<![CDATA[JAY CRITCHLEY - BLOG]]>Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:12:20 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Baby Boomers AT AMP GALLERY]]>Wed, 15 Jun 2022 17:11:06 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/baby-boomers-at-amp-gallery
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Baby Boomers: H2O to Go, found 1948/50 photo montage,
​Selected newsprint 20”H x 29”@ 2022 

]]><![CDATA[Greetings!]]>Wed, 25 May 2022 22:05:49 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/greetings
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Peat & Potatoes: Irish peat and potato skins, 2021
The long winter has finally turned to spring. Its beauty is haunted by the turbulence of the pandemic and the wrath of war. This short video is one creative response to the war in Ukraine: VALOR.

I spent a month in Co.Kerry, Ireland at Cill Rialaig before omicron appeared, at pre-famine stone cottages overlooking the Atlantic facing Provincetown! For my Peat & Potatoes project, I worked with indigenous materials of peat, peat ash and potatoes and absorbed the mythos of the people and the ancient landscape (see Bible above, on view at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) through May 8).

The Provincetown Pilgrim Monument Museum's (PMPM) summer exhibition includes my video, Provincetown 2020: 36 Solar Lights, created during lock down and premiered at the 2021 Provincetown International Film Festival PIFF.

The 39th Re-Rooters Day Ceremony on January 7 took place on a blustery and wet day with 30 souls bundled up and present.The theme: Meta-purse (esrup-ateM)

Check out my merch!

Looking forward to a safe and open summer. Hope to see you.

Thank you.

Peace, Jay
jaycritchley.com
]]><![CDATA[The Whiteness House - tarred and feathered]]>Thu, 01 Oct 2020 01:17:32 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/the-whiteness-house-tarred-and-featheredPictureThe Whiteness House - tarred and feathered, 14’ W x 7’ H x 12’ D, paint, feathers, multimedia;

Conceptual art installation on Commercial Street in Provincetown, MA at Bubala’s by the Bay Restaurant, October 16-25, 2020.

The public is invited to participate.

DATE: September 25, 2020

The Whiteness House - tarred and feathered, a walk-in scale model of The White House created by Provincetown artist Jay Critchley, will be installed at  Bubala's by the Bay Restaurant, 183 Commercial Street, Provincetown, Ma in a novel art space under its new patio awning. The ten-day outdoor installation will be held from October 16- 25, 2020. Writers, performers, poets and others are invited to submit ideas for daily planned activities. Volunteer to staff the installation are also being recruited.
The artist is represented by AMP Gallery, 432 Commercial Street, Provincetown, where other aspects of The Whiteness House will be on exhibit.
“Our nation’s home has taken on an ominous presence with a white president who has defined much of his Presidency based on color. How white is a Whiteness House after a black President? How does a white house express its whiteness?” states Critchley. 

The Whiteness House - tarred and feathered examines race and the politicization of The White House and all of government at a culturally and politically tumultuous time. It was designed and created by the artist at a residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico in 2017 in response to issues elevated by the last presidential election, and now, to continue a community dialogue prior to the November 3 vote.
Tarring and feathering is a form of public humiliation used to enforce unofficial justice or revenge. It was used in feudal Europe and on the American frontier, mostly as a type of mob vengeance. It is meant to humiliate and severely criticize a person.
“We ask, Who is being tarred and feathered – We the American people, owner’s of the home, or the present tenant? Or, is someone else doing the tarring and feathering?” the artist asks.

​The Whiteness House - tarred and feathered sculpture will be open to the public with community engagement and participation. The daily schedule will begin at noon with a community Ringing of the Bells. Visitors will be asked to sign up for fifteen-minute time slots, two at a time, to view the sculpture; only one inside at a time. Masks and social distancing will be required. Times and programming to be announced.

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Jay Critchley 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 multimedia artist, writer and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Ireland and Columbia.
Jay has had residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain, CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France, Milepost 5, Portland, OR 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. The 2020 edition of Provincetown Arts has published his piece, Democracy of the Land: the Moo Moo World.
Jay was honored 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 millions for AIDS, women’s health and the community.
He is represented by AMP Gallery in Provincetown. www.jaycritchley.com
]]><![CDATA[Cape Cod Times: White House as art plus virtual song]]>Tue, 29 Sep 2020 20:04:44 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/cape-cod-times-white-house-as-art-plus-virtual-songBy Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Posted Sep 28, 2020 at 6:35 AM
Updated Sep 28, 2020 at 6:35 AM
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​Provincetown artist creates a White House model as a race-oriented art installation; CLOC adds fall shows; CabaretFest live-streams; new guests for Seth Rudetsky series.
Provincetown artist Jay Critchley will create a walk-in-size scale model of the White House as a pre-election Commercial Street art installation commenting on race and the politicization of the presidential residence.

READ MORE
]]><![CDATA[DEMOCRACY OF THE LAND - THE MOO MOO WORLD 1620 opens at AMP Gallery, Provincetown, June 26 to July 8, 2020.]]>Fri, 26 Jun 2020 14:10:10 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/democracy-of-the-land-the-moo-moo-world-1620-opens-at-amp-gallery-provincetown-june-26-to-july-8-2020
Showing an edition of 35 unique archival prints with found colored sands, 30” H X 23” W, Funk & Shuster Fine Art Printing, 2020.
NOTE from Debbie: Hi everyone! AMP Gallery is so pleased and excited to finally open & feature new works by Jay Critchley, DEMOCRACY OF THE LAND - THE MOO MOO WORLD 1620. The Group Show features Karen Cappotto, Barbara Hadden, Jackie Lipton, Zammy Migdal, Lori Swartz, Forrest Williams, Rick Wrigley.

Please feel free to come by Friday the 26th. We will be taking safety precautions, so no more than 4-6 masked people may enter at a time. Thanks so much, and take good care!
_________

JAY CRITCHLEY | DEMOCRACY OF THE LAND - THE MOO MOO WORLD 1620*
Cows are as ubiquitous to the New England landscape as rolling forests, pastures and fall foliage, languishing on their bucolic fields, holding the land, owning the land.
This iconic tableau has affirmed itself over the four centuries since the Puritan Separatists first implanted themselves on North American soil in 1620. They had hoped to land in Virginia, where one year earlier some twenty slaves arrived at Point Comfort aboard the White Lion, a link to the long established African slave trade.

At the time Europeons called this the “New World,” a mythological reverie of an undiscovered, pristine Garden of Eden of valuable un-extracted commodities such as beaver, sassafras, timber and white pine (Biblical Trees of Life), but we now know that it was misnamed. Revisionist historians now more accurately call the “New World” the “Moo Moo World”.
Barnyard animals, cows, pigs and horses – our familiar Beasts of Burden – have gotten too little credit for the ecological catastrophe they and their masters propagated on the Americas – all invasive species. It’s common knowledge that these disease-ridden creatures did not exist in the Western Hemisphere until Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadors, themselves immune, paraded their horses and pigs off the boats with arrogant fanfare, a caravan of aliens Moo Mooing and Oinking.
These imperial soldiers, not far removed in time from the Black Plague and the rise of white nationalism in Europe, marauding Crusaders and ecological disorder on the Continent were on a clear Christian mission of “discovery,” recruitment and enslavement. In fact, thousands of indigenous people were captured and shipped off to the Caribbean and Europe.
What about all that pristine, “unproductive virgin land” waiting to be civilized, commodified and cowsplained? After all, there were no fences or rigid enclosures so familiar to the English landscape. By the 1530s Europeans were reading about the Noble Savage, “gentle as cows,” with no history, living in a limitless nature and prelapsarian innocence, these creatures were merely waiting for Christianity to save and civilize them.
*Except from Provincetown Arts 2020 issue
]]><![CDATA[Old Glory Condom brand relaunched!]]>Mon, 09 Dec 2019 15:29:44 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/old-glory-condom-brand-relaunched

​​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
]]><![CDATA[The Provincetown Library announces the unveiling of the feminist, Re-signing of the Mayflower Compact 2020,on November 10 at 3:00 pm.]]>Wed, 06 Nov 2019 17:30:32 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/the-provincetown-library-announces-the-unveiling-of-the-feministre-signing-of-the-mayflower-compact-2020on-november-10-at-300-pm
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.
This banner is 6’ wide by 7’ high and is available for loan or exhibition.
​
The Mayflower Compact is the first democratic Colonial document in the “New World”. This historic Christian agreement, signed by forty-one of the 102 passengers, all white men, laid the groundwork for the radical takeover of the indigenous land and peoples. Native Americans were not consulted.
Critchley states, “Now is the time for women to hoist the sails of state and take command: 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.”
How different would the world be if activist American woman had signed the Compact? This project explores the effects of Colonization of the First Nation peoples of the Americas, and examines the intersection of environment, race, class and gender – past, present and future.
The Democracy of the Land project explores the question, what is democracy and how do we define community? To whom do we owe our allegiance? How do people of color, women and indigenous peoples define democracy? What are our dreams? How do we propose to take action?

These forty-one female signers are just the tip of the melting icebergs in redressing the treatment of women in our country’s narrative. The signers are creative, activist women 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.

Jay is represented by AMP Gallery in Provincetown.
]]><![CDATA[RE-SIGNING OF​THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT 2020]]>Sun, 15 Sep 2019 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/re-signing-ofthe-mayflower-compact-2020

This project available for travel. Download PDF flyer.
​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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]]><![CDATA[September 11th, 2019]]>Wed, 11 Sep 2019 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/september-11th-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.
Critchley arrived in Provincetown in the 1970s to take a job at the Drop-In Center. It is here where he left his marriage and began his life as a born-again artist. And he wasn’t quiet about it. His brand of performance art involved in-your-face stuff, like a Statue of Liberty gown made from plastic tampon applicators he found on the beach. He encrusted a station wagon with sand. He gleefully engaged in a three-year trademark battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which had denied his use of the flag for his condom company Old Glory Condoms. This was during the AIDS epidemic when the whole issue of the federal government taking the disease seriously was in question. The trademark ultimately got approved.

Critchley is funny. But he is a sincere person with a deeply serious streak. Take the Swim for Life as an example. There an air of silliness, with its après-Mermaid Brunch, but it’s also a daring plunge into Provincetown’s wild environment.

There is performance art within the Swim. Critchley has rituals, hats, prizes and he continues to add new elements each year. Even the unexpected challenges — the storm this year, a basking shark in the harbor years earlier — are still ways for him to do improv. But he’s always thoughtful about the risks.

The Provincetown Community Compact is another creation seemingly born out of his imagination, though there are other fiscal sponsors elsewhere in the country. The Compact provides umbrella tax exempt status that allows start-up nonprofits to develop themselves before going through the entire process of applying to the U.S. Dept. of Revenue themselves.

The Compact charges a five-percent fee for this service, which includes financial management and accounting. Thus, Critchley has been able to serve as a mentor. Many pillars of the Outer Cape community have benefited including the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Cape Cod Modern House Trust and the Provincetown Commons.

From the dunes to the town sewers — he once did a project about year-rounders living in a subterranean sewer world while the rest of the town was reserved for summer residents — Critchley makes art out of Provincetown, and the town is kinder, sillier, and just plain better because of him.
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]]><![CDATA[Democracy of the Land, Truro Center for the Arts]]>Tue, 30 Jul 2019 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.jaycritchley.com/blog/democracy-of-the-land-truro-center-for-the-arts
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
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