Mike Wright
A Provincetown artist repurposes found painted wood
Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the furthest tip of Cape Cod, is home to the oldest and largest continuous art colony in the United States. The town, the historic fishing village where the Pilgrims first landed in the New World and wrote their famous Compact before moving on to Plymouth to settle down, is now mostly a tourist resort (and a bohemian and LGBT mecca), enjoyed by those who appreciate the stunning beaches and dunes of Cape Cod National Seashore that surround it. But the concentration of artists and writers who live and work in Provincetown keeps the place alive with vibrant talk and imagery.
One of those artists is Mike Wright, a sculptor who works with what she calls (yes, Mike is a woman—it’s her given name) “found painted wood,” wood that is painted and worn with time and the ravages of the sea, which she scavenges the beaches and alleyways of Provincetown to procure. She then goes back to her studio and cuts and assembles the wood into a brand new assemblage, giving it new life. This theme of recycling—a kind of reincarnation—is echoed in the source of her inspiration, which is often the work of other artists. In After Blanche Lazzell’s Abstraction Study V, 1927, below, Mike three-dimensionalizes a cubist painting by early-20th-century Provincetown artist Blanche Lazell. And in Deconstructed Sea Barn, at bottom, she repurposes wood that lined the walls and floors of Robert Motherwell’s studio, which has been turned into a beachfront home. (Watch the short film, “Inside Motherwell’s Dumpster,” in which Mike explains her process.) For Mike, the beauty she unearths is part of the lineage of great art that flows through time. She’s just tapping into it.
