Though Cape year-rounders relish the empty streets and golden light of the off-season, there is something especially electrifying about the advent of spring. Provincetown gardens begin to bloom, and painters with portable easels emerge as if they were part of the growing season. Indeed, in Provincetown, they are, as surely as the first tulips and lilacs. From the contemplative quiet of the winter months comes the energetic productivity of summer. Along with its stupendous beaches, restaurants, and shops, Provincetown's cultural life burgeons between June and August, with galleries, musical events, and theater to attend every night of the week. And at the forefront of Provincetown's growing roster of summer offerings is the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Workshop Program.

Established in 1995, our Summer Program boasts a faculty that includes some of the most vibrant and successful artists working today: Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer Michael Cunningham; short story author Grace Paley; novelist Andrew Holleran; columnist Andrew Sullivan; former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky; and, in the visual studios, artist Michael Mazur, sculptors Elizabeth King and Carlton Newton, master printmaker Robert Townsend, photographers Amy Arbus and Marian Roth, are just a few who teach at the Work Center.

From the third week in June through the end of August, our grounds are transformed by the hundreds of students -- more than 650 during the summer of 2000 -- who gather to spend their weeks working in the studios and sharing what they produce. And the students' experience transforms as well, from the tentative hush at Sunday evening's orientation, to the raucous appreciation at the student events on Thursday nights.

Along with classes and studio time, the Work Center hosts a number of events all summer long, including faculty readings and slide lectures in the newly-renovated Stanley Kunitz Common Room. With the help of generous donations, in the spring of 2000 the Common Room was given a new wood floor, sound and video systems, as well as windows provided by the Michael Kirchmayer Memorial Fund. 1999-2000 Visual Fellow Kimberley Hart made the curtain that now hangs behind the podium. And a fundraising effort called Take-A-Seat in the Stanley Kunitz Common Room brought in donations to pay for one hundred new chairs.

"This was the most nourishing workshop I've attended, anywhere. This was partly due to the environment of Provincetown, which supported the class so well. I'm very impressed with FAWC." -Tara Moyle, Summer 2000 Workshop student "I will likely spend months assimilating everything I've learned at the Work Center. I wouldn't have changed a thing. It was a tremendous week." -David Pauley, Summer 2000 Workshop student

Other evenings during the summer are filled with special events, which in the past have included America's Favorite Poems with Robert Pinsky, the re-dedication of the Common Room in honor of U.S. Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz, and The State of Contemporary Painting with Summer faculty members Lauren Ewing, Gregory Amenoff, Mira Schor and Michael Mazur.

Exhibitions in the Hudson D. Walker Gallery round out the week, with Friday night openings for shows that have in the past included Elise Asher and Fritz Bultman Retrospectives, two exhibitions of Provincetown's renowned town-owned collection, a show of works by Provincetown painter Kenneth Stubbs, and an exhibition of small works by Former Fellows from the early years of the Work Center, 1968-1985. Exhibitions for summer of 2001 include work by Mary Hackett, Robert Motherwell and Former Fellows from 1985 to 2000.

Along with hosting the Workshop Program, each summer the Fine Arts Work Center joins with other arts organizations to offer special residencies to several artists and writers. The Ohio Arts Council and the Maryland Institute of Art are two of the organizations who have placed artists in residence, most recently fiction writer Jacqueline Spangler, poet Jeffrey Hillard and painter Doug Unger from the OAC, and visual artist Emily Tellez from Maryland.

August brings with it the advent of the FAWC Annual Auction, one of the Work Center's most important fundraising events. Local businesses, as well as individual artists, generously donate goods, services, work, and time to this event, which each year grows in scale and festivity. It's an opportunity for us to celebrate the Work Center while at the same time doing what we can to ensure its viability during the quieter months, when Fellows take up residence to begin the process again.