PROVINCETOWN – “I call Jay ‘the trickster,’ ” said Jerry Beck of Jay Critchley, a multi-media artist/writer based out of Provincetown. “I consider him an important artist/activist, probably one of the best in the country.”
Beck, founding director of The Revolving Museum, a nomadic museum based out of Fitchburg, said of Critchley, “He’s a visionary thinker, a visionary artist. There’s not a lot of them.”
Critchley, 72, first made his mark in public art in 1981 by parking a sand-encrusted car that, as he put it, “caused a sensation” for an entire summer in the MacMillan Wharf municipal parking lot in the center of Provincetown. It was his first project. “People said, ‘You are an artist.’ But it was just something I was compelled to do,” he said.
Beck said, “He is kind of enigmatic, almost mischievous… He’s fearless and he has a good sense of humor… When you get people to laugh, it’s easier to reach people instead of pounding it [the message] over your head.”
Critchley is maybe most known for creating and organizing the annual Provincetown Swim For Life & Paddler Flotilla, run by his non-profit corporation, the Provincetown Community Compact.
The Swim For Life fundraiser, which over the years has raised millions of dollars for various Provincetown community causes, “is his greatest piece of performance art,” said Berta Walker, who owns an art gallery in Provincetown.
“He’s not making art for art’s sake.He doesn’t want to be Picasso or Mattise or Rembrandt. He straddles that line between social justice and art.” Arts Writer Susan Rand Brown about Jay Critchley
“It’s such a participatory event, the result of which is hope,” said Walker of the Swim For Life. “I don’t know anything else like it.”
“He’s not making art for art’s sake,” said arts writer Susan Rand Brown, who splits time between Provincetown and Hartford, Connecticut. “He doesn’t want to be Picasso or Mattise or Rembrandt. He straddles that line between social justice and art.”
Critchley lives on that line, it seems. “My work comes out of a very political and cultural awareness and background,” said Critchley. “I want to make a connection with people, and I want to have a good time doing what I do.”
Walker, said, “He’s always commenting on what’s happening and putting that thread of hope and change within it.”
And Abe Rybeck, founding director or Theater Offensive of Boston, said of Critchley, “He’s interested less in objects, and more in the experience of art.”
Critchley wants to be noticed, and his message to be heard. “His PR genius is part of what he does,” said Walker.
“Very Much Like Andy Warhol”
Once, Critchley was barred from entering a hearing room at the Massachusetts Statehouse because he was wearing a Statue Of Liberty gown made out of 3,000 discarded plastic tampon applicators that he had found on Cape Cod beaches.
Jay Critchley, in a Statue Of Liberty gown made out of discarded tampon applicators. PHOTO COURTESY OF JAY CRITCHLEY
Critchley, who has literally made an art of forming corporations, had a three-year legal battle that he ultimately won to trademark Old Glory Condoms, which are condoms bearing a flag-inspired logo. According to Critchley’s webpage, then Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) condemned the logo on the floor of the United States Senate.
And one of Critchley’s recent projects is a small scale model of The White House that he tarred and feathered and called The Whiteness House as a statement on race and power.
“All art is a lark,” said Critchley, who later said, “Part of your job is to figure out what my message is.”
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