Jay Critchley’s summerlong waterfront installation series, The Cold Warmth #2, combining national flags that address the authoritarian shift of the US geopolitical landscape.
Cold Warmth #2 Opening Thurs, Aug 28, 7:00 pm
next to Angel Foods, 467 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA
Stay Tuned for next Opening.
Video: The Cold Warmth #1, conjoined flags: US/Russia; US/Turkey. Human video screen, projection by Arvid Tomayko and Wyona Gene Tourmaline
Drawing on the luminosity that has attracted artists to the Cape tip for over a century, inter-spatial artist Jay Critchley creates The Cold Warmth, a summerlong installation series at Provincetown Harbor that combines the US flag with the flags of other countries, referencing the shape-shifting global alignment of nations and the authoritarian direction of the US geopolitical landscape. The inaugural installation includes the US/Russian and the US/Turkey flags.
The opening reception The Cold Warmth #2 is Thursday, August 28 at 7:00 pm next to Angel Foods, 467 Commercial Street.
With special guests: artists/performers Myra Kooy + Kate Rogers + Anne Bloom, and musician Andy Scheib.(Showgirls winner), and artists/performers Arvid Tomayko + Wyona Gene Tourmaline.
The project, which is sponsored by the Provincetown Public Art Foundation, asks: What does it mean to be an American? A patriot? A world leader?
“The daylong changing of light is one of the defining features of Provincetown and this project sheds light on the White House’s disturbing shift in our relationships to our closest allies and autocratic countries,” states Critchley.
The Cold Warmth is located on the waterfront next to Angel Foods, 467 Commercial Street, where this series of conjoining flags will unfurl through October and include performances, readings, music and ceremony. Future selected countries may include Canada, Greenland, Panama, China and the European Union.
Jay is a locally-sourced, interspatial artist, writer and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Ireland, Germany and Columbia.
He 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 gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the artist as a corporation.
He has taught at the Museum School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Tufts), and has had residencies at: Harvard University (where he lectured); AS220 in Providence, RI; Williams College in Williamstown, MA; Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT; Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, NYC; Milepost 5 in Portland, OR; Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain; CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France; and the Santa Fe Art Institute, NM.
His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and his 2015 survey show at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He won a controversial Trademark from the US for his Old Glory Condom Corporation patriotic condoms. He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects for his visionary, environmental proposal, Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his Big Dig project, The Big Twig. He recently gave the keynote speech at the UK Conference on Menstruation and Sustainability in St. Andrews, Scotland where he performed a ceremony on the North Sea as Miss Tampon Liberty.
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 over $7M for AIDS and women’s health and the community (the 38th Swim is Saturday, September 6, 2025).
The opening reception The Cold Warmth #2 is Thursday, August 28 at 7:00 pm next to Angel Foods, 467 Commercial Street.
With special guests: artists/performers Myra Kooy + Kate Rogers + Anne Bloom, and musician Andy Scheib.(Showgirls winner), and artists/performers Arvid Tomayko + Wyona Gene Tourmaline.
The project, which is sponsored by the Provincetown Public Art Foundation, asks: What does it mean to be an American? A patriot? A world leader?
“The daylong changing of light is one of the defining features of Provincetown and this project sheds light on the White House’s disturbing shift in our relationships to our closest allies and autocratic countries,” states Critchley.
The Cold Warmth is located on the waterfront next to Angel Foods, 467 Commercial Street, where this series of conjoining flags will unfurl through October and include performances, readings, music and ceremony. Future selected countries may include Canada, Greenland, Panama, China and the European Union.
Jay is a locally-sourced, interspatial artist, writer and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Ireland, Germany and Columbia.
He 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 gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the artist as a corporation.
He has taught at the Museum School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Tufts), and has had residencies at: Harvard University (where he lectured); AS220 in Providence, RI; Williams College in Williamstown, MA; Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT; Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, NYC; Milepost 5 in Portland, OR; Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain; CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France; and the Santa Fe Art Institute, NM.
His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and his 2015 survey show at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He won a controversial Trademark from the US for his Old Glory Condom Corporation patriotic condoms. He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects for his visionary, environmental proposal, Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his Big Dig project, The Big Twig. He recently gave the keynote speech at the UK Conference on Menstruation and Sustainability in St. Andrews, Scotland where he performed a ceremony on the North Sea as Miss Tampon Liberty.
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 over $7M for AIDS and women’s health and the community (the 38th Swim is Saturday, September 6, 2025).