By M Sebastian Araujo

Recently I  had the chance to chat with an artist who also is a cartographer and geoscientist…someone who embodies a synthesis between the past and the present who will help create a vision of the future, Mark Adams…

Tell us something about yourself….

The first question is tough to answer. I’m lucky enough to be able to blend my interests into something that I would never have been able to define before I was 40 — but against the odds, everything I have done seems to have been essential to what I do now. As a cartographer/geoscientist/painter/videographer/writer I am grateful everyday for the unexpected experiences that led me here. I’ve worked as a cartographer for the National Park Service for more than 25 years, I’ve done landscape architecture, forest firefighting, graphic design, taught gymnastics, odd jobs at a ballet company and illustrated the early life stages of fish. I’m indebted to Michael Carroll at the Schoolhouse Gallery and many other friends and mentors on the Cape. I am eager to travel under almost any conditions. I spent September camping in the Atlas mountains in Morocco, mapping plate tectonics as a volunteer with MIT scientists. Above all, I hope to be a nature artist.

Who are some of your Favorite Artists?

I marvel at many artists, living and departed. People like Jarrod Beck, former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, (an insanely focused artist whose medium is the physical world). Poets Nick Flynn and Marie Howe are constant inspirations — for their keen observations and incisive ways of peeling the skin off the world. For the pure pleasure of getting lost and found in paint, I look to Larry Collins and to the abstract expressionists like DeKooning, Motherwell, Yves Klein, — but I am most at home with the Japanese Zen painters and with the watercolors of Sargent. Do I sound confused? If I have to pick one artist, it might actually be  Rauschenberg for his intuitive way of shuffling images of the collective consciousness.

Do you feel Technology has changed the Art World?

I love technology, and it has been changing art for a long time. The technology of engraving created atlases of maps, photography helped make Whistler and Warhol and Sigmar Polke … Technology should be a tool to open us to real direct animal experience, not a substitute for it. But yes, there are amazing phone apps and digital photo tricks that create inspiring images and have everyone composing and looking at the landscape. Still, people with vision and a sense of composition are rare and shine through. Instagram is a keyhole into the world virtual gallery space. I don’t doubt, however, that the direct experience of thick paint on canvas or pools of black ink on mulberry paper will continue to keep art sacramental. People yearn for experiences that pick them up and take them into a place of vertigo. This stuff doesn’t fail to thrill and change people.

Was there an Aha! Moment when you knew you were an Artist?

The Aha moments are many because I am born euphoric — but to pick a few: dipping squid in their own ink and printing them on Japanese paper, life drawing with walnut ink in Larry Collins studio, or projecting the constellations onto a map of the Province Lands and then navigating to the stars by GPS. Currently, I’m looking at the end of Cape Cod as a tarot deck of stories.

What is it about Ptown that keeps Artists coming back to its shores time and again?

Provincetown offers the chance for peak experiences of nature: diving in a kettle pone or watching the moon rise on the harbor on the solstice (just now). Even the low angled sunlight down some alley off commercial street can make anyone feel something. Provincetown’s community of fabulists and freaks push us all to live creatively. The arts community here has been spawning us for generations, makers, and celebrants of art. Every time I go to a members show at the PAAM, I am moved by the work of people who live here and whom I’ve never heard of. Sure, it’s increasingly difficult to find space and make a living, but somehow they keep coming and making vital work.

Hopefully, the door will stay open for a generation to come
Its people like Mark who really make this Olde Cape Cod a truly special place to be…Find out more about Mark

Here:
        http://www.galleryschoolhouse.com/mark-adams/#.VcmG9xNVhHw
         www.facebook.com/chillmark