Forty years ago Jackson Lambert brought me to Provincetown. Sixty years ago, Jackson, a young painter living in the Oliver Day Studios for $50 a season, got drafted, then drove his tank from Omaha Beach to Pilsen. He is still hoping to collect his World War II bonus from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The infant of Prague became his icon.

He lives in one of the oldest houses in Town with his cats and the occasional dog, surrounded by a circle of female admireers. His second home is the O.C., the Old Colony Tap. Jackson, one of Provincetown’s most prolific artists, paints and sells out of his studio, where he writes and ullustrates a weekly column for the local paper (soem 1250 columns so far), and works on his memoirs, Squid Row. In his back yard he is putting back together the Siberian Elm that hit his house when a hurrican efelled it. His sculptures—“biodegradable,” he calls them—enhance my back yard; he also built total wood-environment studio apartments in my house out of found objects, driftwood, and dump pickings.

For my 65th birthday I got Jackson as a present, but actually he belongs to Provincetown.

--Frank D. Schaefer
White Horse Inn, February 2002
Photos by Mary J. Martin

5 Stars Provincetown