Grace Gouveia in her Washington Avenue home.
Grace Gouveia amazed many with the size of the ash that at times extended as much as an inch off the tip of her cigarette. As a chain smoker, plowing through two packs a day, she had plenty of practice. Breezing through Provincetown, usually in a brightly colored muumuu, ensconced in a cloud of smoke of her own creation, Gouveia was a force of nature with the energy of a benevolent sorceress.
When artist Jay Critchley arrived in Provincetown in 1975 he was instantly enchanted by the town, and soon thereafter, he fell under Gouveia’s spell when they met volunteering at the Drop In Center, a free community health and counseling clinic that lasted only for the decade of the seventies, largely aimed at serving the young hippies flooding the town. Critchley arrived in town freshly divorced having just had a son and come out as a gay man as well as deciding to pursue life as an artist, without really knowing what that meant. It was a personally tumultuous time for him to say the least. The two became close friends and Critchley visited her Washington Avenue home frequently for hours and hours of conversation.
“I would listen to her,” says Critchley. “She had a very mesmerizing voice. Her voice was magnetic.”
Critchley recently paid homage to his friend with an ephemeral installation titled Grace Gouveia: Smoking Bomb on Motta Field featuring an excerpt of a poem Gouveia wrote, poetry being one of her many varied pursuits in life. Created on April 14 by drawing each letter with chalk at 18 by 16 feet, the words were only visible from atop the Pilgrim Monument. Once at the top of the 252-foot-tall monument viewers saw this stanza:
Arise
beloved town
And shout your will
that dares defy
Born in 1909 in Olhão, Portugal, as Graciette Leocadia Gouveia, she immigrated with her family to the United States, settling in Provincetown in 1916, the thunderous year in which the town was declared the largest art colony in the world and the Provincetown Players presented Eugene O’Neill’s Bound East for Cardiff. After graduating from Provincetown High School, Gouveia attended American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts, followed by Mount Holyoke College in nearby South Hadley. She returned to Provincetown and taught fifth and sixth grade at the Governor Bradford School (now home to The Commons). She left again to work as a social worker in New York City’s Spanish Harlem and then worked in Appalachia as part of the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic incarnation of the Peace Corps, before returning to Provincetown. From then until her death in 1998 she was an activist (even getting excommunicated by the Catholic Church for promoting birth control).
Gouveia’s legacy in town was largely driven by her work with senior citizens founding the Senior Citizens Group, which then became the Council on Aging, which eventually moved to Alden Street and whose headquarters were named after Gouveia by a 1983 town meeting vote. But throughout her life Gouveia wrote poetry, usually with Provincetown as a subject, and come the 1980s the gentrification of the town as its focal point (one can only imagine what she would have said when the Grace Gouveia Building was transformed into condominiums). She never gave titles to her poems and someone other than Gouveia typed the poems up until 1980, with the ones that followed existing only in her handwriting, which all went to Critchley after her death. Ever since, he’s worked to bring more attention to her poetry as while she was alive it received little public attention.
“I don’t think that local people were taken seriously as artists and writers,” says Critchley. “She also never promoted it. She never submitted it for publication to anyone as far as I know. She definitely was an outsider poet.”
The installation is now a blur after wet and windy weather, but Critchley remains steadfast with a renewed commitment to publishing a book of her poetry, raising funds to do so through his nonprofit Provincetown Community Compact. Gouveia’s work will be part of a symposium at the Fine Arts Work Center as part of the first Outsiders Festival titled The Tramp and the Smoking Bomb, an examination of the writing produced by her and Harry Kemp.
As for Critchley, Grace Gouveia: Smoking Bomb is another project involving a soon to be demolished or radically altered part of Provincetown and the Outer Cape, as Motta Field will undergo a major restoration. Past works include 2003’s LETOM SWODAEM (Meadows Motel) in which eight artists presented an installation of their work in the motel before it was torn down as well as the Beige Motel, a similar work in 2007 featuring his own work in the now gone Pilgrim Springs Motel in North Truro, and Ten Days That Shook the World: the Centennial Decade, an installation at the old Herring Cove Beach Bathhouse in 2012. And he is currently working with the town for an upcoming installation at the old police station before its demolition to make way for housing. These massive, temporary palettes suit a major theme of Crithcley’s work.
“I think it has to do with our vulnerability and recognizing our vulnerability in the process of time and culture,” says Critchley. “It’s the birth and death cycle that we are all a part of. It’s not a linear process we’re living in, it’s circular. It’s something to be celebrated. It’s an opportunity for the community to move on and move through.”
To learn more about the Outsiders Festival and The Tramp and the Smoking Bomb visit campprovincetown.com or call 508.837.9607. To learn more about the proposed book of Gouveia’s poetry or to make a donation towards the project visit thecompact.org.
