Ecosystems & Imagination Field Trip

1pm | $20 Suggested Donation

Field Trip will meet at Center for Coastal Studies Kiosk at MacMillan Pier

Provincetown makes a great case study of how dynamic coastlines evolve as the forces of tides and storms interact with the financial risk to its historical and cultural fabric. Participants of this field trip will walk and examine the town’s harbor front and train an artist’s eye on how public space occurs, using sketching, description, data and measurement.

A followup Ecosystems & Imagination Workshop on Sunday, May 25 will bring our field observations into Stanley, Twenty Summers’ 494 Commercial Street space, where we can share how nature’s space has molded our autobiographies. The participants will be asked to contribute selected personal stories about coastal life, it’s daily routines and extraordinary events.

Participants in the initial field trip will be asked to bring a personal sketchbook, explore some basic drawing and writing methods and use their own environmental experiences to gather data for a communal map of the harbor coast. Adams will provide base maps of public lands, flood zones and tide lands and explain some of the history of our coastal footprint on Cape Cod.

Though participation in both the Field Trip and Workshop are highly encouraged, it is not a requirement. We would love for you to join either or all portions parts of our Ecosystems & Imagination series.

“Coastal space is made of ecosystems overlain with our cultural presence. We can inhabit that space responsively by understanding its boundaries as it changes under forces of ocean and atmosphere, storms, tides and the dynamics of land. The places we make and return to are never fixed. They need room to change but we prefer not to surrender our vital experiences that attracted us to the water’s edge. Together we will map the extent of the tidal coast, its ecological habitats, its cultural boundaries and the experiences that are crucial to our lives.

A good coastal map has five dimensions: the physical features of rock, plants and sand, its natural inhabitants both transient and resident, the built environment of structures, docks and seawalls, its cycles of change over time (daily, seasonally and decadal), and our stories and experiences. We will bring our data and expertise to add to a base map of habitats and ownership. You bring your stories and experiences as told through beach fires, fishing, dog walks, storm shelter and the art that it inspires. We hope to blend all these contributions into a hybrid that will reveal our intuitions and bring a more nuanced awareness of coastal places.”
–Mark Adams

Also check out other Arts events in Provincetown, Workshops in Provincetown, Fine Arts events in Provincetown.