwich Village and when he had soaked up all of the knowledge and wisdom of his teacher, he then opened his own studio in the East village. Ambitious and restless, and always eager to improve, he traveled to Florence, Italy and returned with a newfound understanding of cast bronze and carved stone.
He then returned to New York, got married and eventually settled down in Provincetown, MA, whose rolling dunes, expansive seaside and openminded locals quickly claimed him as their own. On Cape Cod, the man and his art were constantly evolving and his artwork seemed to be in a state of constant motion and flux.
Always searching for a new form of artistic expression, Richard worked in just about every conceivable medium, moving from one to the other, with the confidence and ease of the familiar. While sculptural representation of the female form was a favorite theme that he would always return to–one that he perfected in marble, bronze, ceramic and resin (among others)– this was not his only source of inspiration. He made stained glass panels of wild animals, ceramic bowls reminiscent of the ancient cave dwellings of Lascaux, and wooden oars that became an homage to the town and its Portuguese settlers. He twisted castaway pipe and altered copper vessels found in thrift stores, seeing beauty in the discarded and function in the broken.
And when his body was no longer able to keep up with his always eager, always hungry, always yearning youthful mind, he returned to a medium that he could do anywhere and anytime–drawing, printing and painting. He enjoyed this simple and often solitary form of expression until his very last days, creating gorgeous one of a kind monoprints on wood and paper, and stunning limited series lithographs.
