The Whale, Imagined by Gallery Artists

Gallery artists celebrate the Provincetown Public Library's first annual Moby Dick Marathon Reading with a group show at Julie Heller East, a former whale oil refinery.

The exhibition features historical whaling prints, Moby Dick word art using 19th century wooden type, contemporary and modernist works on paper, painting and sculpture -- art that evokes imagined breaches, flukes in the deep, shipwrecks, and marine life on the Outer Cape.

The gallery's location, 465 Commercial Street, is an oddly appropriate venue; the building was once a whale oil refinery owned by David Conwell Stull (1844-1926), the self-proclaimed 'Ambergris King.' At the time, whaling was a cornerstone of Provincetown's economy and the source of much of the town's wealth. Stull dealt in ambergris, an extremely valuable wax-like whale product once used in the manufacture of perfume.

With whaling well in Provincetown's past, and its impact on the town's cultural heritage being reexamined, we mark and support current efforts to help whales survive in the 21st century -- a percentage of 'The Whale' sales will benefit the Center for Coastal Studies innovative whale disentanglement program. http://coastalstudies.org/programs/whale-rescue/