Developing stories: These Cape Cod artists are just beginning their journey

“Cod Town Mayflower”

Tim Ellis Cole
Whether painting, screen-printing or skateboarding, this artist is enjoying the ride

Tim Ellis Cole has ridden his artwork from the skate park to the Kennedy Compound. “Art and skateboarding both require a lot of individual effort,” says Cole, “so they feel interchangeable to me in many regards.”

A New Jersey native and a lifelong skateboarder, Cole, 35, earned his BA in studio art at The College of Santa Fe in New Mexico, and settled in Monument Beach, Bourne in 2013. Unsurprisingly, one of his first art-related commissions on the Cape was creating t-shirt graphics for a local skate and lifestyle brand, Cod Town.

He also recently completed new t-shirt graphics for Levitate, the brand that commissioned him to paint one of his first murals at the Levitate Music & Arts Festival in Marshfield. “I always like working with them because they are really supportive of skate, surf and music culture, which are all personally relevant,” he says. This year, Cole designed a poster to promote the 2017 Cape Cod Bay Challenge, a stand-up paddleboard marathon that raises money for Christopher’s Haven, an organization that provides residency in Boston for families of children with cancer who are being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Cole has also been working on several projects for an upcoming auction to benefit the JFK Hyannis Museum entitled “Artwork Inspired by a Presidential Home.” In 2017, the museum is commemorating the centennial of JFK’s birth—for which Cole has created two images and has screen-printed 100 of each upon shingles donated for the project by Ted Kennedy, Jr. and his wife, Kiki. “It feels like my artistic debutante ball on the Cape,” says Cole, “hand-pulling prints of JFK sailing on cedar shingles salvaged from the Kennedy Compound.”

After years of exploring, Cole has found his home on Cape Cod—and his career as a full-time artist, running his own studio, Partner Projects, out of Monument Beach. “Now that I’m on this side of the canal,” he says, “there’s no turning back.”

More of Tim Ellis Cole’s work can be seen at partnerprojectstradingpost.com