Joey Mars
1. For those meeting you for the first time, who is Joey Mars?
Creation and destruction right off the bat, Chucky. Really! Jeez, aren’t you supposed to toss me a couple of softballs in the beginning?
I’m everything and I’m nothing. I like to make people smile and laugh. I’m fascinated by the natural and mechanical world around us, as well as the dream, mystical and tribal paradoxes intertwined in this fractal universe we are skateboarding through.
Been a scribe forever. I draw and paint to create, so as to live in that moment of Zen when the muse can work its alchemical magic. How’s that bullshit? No, really—it happens sometimes. That’s the fun part.
I have a cartoon pop-surrealist style mixed with sci-fi, sports and hot-rod culture. I was born in ’63. Three months later, they killed JFK, and that’s what I’ve grown up with. Yin and yang, baby: the Vietnam War to the lunar landing—a lot of crazy, and a lot of wonder and amazement. Pinball to Pong to Space Invaders to computers. Nixon to Cambodia to Jim Morrison and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth to Reagan to Ollie North, mixed with Ziggy Stardust, Marley and King Crimson.
Throw in the Stooges when I went to art school in Boston, and I’m a real ball of laughs.
Joey Mars is a pen name. A now-and-again superhero. I’m not really Joey Mars, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
2. Your work often transforms ordinary spaces into extraordinary experiences. What first drew you to creating immersive art?
To me, it may start in just a reflection of the world around us. It’s a very immersive planet. One big giant womb.
My work is usually environmental in its setting. It’s in a spot or a place—a garden, a crater, the ocean, a plateau or a room—and there are all kinds of things going on. It’s coming from all angles, with lots of detail. I like to amp it up somewhere in the piece. Extrasensory, for sure.
3. Provincetown has always welcomed dreamers, outsiders and inventors. What does this town allow you to create that other places don’t?
Well, you vibe off the energy around you. So many characters and so much natural wonder everywhere you turn. Lots of inspiration and outlets to showcase your art.
“Artist” isn’t a dirty word around here, and there are patrons who enjoy being a gateway to creativity. The tip of Cape Cod spins in on itself and creates a pretty wild vortex of energy, I believe. The whales are not just here for the phosphorescent plankton. There is definitely something in the water.
4. Missing Time explored memory, transformation and alternate realities. How did that theme inspire your work?
Well, those are the themes of my work, so once it got rolling, it was a lot of fun.
It was really a meme taken from the writings of Budd Hopkins that stuck with me: the UFO sightings and missing time as “rupture.” I researched it, got a handle on the word “rupture” and used it as the verb. I explored the Abstract Expressionist artists associated with Hopkins, like Robert Motherwell.
My first hits of color on the phone-booth portals were purely Abstract Expressionist paint strokes, funneled through the movement and shape of graffiti gestures. Then, tagging images via paint markers transformed the phone booth into a portal to an alternate reality where you could leave your memories via QR code for future generations.
I focused my work on the memory part by really having that black vinyl phone-book holder explain how to upload your recorded memory for the time capsule.
5. Your painted phone booths became one of the defining images of the 2026 Outsider Festival. What did those portals represent to you?
Well, the first thoughts in my head were of graffiti-covered communication devices. Graffiti has a way of representing chunks of history as the years of layers disappear and come through while new tags and stickers appear.
You, sir, had concepts for lighting and sound powered via solar panels, so there was lots to consider. Early on, I saw them as a collecting spot for the missing time, and I collected many artifacts to leave in the portal—until I read Hopkins on rupture.
I had books and clocks and golf clubs and toys and other phones I was going to adhere to the walls of the portal. But it wasn’t about the missing items. It was the rupture of time and cracking through to something new.
That’s when I decided I was going to paint it with blacklight and glow-in-the-dark paint and just go at those booths like a demon.
The final touches came through via the electrical enhancements executed by ABD. She ran and soldered the lines for solar-battery-powered switches and installed the blacklights, motion detection and trail cams, which brought this thing to life like Dr. Frankenstein.
6. Where does imagination come from? Is it something we discover, something we remember or something we invent?
Well, the collective unconscious must have some kind of outlet. Oh, we definitely invented it. Add a little spore dust to snot and—boom—you’ve got all kinds of shit flowing through your mind.
7. What part of Provincetown’s creative spirit should never disappear?
What, are you running a pep rally here? What do I look like, a fucking cheerleader?
I don’t know. What’s the kind of creative spirit that lets you lie on your back in the dunes and stare at the stars on acid? That kind.
8. If you could place one work of art—or one object—in the Provincetown 300 Time Capsule, what would it be, and why?
I don’t know. Ronny’s triple beam? Historical and utilitarian.
9. What advice would you give someone who’s afraid to create something that nobody has seen before?
Have you ever tried sativa gummies?
10. Finish this sentence: “The outsider inside us all…”
“The outsider inside us all should come in from the cold, have a hot chocolate and color.”
