Meet my new friend Mary Beth. She is the general manager of the B&B that we stay in during our time in PTown. Yes, we spent three months last summer house sitting in Gail Williams and Dawn McCall’s beautiful home. That was a huge treat. We have stayed at the White Porch before but this year we got to meet Mary Beth. Her welcoming personality, premium concierge service and great stories of PTown has made this trip extra special.
With permission from White Porch owners, Tom Shirk and Felipe Lara, Mary Beth was allowed to provide shelter to many artists during the 2026 snowstorm that shut this town down, no power, no heat, no electricity. Very few services. She turned what could have been a disastrous few weeks into paradise for many stranded artists.
Read all about it below in the Provincetown Independent.
Thank you Mary Beth. Special hugs to Tom and Felipe.
Mary Beth Bongiovanni is the general manager of the White Porch Inn in Provincetown.
This is the article Mary Beth wrote.
How We Found Laughter and Comfort in the Storm
‘Artists don’t disappear when the lights go out’
For four days in February, I lived with a group of artists inside the storm — the storm on Johnson Street. I sat with them inside the snow fort that the White Porch Inn had become. On the first night, we called it Pop-Up Igloo. After several nights, it felt more like a meetinghouse than a warming station.
Tadhg Slater, a New York School painter living in Provincetown, blew in the door. He has a fabulous way of elevating the space and shifting the energy. “Amazing things happen when artists and blizzards combine,” he laughed. “Not one town on the Cape has power, but this place is our pop-up sanctuary for warmth and great conversation.”
Slater wrote on social media: “We gathered. … Sitting together while the wind tried to rearrange the town. That’s Provincetown. Galleries shuttered. Streets empty. Joe Coffee closed, five-foot drifts in places, a Nespresso machine on a generator, and still we are here. Artists don’t disappear when the lights go out. We walk into the storm … We absorb it. Because later it becomes something. Another painting. Another song.”
What whirled through the space were excerpts from drafts, hybrids of new concepts, and curious collaborations. Slater finalized the PR for his Concrete Winter series. The generator kept laptops powered and heaters warm. Community filled the void left by the absence of convenience. People power, the interplay of distinct, even sacred, human resources, fueled conversations and created wonder amid fear, comfort in the cold, joy in the silence.
From the Fine Arts Work Center, sculptors, interdisciplinary conceptual artists, a culture worker, installation artists, a poet-organizer-educator, a violinist, a novelist, poets, painters, and their dogs came to the inn. Johnson Street neighbors, escaping homes surrounded by downed power lines, made the hotel their home that week. They were my source of sanity, laughter, and comfort. Thank you Lacey Black, Yacine Tilala Fall, Dominique Muñoz, Anne Clare Rogers, Jada Renée Allen, Nico Amador, Domenick Ammirati, Tess Oldfield, Pio Arango, Connor Greer, Robbie Herbst, Ariel Miller, Ashley Danielle Moore, Kevin Brisco Jr., Ty Raso, and Emma Fiona Jones.
“It’s like the Brady Bunch in here!” declared one neighbor as she stomped snow off her boots at the front door. There was some Brady Bunch-level mayhem. “When I accidentally set off the fire alarm,” said Domenick, a FAWC writing fellow, “they responded with both alacrity and good humor, which I doubt I could have managed in the circumstances.”
Paul Rizzo, a painter whose work is at Four Eleven Gallery, found his way to White Porch each night to warm up and charge his devices. Inside the storm, he made marks in his sketchbook, and some of us sitting around the kitchen table got a glimpse. Looking at the Stars is a favorite, as are his videocassette pieces.
After those days together, I keep thinking of the new constellations of people in my life. I know the light here, the natural light, is unprecedented and distinct. I am new to town, but I think the people illuminate the sky in a whole other way. There is care in each connection. We listen to what is not said, question from the heart, and commit to support one another.
I know the novelty of the Pop-Up at White Porch is wearing off with each passing day, but the memory and the magic of it will endure. New patterns of connection are now conduits to belonging and solidarity, two beloved dynamics of this town.
Mary Beth Bongiovanni is the general manager of the White Porch Inn in Provincetown.
DigiDame 