In July, a nearly 20-foot-tall weather vane appeared at the edge of Provincetown harbor, next to Angel Foods, at 467 Commercial St. in the East End.

It’s Boston artist Andrew Mowbray’s 2009 sculpture “Tempest Prognosticator”—brought here through October by the Provincetown Public Art Foundation.

White polyethylene fins turn the weathervane into the direction of the breeze or are pressed up and down by the force of the wind. The movements cause a pen inside a canister on the black steel vertical axel to a produce a seismograph-like scribble of the weather—horizontal for the wind’s direction, vertical for the wind’s power.

“I get to open this present and see what the weather did over the past week,” Mowbray recently told The Provincetown Independent. “It’s a functioning weathervane that creates a record, but at the same time it’s creating a drawing.”


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Categories: Art