(2009)
Jay Critchley compound | Just Visiting for the Weekend.
The work that put Jay Critchley on the map, at the beginning of the 1980s, was Just Visiting for the Weekend. He encrusted a 1968 Dodge Coronet station wagon in sand and placed it at the foot of MacMillan Wharf. “Almost at once crowds began to form,” Peter Manso recalled in Ptown. “Big crowds. People went out of their way to scratch the sand off the car’s windows to see what was inside. Others took Polaroids. Articles appeared in The Advocate and The Cape Cod Times, speculating on what the sand-covered vehicle might mean.” When Town Hall moved to tow it away, the lawyer Roslyn Garfield swung into action. “She reminded the town fathers that no laws had been broken, that the car was properly registered, and that this lone unshaven man was only standing up for what he believed in, and doing so in a way that was typically ‘Ptown.’ The argument was successful. The car was a symbol of the small guy. In its humor and camp, it was the work of a populist hero.”
Other Critchley projects that will be found elsewhere in Building Provincetown are the Meadows Motel and Cottages project (122 Bradford Street Extension), Beige (53 Bradford Street), the Outermost Alms Museum (143 Commercial Street), and the Tiresome Tabernacle (Cape Cod National Seashore | Province Lands).
¶ Last updated on 1 May 2017.