Artful Provincetown Breeze Drifts Indoors

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — It’s tempting to slap an analog-versus-digital, “opposites attract” label on Ted Chapin and his husband, Torrence Boone. After all, Chapin, a retired architect, has painstakingly assembled a series of hand-held sculptures from vintage typewriter parts, while Boone, Google’s vice president for global agency sales and services, is more focused on analytics and artificial intelligence.

Yet Chapin insisted that though his sculptures may be drastically downsized from his skyscrapers, they’re as mathematically precise as any computer algorithm: “It’s all about structural engineering. To me it’s just pure play. But it’s still very structured — it’s all bolted. There’s no welding or glue.”

For his part, Boone noted that he’d just finished writing an old-fashioned novel, one set far from Silicon Valley, unfolding instead amid the overlapping milieus of art colony, gay resort and nature preserve here at the tip of Cape Cod.

It’s in their shared love of Provincetown artists where the couple’s interests most obviously converge. Work by a local “Who’s Who” — past and present — fills both their Manhattan apartment and their compoundlike summer home here, which includes an adjoining small barn repurposed into Chapin’s studio and a separate guesthouse often filled with artists from the town’s Fine Arts Work Center residency program. (Chapin is co-chairman of the board.)

No single style of artwork dominates their collection: Paintings by James Balla, with oceanlike waves of color crashing past one another, share space with work by Tabitha Vevers depicting surreal sexual meetings with sea creatures. A 1947 piece by Jim Forsberg, forged in that era’s growing wave of Abstract Expressionism, contrasts with a beautifully straightforward painting of one of the area’s signature cottages, done recently by Michael McGuire. A circular wooden sculpture by Paul Bowen makes a starkly minimalist statement in the living room, while the kitchen’s walls and ceiling are covered in giddily louche Keith Haring-like figures, hand-painted by Dex Fernandez after his stint at the art center. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.

BOONE: The art here is reflective of the place. And we fell in love with the place, with its sense of creativity and its physical beauty. So for us, it reinforces why we’ve loved coming here for the past 25 years.

CHAPIN: There’s also a different attitude toward history; you do a lot of time travel here. You regularly see art from 100 years ago in a way you wouldn’t if you were running around Chelsea’s galleries.

BOONE: There’s a humility to the art scene here as well. It is more grounded in a sense of character as opposed to a cult of fashion. That’s why artists from New York have always come here — it’s a refuge.

CHAPIN: The wood is salvaged from the Days Lumberyard, home to the studios of some of the greatest artists of all time: Charles Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann, Fritz Bultman, the list goes on. In 1972, it became the Fine Arts Work Center building. Paul was a fellow there in the late ‘70s, and when they gutted its first floor in 2009 he chose to use some of its old wood. He was feeling a little nostalgic for both this old antique building and his own earlier days. Hence the double meaning of its name: “Days Ring.” The wood is so radiant! And we love the history associated with it.

BOONE: It means you’re not buying art based simply on a JPEG. You’re not buying art without a connection to the artist. You really get to know them.

BOONE: Your tastes change, your budget changes. But before we buy anything, we have to agree on it.

CHAPIN: If it comes into our home, that means we both love it. (Boone raises an eyebrow; Chapin laughs sheepishly.) Unless it’s hanging in the guest quarters!