For many conservationists, devoting themselves to the natural world has a simple origin story. And for a young Carl Safina, it all started with the singing canaries in his childhood apartment in Brooklyn.
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The open sea is an endless source of inspiration, energy, mystery and wonder. It conjures fear and curiosity, longing and serenity. It is equally relentless and soothing, unforgiving and welcoming — a character that has touched, and taken, endless lives.
For Matthew Raynor, it was nearly the latter.
Even after a swim gone wrong left the former commercial fisherman paralyzed from his chest down in 2019, his love for the water — and capturing it through his camera lens — persists, though it has taken on a new shape and approach.
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Six days out, one day in.
For Lori Hawkins, the words became a mantra. They were her schedule, a repetitive routine. A source of comfort and reassurance, stress and depression. An escape, a homecoming, her sense of normalcy.
For the last six months, that one sentence defined her life. And it has led to the most fulfilling photography series of her 20-year career.
“I feel like I’m creating my best work ever,” Hawkins said from her home in Bridgehampton. “I feel like I’m more focused on telling stories.”
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David Morris knew this day was coming. All it took was the right gust of wind.
When Tropical Storm Isaias cast a glancing blow on the South Fork in early August, it not only downed trees and power lines, wrecked cars, and knocked out power to thousands of homes, its hurricane-force gales also swept away half of the façade of “Stargazer,” its steel frame now exposed like a skeleton on County Road 111 in Eastport.
But this time, after a series of repairs that have kept “Stargazer” standing as the gateway to the Hamptons since 1991, the damage is just too much for a quick fix, explained Mr. Morris, who built the nearly 50-foot-tall sculpture with artist Linda Scott nearly 40 years ago. It will require a complete rebuild, from the ground up.
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When abstract painter Lucien Smith manipulated a repurposed fire extinguisher and turned it loose onto a series of 9-foot-by-7-foot unprimed canvases — and, in 2014, sold one at auction for $372,000, nearly six times its estimate — the art world collectively lost its mind.
His rise through what he called his “Rain Paintings” series would be simultaneously meteoric and disruptive. The New York Times and Vogue named him the “art world wunderkind,” while ruthless critics attempted to tear him down. For a time, it worked.
After Artsy estimated that his work generated $3.7 million that year, Smith took a step back from the New York spotlight in 2015 by retreating to his home and studio in Montauk — disenchanted by dealer and gallery politics, and eager to reconnect with himself.
Five years later, he has done just that, and with poetic justice. Ten of the very same large-scale, controversial “Rain Paintings” are now on view for the first time as a group at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill through January. He waited for the right moment to place the paintings, he said, knowing that when they did reappear, they might look radically different to him.
And they do.
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At age 82, Hans Van de Bovenkamp has a twinkle in his eye. Shades of gray tease at the sides of his full, shaggy hair, but it holds its color. His sense of adventure is sharp, his laughter contagious, his creative mind vibrant.
Even still, “Now, I’m the old guy,” the sculptor said with a laugh from his longtime home and studio in Sagaponack.
He is referring to the once abundant cohort of abstract expressionists who established the East End as an art center in the mid-20th century. Despite their 20- to 30-year age gap, they were his friends — Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb and Conrad Marca-Rellito, to name a few — and an artistic home far from his native Holland.
Through his own property, he keeps their legacy alive — its 7½ acres dotted with 50 of his large pieces in what has become known as the Sagaponack Sculpture Farm, the last of nine stops along “A Hamptons Sculpture Tour,” presented by Louis K. Meisel Gallery through Labor Day 2021.
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Any time Robert Chaloner sees a new doctor, he walks into the medical office with trepidation, often thinking to himself, “I wonder how they’re going to react when I tell them I’m gay.”
It is an experience shared by many members of the LGBTQ+ community, the chief administrative officer of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital explained. And for the past decade, he and his team have made it their mission to end it.
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Ronald Worthington can’t count the number of times he has reached for his phone to call his big brother over the last three weeks — to tell him a story, to share a laugh, to say hello.
But every time, he stops himself. And reality hits.
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On a fall morning in 1969, Courtenay Pollock was strolling down a bucolic country road in northern California when a slightly offbeat farmhouse caught his eye.
Before he knew it, his feet were leading him up the driveway.
“It looked like freaks lived there,” Pollock recalled with a laugh from his home on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada. “And so I went up to introduce myself.”
He banged on the front door and a cute girl with a nose ring answered, immediately inviting him in. “Roll yourself a joint, I’ll get some coffee going,” she offered.
The Englishman obliged. He’d just wrapped up an idyllic summer living in a small commune on a 500-acre farm in Vermont, choosing to trade the looming bitter cold for a more temperate winter on the West Coast — and he never could have imagined that, in less than 24 hours after walking through that door, his life would change forever.
Because he had just wandered into the Grateful Dead house.
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Peter Browngardt is closer to his cartoon childhood heroes than most have ever gotten. Perhaps most notably known as the creator of Cartoon Network’s “Uncle Grandpa,” his 20-year animation career now includes “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” which premiered this past May as part of the HBO Max launch.
Composed of 80 11-minute episodes, the animated shorts present adapted storylines for a more modern audience, explained the series executive producer and showrunner — a pair of roles that cast Browngardt as the prime candidate to supervise an adjacent project that marks one of the greatest moments of his career.
In a collaboration between the U.S. Postal Service and Warner Bros. Consumer Products, Browngardt and his team of designers and painters recently created a series of commemorative Forever stamps celebrating Bugs Bunny’s 80th anniversary. Now available for purchase, the 20-stamp pane — which features 10 designs of Bugs Bunny in his most memorable getups — comes at a time when the USPS is not only at risk, Browngardt noted, but is also poised to play a crucial role in the upcoming presidential election.
“It’s one of the highlights of my career, for sure, to be involved with this postage stamp,” he said. “The Postal Service is part of our history as a country and, right now, it’s a big deal what’s going on politically with the postal service, so it’s kind of cool and important, and it was awesome.”
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