Recap | 2018 East End Studio Tour
Sold out tour gave a behind-the-scenes look at East End artists’ work and studios.
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Leadership Council Members Carol Ross and Marjorie Silverman and Board Member J. Whitney Stevens hosted an intimate tour of three artist studios on Long Island’s East End on August 3, 2018. Led by Andrea Grover, Executive Director at Guild Hall, the group visited the studios of artists Ross Bleckner, April Gornik, and Hiroyuki Hamada. The ticketed tour concluded with a seated lunch with the artists at a private residence in Bridgehampton, where guests dined on smoked grilled salmon, mozzarella nectarine salad, and sour cherry pie.
“I think I was the first person to click the sign-up link for this year’s East End Studio Tour. As an artist at RISD in the 1980s, Ross Bleckner has been a long-time art crush of mine,” said Anne Spalter, artist and former NYFA Board Member. “I continue to be amazed at the breadth of opportunities that NYFA makes available to communities in New York State and beyond. It was the perfect summer day to witness the ongoing artistic history of the Hamptons, from Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning et al to today’s greats including this year’s artists,” she added.
Andrea Grover had the following to say about this year’s tour: “What an open-minded and inquisitive group that was assembled for this tour. It was an honor to guide them through the studios of Ross, Hiroyuki, and April. These three very distinct artists are extraordinarily talented, aware of their process, and committed to the Hamptons community and civic participation.”
The annual East End Studio Tour benefits NYFA’s programs for artists throughout Long Island and New York State. Past tours have featured Alice Aycock, Quentin Curry, Mary Heilmann, Brian Hunt, Donald Lipski, Toni Ross, Joan Semmel, Arlene Slavin, Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, and Joe Zucker.
Ross Bleckner’s work deals largely with notions of loss, change, memory, and mortality, particularly in relation to AIDS and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. He received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting in 1985. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, including a 1995 mid-career retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum that traveled to the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway, and the I.V.A.M. Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain. He is represented by Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
April Gornik’s paintings of land, sky, and sea are rooted in observed reality and a world that is synthesized, abstracted, stored, and remembered. Her work is featured in many public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Museum of American Art and The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and High Museum of Art, Atlanta. She is represented by Danese/Corey, New York, and has had one-person shows in New York regularly since 1981.
Hiroyuki Hamada is a Japanese-born sculptor who has exhibited widely in gallery and non-commercial settings alike, including Guild Hall of East Hampton; Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York; Southampton Arts Center; Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI; The List Gallery, Swarthmore, PA; Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC; and O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York. Hamada is a two-time NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Sculpture (2009, 2017). He is represented by Bookstein Projects.
Andrea Grover (Tour Leader) is the Executive Director of Guild Hall, the cornerstone cultural institution of East Hampton, that combines a museum, theater, and education center. Prior to joining Guild Hall in 2016, she was the Curator of Special Projects at the Parrish Art Museum, where she was awarded both a Tremaine Foundation and an AADA Curatorial Award for her exhibition, Radical Seafaring.
Want to know more about upcoming NYFA events and to get a heads up on next year’s East End Studio Tour? Sign up for our free bi-weekly e-newsletter, NYFA News, to receive updates on future programs.
Images, from top: NYFA’s East End Studio Tour visits the studios of Ross Bleckner, April Gornik, and Hiroyuki Hamada; guests at the private luncheon in Bridgehampton; All Photos Credit: Thomas Kochie
