Moby Dick: Inspired Visions

The Cape Cod Museum of Art’s premier summer exhibition pays homage to the whaling culture of the Cape and the 200^th anniversary of the birth of author Herman Melville.   On June 14^th, the museum unveiled “Moby Dick: Inspired Visions”, a collection of artwork by New Bedford artist Peter Michael Martin.

The exhibition features twenty-four pieces inspired by the great novel, including works never before exhibited, such as a life-size kinetic wall sculpture of a Jonah being consumed by a whale.  Together, the exhibition can be viewed as one large-scale installation. Martin uses a recurring visual vocabulary, with highly contrasting, black-on-white, cut paper or cut Tyvek silhouettes. Other works are made from sailcloth, and one is a grouping of period sailors’ shirts, hanging ghostlike from the rafters. Martin, renowned for his larger-than-life pieces, transforms the museum’s grand Hope / McClennen Gallery – floor to ceiling. Inspired during a chance meeting with a Melville lecturer seven years ago, Martin later learned that one of his ancestor’s was buried at sea after being crushed by a heavy slab of whale blubber while working as a crewman on a whaling ship out of New Bedford at the age of 25.

Today, Martin maintains a studio in New Bedford and makes his home in Mattapoisett, but he has deep roots on the Cape. He spent thirty-five years as a Special Education Teacher in the Dennis-Yarmouth School System and then at the Old Roster Regional High School in Mattapoisett. He officially retired from teaching in 2009 to pursue a full-time career as an artist.