JAY CRITCHLEY
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JAY CRITCHLEY

Old Glory Condom brand relaunched!

12/9/2019

 
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​​Old Glory Condoms - still worn with pride country-wide;

radical safer sex corporation celebrates thirty years of redefining patriotism; a legal textbook Trademark case 

Thirty years ago CEO Jay Critchley founded the Old Glory Condom Corporation - worn with pride country-wide, which redefined the definition of patriotism: to protect and save lives. It was launched at an exhibition at MIT in 1989. At the time the US Congress was debating a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw desecration of the flag following a Supreme Court ruling declaring it free speech while the government was doing little to confront the HIV/AIDS crisis. 

When the company applied for a US Trademark, the government deemed the name and logo - the American flag imprinted on a condom, “as immoral and scandalous to associate the flag with sex”. This led to a three-year legal battle that forced the government to issue the Trademark. 

Old Glory Condoms is reviving its potent message and relaunching its brand with trademarked 
t-shirts, mugs and even flip flops. At this time condoms are not available, although they may be in the future.
Attorney David Cole, presently National Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union, took on the case while at the Center for Constitutional Rights and recently commented on the results:

“Your legal battle was important both culturally and legally.  It arose in the heart of the culture wars over both the proper uses of the flag, and over safe sex and HIV-AIDS. As a legal matter, the Old Glory Condom case became a textbook case (literally) in the application of the disparagement and scandalous provisions of the Trademark Act. In the past few years, the Supreme Court has held unconstitutional the legal provisions applied to deny you a trademark, in cases involving an Asian rock group that sought to trademark their name, The Slants, and a clothing manufacturer who wanted to trademark its brandname, FUCT. So you were ahead of your time!”

“The challenge to freedom, democracy and sex and gender could not be more relevant today”, especially as we commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims on indigenous peoples land in 2020”, states Critchley. “For years people have asked us for these irreverent creations so we dug into our archives – a patriotic Christmas!” he added. 

The controversy generated worldwide media coverage including the front page of the Washington Post and a feature in People Magazine.  But its most successful prize was from conservative Senator Jessie Helms, an architect of the culture wars, who inadvertently created the first global safer sex commercial by holding up the Old Glory logo in the US Senate and denounced its Trademark, which was broadcast on CNN.

CEO Critchley is a respected corporate leader and influencer whose projects and actions have tackled global environmental issues like plastics, fossil fuels and the automobile, including legislative filings and governmental interventions. His offices and home are on Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts USA. For more information: reroot@comcast.net

Contact: Jay Critchley, CEO
Old Glory Condom Corporation - condoms with a conscience
reroot@comcast.net
www.jaycritchley.com

The Provincetown Library announces the unveiling of the feminist, Re-signing of the Mayflower Compact 2020,on November 10 at 3:00 pm.

11/6/2019

 
The pop-up installation by artist Jay Critchley commemorates the yearlong countdown to the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims on ancestral Wampanoag land in Provincetown Harbor.
The Provincetown Library is pleased to unveil artist Jay Critchley’s pop-up banner installation of the feminist Re-signing of the Mayflower Compact 2020 on Sunday, November 10 at 3:00pm. The event, which is open to the public, marks the yearlong countdown to the 400th anniversary of the first landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor on ancestral Wampanoag land, on November 11, 2020, and the signing of the Mayflower Compact. 
This installation is part of Critchley’s ongoing project, Democracy of the Land, which takes a deep dive into the pre-Colonial Americas and the ecological devastation of the European invasions. In 2020, it will be 528 years since the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas.
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RE-SIGNING OF​THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT 2020

9/15/2019

 
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​How different would the world be if activist, American woman had signed the Compact? This re-imagined Compact is part of the Democracy of the Land project, which explores the effects of colonization on the Mashpee Wampanoag Nation and First Nation peoples of the Americas, and examines the intersection of environment, race, class and gender – past, present and future. ​
America, America,
​God shed her grace on thee.
And crown thy good with womenhood.
From sea to shining sea.
 
​

The cultural, political and environmental stakes are high in how we understand and regulate our relationship with the land, climate and culture. Like the layers of soil, we dig deep into layers of human occupation on the land to discover our history, and the filters we use when we view and experience its elements. The Pilgrims weren’t the first European visitors to the Cape tip, but they certainly created an uproar! In 2020, it will be 528 years since the arrival of a wave of invaders – precipitated by the notorious Christopher Columbus and company. 

​
Next year we commemorate the historic and exalted Mayflower Compact, a democratic document signed in Provincetown Harbor in 1620 by forty-one bedraggled white, Christian men. Native Americans were not consulted. Neither were women. Now it’s time for women to hoist the sails of state and take command: the Re--signing of the Mayflower Compact 2020. We beseech you to reclaim and recreate a value-added Mayflower Compact - for now and for the future! Caesar said it with flair, as did the Pilgrims: Veni, vidi, vici. We came. We saw. We conquered. And now it’s their turn! 

With so many activist women of importance in US history, the selection process for the forty-one re-signers of the Mayflower Compact 2020 was agonizing. Just how have women unburdened themselves from the thousands of years of oppression, run through the Christian grinder of western ideology and prosper on American soil? 

These forty-one female signers are just the tip of the melting icebergs in my attempt to redress the treatment of women in our country’s narrative. Creative, activist women make up almost half of the signers, from Marion Anderson to Cher, from Audre Lorde to Rachel Carson, from Zora Neale Hurston to Gertrude Stein. And muckraker Ida Tarbell who brought down Rockefeller’s Standard Oil!  Other signers include Lucille Ball, Rosa Parks, Whoopi Goldberg and Sojourner Truth. And two of Provincetown’s local exemplars, poet and activist Grace Gouveia and Mary Heaton Vorse, a radical journalist. We also honor the recently elected Congresswomen, two Native Americans - Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids, and two Muslims - Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. 

Recalibrating our history and our vision for the future begins right here. Rise up and join the insurgency! (Please inquire about exhibiting this two-sided, free-standing banner at your “Get out the vote 2020” action.) Curriculum guides for middle and high school students based on the Re-signing The Mayflower Compact 2020 project are available. Inquire at www.jaycritchley.com/mayflower 
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September 11th, 2019

9/11/2019

 
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To spite the weather, swimmers, paddlers, volunteers and supporters come out to eat for the Swim
It’s hard to know which force has had the greater impact on the other. Has Provincetown changed Jay Critchley, a gay man raised among nine siblings in a Catholic family, or has Critchley changed Provincetown even more?

Critchley may be feeling slightly depressed this year. After 32 years running the Provincetown Swim for Life, this was the first year no one dipped a toe into Provincetown Harbor to raise money for the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, Helping Our Women, Outer Cape Health Services and other nonprofits. And still, the charitable event Critchley founded in 1988 raised about $150,000 for nonprofits this year. It’s collected $6.5 million overall.
The Cape Cod National Seashore denied him a permit to use Long Point as the jump-off for the 1.4-mile swim across the harbor due to the fear of sharks. Then, Hurricane Dorian hit. So Critchley called off the harbor swim. Even still, swimmers had already raised the pledge money, and so the nonprofits that depend on the Swim’s funds will still get donations.

As a tribute to Critchley, we hope people donate more to make up for the $50,000 shortfall of this year’s semi-swim.

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Democracy of the Land, Truro Center for the Arts

7/30/2019

 
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Longtime Provincetown multi-media artist, performance artist, writer and activist will take a deep dive into his singular, penetrating work, and his historic exploration of the roots of the American landscape and its mythology. How does an artist, or anyone, tread on the Earth with the cultural, political and environmental stakes at an all time high? What is our narrative with the land? How do we occupy our ground? How do we make a stand?
Jay is a longtime resident of Provincetown and the shifting dunes, landscape and the sea are his palette. He has utilized sand, Christmas trees, fish skins, plastic tampon applicators washed up on beaches, pre-demolition buildings and selected sites in his work. He is a conceptual and multi-media artist, writer and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany and Columbia. Jay recently returned from a two-month residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Other residencies include Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain, CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France, and Harvard University where he also lectured. His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and he recently gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist as a Corporation. His 2015 survey show at the Provincetown Art Association &; Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his environmental projects. Jay was honored in 2012 by the Massachusetts State Legislature as an artist and founder and director of the Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life, which has raised $6.5M for AIDS and women’s health. He is represented by AMP Gallery in Provincetown.

Notable historic documents:
  • Mayflower Compact (Pilgrims, 1620)
  • Native America (Four-part PBS documentary, 2018)
  • Document of Discovery (1493)
  • Florentine Codex (16 th Century)


This event is part of Truro Connections

JAY CRITCHLEY’S APOCALYPTIC VISION OF MAYFLOWER 400

7/29/2019

 
By Howard Karren  |  Provincetown Banner
​
When Jay Critchley, Provincetown’s resident performance-installationartist- writer-satirist-activist- impresario, sat down to discuss his upcoming talk, “Democracy of the Land,” which he’ll be giving on Tuesday at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, a messianic mission quickly emerged. Ever since he was “born again” as an artist some 38 years ago, at the age of 33, Critchley has been creating projects and series and films, on his own and collaborating with others, on subjects that he feels need addressing. “It’s just being engaged in the politics of the world and the country,” he says.
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Before re-imagining his life as an artist, Critchley’s “former self ” was devoted to “human services” — and he still is, by running the Provincetown Compact, which he founded 26 years ago and has raised millions to support charitable causes, mostly by holding the annual Swim for Life & Paddle Flotilla in September. “I worked for youth in Connecticut,” Critchley says. “I was a VISTA volunteer in Oregon. I worked at a drop-in center in Provincetown — that’s what got me here. I was married at the time. I have a son and three grandchildren. I came out as a gay man first. The ‘born again as an artist’ came four years later. My sister sent me a subscription to Art in America. I said, ‘Why are you sending this to me?’ She said, ‘Because you’re an artist.’ How could I get away with being an artist? It just wasn’t part of my thinking. We’re talking about Irish Catholic in the ’50s.”
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Jay Critchley’s self-portrait, his face hidden by tie-string surgical masks, is from his “Maskuerade Ball” project. The photo is by Bobby Miller.

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36TH RE-ROOTERS DAY CEREMONY, PROVINCETOWN HARBOR, 1-7-19

1/7/2019

 
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After the Twelve Days of Stockpiling (Christmas), people gather to purge 2018 and pay homage to community. Song, chanting and ranting preceed the burning of the Christmas tree boat in the harbor.
Transactional Storm Surges
lanoitcasnarT mrotS segruS


The Lord appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and gave him…
The Ten Commandments of Natural Security
1. Brain-pruned prerolled brinkmanship is the Lord Thy God and thou shalt not militarize queer coal-dusted terrestrial protein CHANT after each: lanoitcasnarT mrotS segruS
2. Thou shalt not monetize conspiratorial hardcoded intimacy flooding near-Arctic merchantiled microbial heat islands
3. Thou shalt not unbank throttling multi-planetary flocking behavior interoperably lame-streaming self-salted, two-legged nuclear optioned threequals 
4. Thou shalt keep holy virgin thought-leadered chocolate conscious abusers vaping supply chained filterbubbled self-driving strongmen
5. Honor the father and the mother: Fire + Fury
6. Thou shalt not kill hush-moneyed Club Medicared idolaters bombing energy dominant fear-gassed Marshmallow Tester dwebs
7. Thou shalt not commit hungry Deep State immigrant swine waste pestilence shooting dismembered tipping point monopolies
8. Thou shalt not commit nuclear-optioned racially illiterate cakeism genderizing friction-free climate refugee mergers
9 Thou shalt not border cross tear-gassing market driven extinctions Mobil Warming 
minimum raged free-range parents
10. Thou shalt not covet fake-pewed taking a knee cold warring ice sheet endowment effects white listing tax uncut value-added native land baby fixers
Let it be known that the devils and sinners who deceive us shall be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beasts and false profits are and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Amen.

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Provincetown Aids memorial dedication

6/24/2018

 
At the recent dedication of the Lauren Ewing’s elegant and transcendent AIDS Memorial on Provincetown Town Hall lawn, the community told the story of the town’s valiant response to HIV/AIDS. Jay Critchley was honored to speak as director of the Provincetown Community Compact and the Swim for Life, citing the town’s continuing role and responsibility to share Provincetown's narrative to a fractured and discordant world. TheCompact.org

SHROUDED RAINBOW - THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE NATURAL AND CIVIC ENVIRONMENT

3/15/2018

 
​HERRING COVE BEACH, CAPE COD NATIONAL SEASHORE, PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS

A project by Jay Critchley

A planetary dream deferred.

Herring Cove Beach in Cape Cod National Seashore was dramatically transformed by four nor'easter storms in the winter of 2018. Although not unprecedented, the break in the narrow sand spit created an enormous breach that threatens the protected salt marsh behind it. Exposed after the barrier dune was washed away were three pilings that formed the base of a measured nautical mile target.

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TEDx Provincetown 2018

3/15/2018

 
A portrait of the artist as a corporation
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