Art Spirit

By Deb Rondo, Shirl Roccapriore, and Lauren Kleciak

Provincetown, Massachusetts has been home to thousands of artists since the arrival of Charles Hawthorne and his Cape Cod School of Art in 1899. Easily accessible by train at that time, the spiral spit of sand flourished with master teachers and painting students, all of whom chose the Cape over a war-torn Europe. They came in droves, wooed by the light and the bohemian spirit–diverse cultures living side-by-side and in support of one another. But like the shifting sands on the dunes, the art, the artists and the town itself have changed dramatically through the decades.

ArtSpirit, a full-length documentary feature, presents a cultural and socioeconomic perspective on living the artist’s life, juxtaposing the rich history of Provincetown as the oldest continuous art colony in America, with its present-day status as a gay resort, where tourists now own over fifty-percent of the real estate for use as second homes.