An installation of local portraits on the billboard outside at Wellfleet Preservation Hall. 355 Main Street, Wellfleet.

yo.kel :  noun :an inhabitant of a rural area or small town

Yokel is an outdoor art installation by artist Megan Hinton. Remnants of painted lumber are arranged as multiple portraits depicting Outer Cape Cod locals. Typically, a pejorative and ethnocentric label, yokel is humorously recontextualized to caricature the folks who live here. They are artists, writers, performers, entrepreneurs, essential workers, eccentrics, activists, leaders, friends, acquaintances, and much more. The play on local yokel’s vernacular is reinforced with black and white gestural cartoon marks on informal surfaces of discarded construction wood.

Hinton’s installation conveys a spirited assemblage of our community after an extended time apart during these pandemic years. May the viewer recognize or find themselves reflected in a Yokel hanging out here in assemblage.  Work on the billboard will be in progress through the Spring of 2022 and complete during the Summer Season.

artist biography.

Megan Hinton assembles materials in painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography to reassemble personal and public narratives. Their studio work and theoretical interests are rooted in painting’s history, object theory, and contemplative practice. Megan received an MFA from Mills College in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts where they were nominated by the faculty for The Dedalus Foundation Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture and won the Hung Lui MFA Prize. Hinton’s work is shown at Farm Project Space in Wellfleet and Bakker Gallery in Provincetown and is in the permanent collections of The Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. In tandem with their studio practice Megan Hinton is also a curator, art writer, and educator.