by Steve Desroches
Gays hate overhead lighting. It might be a stereotype, says artist Justine Crosby, but nevertheless, if you go into many gay or lesbian households and you will see a plethora of dimmers and creative lighting. See a gay person go into a brightly lit home and they may think the evening includes an interrogation. See a straight person go into a dimly limit queer household and they might assume a vampire is in residence. Of course, she speaks in jest…for the most part. But there is something decidedly gay about household lighting taken to an art form. Lighting a room is akin to painting it. The use of colored bulbs, shades, positioning of lighting source, and the attention to wattage can make any room a canvas.
Light as an artistic medium brought Crosby’s multidimensional and already a multimedia pursuit to the next level. Over the course of her life as an artist Crosby has explored a wide array of practices and mediums: fine art, illustration, dance, performance art, costume, makeup, paper, paper-mâché, fabric, copper wire, ink, gouache and acrylic, and mixed-media, in both 2-D and 3-D works, and in small to larger scale installations. She even considered the years she spent working as a hair stylist at Snip to be a true artistic expression, “To me, hair was my medium,” says Crosby. “It’s a sculpture. I can cut it. I can shape it. I can color it. It’s a sculpture. It gave me a chance to be creative and make art even with someone’s head.” But her latest obsession has Crosby exuding a palpable sense of excitement. She can’t get enough of lampshades.
When she would look around her Provincetown cottage she shares with her wife and dog, she’d often be distracted away from the beauty of her home by the beige and boring lampshades. So she took down the soulless covering, tearing off the fabric and lining, stripping the shade down to its boning and then recovering it with a variety of materials creating a work of art in the process. Over the past four years she been working non-stop, with the fruits of her labor part of a show titled Shades of Ghey, now on display at The Commons. Provincetown, and in particular The Commons, creates such a space for an unconventional art form.
“This town has a niche for all kinds of things and I love that,” says Crosby. “The town has a large amount of landscape, which isn’t what I do. My work is a little off-beat. I usually showed my work in untraditional spaces like at Spiritus or at Café Edwidge. That’s often where you see work that doesn’t have gallery representation. Things that might not fit in galleries. There’s a space for everything in town.”
Crosby has explored all the facets of Provincetown as much as she has artistic pursuits. While she was raised in Florida, her mother was a Provincetown native and her grandmother was part of the Portuguese community in town who married a man she met while he was stationed in town while serving in the U.S. Navy, settling in a home in the East End on Commercial Street in 1942. Crosby spent every summer in Provincetown as a child, a magical experience.
“It was amazing, to say the least, in the 80s and 90s, for kids especially,” says Crosby. “I used to sell painted shells by the high school. I’ve always been an artist. And of course, to be introduced to queer culture. Each summer was just amazing.”
She moved here full-time in 2000, with a brief time in Austin, Texas, during largely over the pandemic, before returning to Provincetown again, in time to find an artistic energy boost in lampshades. Wearing a vintage David Bowie t-shirt with a beautifully-constructed red-orange hairstyle Crosby points to a shelf with a variety of styles of shade-less lamps. Friends and acquaintances now drop off interesting lamps for her in her workspace at The Commons they think might be good for her next creation. And surrounding her work table are projects in various states of completion. Some festooned with fringe, others with homemade paper and painted images others with collages featuring clippings from magazines that include images like Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien or a monarch butterfly on a flower. But look again as each shade is not a static work as it changes once illuminated. Before the bulb is turned on one lampshade has an enticing image of a milkshake, but once lit, a ferocious cobra appears above the frothy treat. Most every shade has some sort of luminous surprise. And speaking of surprises, Crosby received one after a curator from the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Cotuit came to an open studio night at The Commons recently and saw one of her lampshade constructions and invited her to participate in a group show in the spring of 2026 featuring artists that work with light in some fashion.
“That happened because of this place,” says Crosby. “I can’t image doing this show anywhere else. I don’t think I could. Here there’s nothing but support. They just keep asking how they can help and what do I need. I’m super grateful.”
Shades of Ghey by Justine Crosby is on exhibition at The Commons, 46 Bradford St., from Wednesday, October 15 through Sunday, October 26. An opening reception will be held on Friday, October 17 from 5 to 8 p.m. at The Commons. For more information call 508.257.1748 or visit provincetowncommons.org.
