More than twenty years ago, writer Ellen LeBow described Tom O’Connell’s work as “one great mobile of memory” and observed that viewers were “compelled to project their versions as well.”
Building Your Own History.
Reading those words today, it is striking how little has changed.
A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, O’Connell has spent decades transforming concrete, glass, found objects, wire, canvas, and cast-off materials into sculptures, mosaics, installations, fountains, public art, and environments that seem to exist somewhere between archaeology and dream.
What has remained constant is his belief that art should not tell viewers what to think. Instead, it should create a space where memory, association, and personal history can happen.
As part of the Missing Time Oral History Project, Camp Provincetown sat down with O’Connell to discuss concrete, Provincetown, impermanence, and the visual riddles that have occupied him for much of his life.
You’ve spent more than twenty-five years working with concrete—a material most people associate with construction rather than art. What first made you see its creative possibilities?
Tom O’Connell:
“Well, because I was working in the construction industry, one thing, and working as a pile driver.
One of the things I really liked about it was the massive structural things you can do with it. Simple forms, you know. But the access, the volume, and the immediacy I think I liked about it.
Affordability was always key with me. I was always broke.
I was testing concrete, and then I would save the concrete and work after work and make artwork. I’d always have things going on in my shop when I was working.
So yeah, that was cool.”
Concrete records time in a unique way. It hardens, weathers, cracks, and accumulates history. What has working with that material taught you about permanence and change?
Tom O’Connell:
“Well, I’ve come to accept the perfectly imperfect.
I’ve had a lot of loss. With glass, if you get a crack in it or a chip, it’s considered valueless. That always annoyed me.
Even concrete—say you made a countertop and it had a crack in it—people wouldn’t like that.
I’ve had many glass pieces smashed. I’m my own worst enemy.
I’ve had pieces disappear that I did in Cambridge already. Restaurants close. Things get taken down.
When the work gets flawed, too, you have to adopt it.
I’ve accepted the impermanence of it all.”
Your work ranges from public mosaics and libraries to countertops, fountains, benches, and pools. Do you approach public art differently than functional objects?
Tom O’Connell:
“Well, I think art in general has function, right?
When you deal with public art, you have to take into consideration design. You end up working with other people, architects. Things get watered down a little differently. Things get changed.
But I think in general they both have to function well.
I think the answer is function.”
Provincetown is a place built on reinvention. What keeps you creating here after all these years?
Tom O’Connell:
“The Cape.
The space I have. The people. The opportunities. The lifestyle.
One thing I like is the distance from Boston and the connection to New York.
The triangulation.”
Missing Time explored memory, disappearance, and transformation. Did that resonate with your own work or experience?
Tom O’Connell:
“Well, maybe.
Think about how I might have addressed it in the pieces I’ve done, so I’d say yes.
Just the idea of memory and nostalgia, that kind of thing. Visual riddles.
Indirectly, I address that.
I try not to think too hard about it.
The work formulates and then it feeds me once I look at it.”
Was there anything from the festival that stayed with you?
Tom O’Connell:
“Yes.
I enjoyed the raw, fun, edgy, small, open.
It was great. You guys did a good job.
I thought it brought a little life to the spring in a good way.
Now it’s overwhelmed. You couldn’t have done it right now.
It was the right time.”
As someone who builds things meant to last, what do you think Provincetown should be preserving for future generations?
Tom O’Connell:
“The Monument.
The Library, I guess.
Ronny Hazel’s house.”
What story, place, or tradition in Provincetown deserves more attention than it receives?
Tom O’Connell:
“I think the idiosyncratic people.
It still attracts certain people. It gives people a little stage sometimes.
They come and go.
People have a little moment and then keep moving.
I think that’s what people need to keep paying attention to.”
If you could create one permanent public artwork anywhere in Provincetown, what would it be?
Tom O’Connell:
“A star compass.
Like my library piece. A piece where people can figure out direction and locate themselves. Plus the night sky, too.
Some type of star compass.
It could be right in the center of the square there.”
Portuguese Square?
Tom O’Connell:
“Yeah.”
What would you place in the Provincetown 300 Time Capsule to help people understand this moment in the town’s history?
Tom O’Connell:
“Well, I’d put one of those phone booths in there.
And aside from that, I’d put an iPhone with charger, earbuds, Ozempic, grooming stuff, whale watch tickets, and a Missing Time playbill.”
About the Exhibition
O’Connell’s current exhibition at Hammock Gallery continues a conversation he has been having for decades.
In 2003, discussing an installation at Berta Walker Gallery, he explained:
“You create a mood with an installation. You can build your own history.”
That idea remains at the center of his work.
The exhibition brings together concrete, glass, portraiture, assemblage, statuary, framing devices, found objects, and visual storytelling. Ancient seaside ruins seem to collide with contemporary visual noise. Portraits emerge from weathered surfaces. Objects appear excavated from forgotten shipwrecks, abandoned buildings, or half-remembered dreams.
Asked what he hopes visitors take away from the exhibition, O’Connell offered a familiar answer:
Tom O’Connell:
“What I want the show to do is bring you somewhere in your own memory.
I think that’s how work works.
You build your own history.”
As our conversation came to a close, we asked Tom to describe the experience of visiting his studio.
He thought about it for a moment.
Tom O’Connell:
“An elevated experience in nature.”
Twenty-three years ago, Ellen LeBow described O’Connell’s work as “one great mobile of memory.”
Different words.
Same artist.
Interview by Chuck White & Annabelle
Camp Provincetown | Missing Time Oral History Project
Presented by Camp Provincetown as part of the ongoing Provincetown 300 initiative documenting the artists, thinkers, builders, makers, and outsiders who continue to shape Provincetown’s cultural landscape.
