PROVINCETOWN – In the late 1980s, “Bob Gasoi was a bohemian artist living hand to mouth,” said Ronny Hazel, the owner of Shop Therapy. “I had put the word out. I was looking for someone to do murals for my building.”
“We are anti-establishment,” said Hazel, describing Shop Therapy. “We’re a little outspoken, a little wild,” he said. Plus, Hazel added, “We’ve always been a head shop.”
So when Gasoi was hired to paint murals for Shop Therapy, Hazel said the project quickly became more than what Provincetown selectman envisioned when they suggested business owners paint some artwork on the the dull off-season plywood that covered closed-for-the-winter businesses.
As Chris Busa, the founder and editor of Provincetown Arts magazine, pointed out, Hazel’s is a “very wittily named store. You get therapy from shopping, and it will help cure your mind.”
Ronny Hazel
Gasoi’s murals reflected that, and maybe something more. “The old building was an evolving monument to local figures,” said Busa.
“Through my filter, those murals are a very important part of Provincetown history,” said Chuck White, Provincetown-based multi-media artist, and the founder of Motherlode.TV – a website dedicated to those who create something because of passion. Motherlode.TV has written about Gasoi.
Almost 30 years after Gasoi’s edgy murals first appeared as very public and sometimes political art that quickly covered the front of the old Shop Therapy building on Commercial Street in Provincetown, what could be saved is now on display in an alley on the side of the new Shop Therapy location, further west on Commercial Street.
“Shockingly, an amazing amount of people walk down there,” said Arnie Charnick, an artist and self-described “art problem solver,” who rehabbed and saved what he could of Gasoi’s old murals.
“It’s become a destination alley,” said Charnick.
“Provincetown has always been about the radicals and people pushing the envelope,” said White. “And Ronny did it. He and Gasoi together.”
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