Today is Memorial Day, Cornelia’s mother Molly Channing flips hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill. As more and more guests arrive at the dogs, kids and Celte cases, gravel lies on their backs. Local artists Scott Bluedorn, Ellie Duke, Harris Allen, Julian Mardoyan-Smyth and Nick Whelan were scattered on the lawn. “The social life here is crazy,” Cornelia notes. “There are a lot of people between the ages of 25 and 40 who live here all year round, and that really changes everything.”
The Hamptonians in Cornelia’s production is far from the $10,000 bottled service scenario, patronized by boys wearing linens and investment bankers. Her eastern end world revolves around a closely-connected network – group chats, dinners, late-night screenings and midnight ocean plunges. “The dream is to invite more artists to bring their work to the sculpture garden,” she said. “We also talked about creating the living wood sculpture sculptors who could use the residence of the old studio.
“We are a real art world,” she added. “My friends are ambitious, not themselves, but about this place.”
Community Gallery
Thirty minutes from the South Fork, the Montauk strip dissolves in dunes and scrubbing places, another unconventional art space is quietly reshaping the landscape. Max Levai, 37, once a former Manhattan dealer, moved to the Marlborough Gallery during the pandemic, moved to the East Side, and took over a 17th-century cattle ranch, the oldest cattle in the United States. Once owned by Mickey Drexler, the 26-acre horse farm is set on a sandy road, one pole of stone from Peter Beard’s house and Roosevelt Estate. It’s home now pasture: A work gallery located in a converted horse barn.
“The idea here is to challenge what the gallery needs,” Max explained, explaining that his 95-pound Rottweiler Hunter Hound did indeed circle around an empty sand ring. Unlike the white cube space in Hampton, the ranch invites artists to commune, work and display on the rustic property. “I want to see what happens when you take the artists somewhere and then let them exist and make art,” Max said.
The first permanent structure on the ranch is not the wall of the gallery, it is a living sculpture by Mamoun Nukumanu Friedrich-Grosvenor Earth and the sky. The 40-foot-wide earth material is built from willows and bamboo and planted directly into the fields, with its woven frame designed to move over time and further towards the earth. Within five years, the willow tree will be fully lifted and the bamboo will disintegrate. “The promise here goes beyond money,” Max said. “It’s my responsibility to keep things alive.”
