Press in James Lane: Jaime Lopez Catches a Wave: New Book Captures Hamptons Artists

Jaime Lopez Catches a Wave: New Book Captures Hamptons Artists

by Bridget Leroy for James Lane

Read the original story on James Lane Here

Cover of Hamptons Artists: The Current Wave

Artists capture moments of light, of truth, of perspective. Jaime Lopez, a Peruvian-born photographer who lives in Sagaponack with his family, decided to capture the artists themselves.

The result is “Hamptons Artists: The Current Wave,” a book filled with images of 48 local artists whom Lopez has immortalized in portraits of both them and their work. The text for the book was written by Coco Myers of the folioeast gallery in East Hampton.

When he first opened his studio in Sagaponack, after years in the fashion magazine photography industry, “I figured that I would do personal projects like photographing the farmers of Sagaponack, but I asked Coco Myers, who represents my fine art photography, if I could photograph one of her artists instead,” said Lopez. That portrait became two, then six, “then I realized I had something, so we kept going and all of a sudden I had a small layout.” Soon, Lopez and Myers “had a book in our hands,” he said.

“I often accompanied Jaime to these shoots, which were such fun,” Myers said. “The photos were so intimate and revealing and uplifting. Jaime makes everyone comfortable.” The text includes quotes from the artists and “a little blurb about them,” said Myers. “We self-published a short run of books and decided to have an event to present them.”

That became an event at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, curated by Myers. The book sold out, and a new printing is in the works.

Portrait of folioeast artist James DeMartis

James DeMartis is one of the Hamptons artists captured by Lopez. “I think the reason the portraits are so successful, intimate, and revealing of each of us is because Jaime has a way of working without the pretense of photography,” DeMartis said. “He is conversational and laid back. He has a curiosity, interest, and casualness that allows us as subjects to ease comfortably into our natural skin.”

Lopez provided that ease by meeting the artists, having a conversation and a cup of coffee, and asking them “to play for the camera. Artists are visual people so they understood the camera. The rest was up to the photography gods,” he said.

As the project progressed, it became more than an interest to Lopez. It became a mission. “I wanted to create a document of who we were while here during these years—a legacy for others to enjoy and appreciate, I felt I owed this to the artists themselves, and their art.”

And even beyond that, Lopez found his own photographic art developing in the process. “I rediscovered photography in its essence,” he said. “This project made me more curious about these artists and how they may be in front of a camera. I experimented like I had in the beginnings of my passion for photography. My ‘a-ha’ moment was that after all these years, this rediscovery was possible.”

And along with that came a mission to give back to the community, something which Lopez had already been mulling over for years. “I kept thinking, ‘How can I give back to my community?’ A fireman? Too late. An emergency medical technician? I wouldn’t be good at it. Then I realized it would be better do what I could do well. The book was the answer.”

Limited editions of the book are available at Golden Eagle in East Hampton, Sylvester & Co in Sag Harbor, and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

View more of Jaime’s work on folioeast Here

Mark Webber in Woven Tale Press

Sag Harbor Studio: A sculptor and Cabinet Maker

Inside the Studio with Mark Webber

by Jennifer Nelson, photographs by Francine Fleischer

Read the original story on Woven Tale Press Here

Mark Webber in his home-based studio

More than twenty years ago, sculptor Mark Webber and his wife Francine Fleischer decided it was time to leave New York City. Their young daughter was growing out of her makeshift room and Mark’s love of kayaking was developing into a desire to do more ocean paddling. In Sag Harbor, they found their perfect home: it featured a stand-alone 800-foot studio for Mark’s sculptures, a large basement with a darkroom for Francine’s photography work, and Sag Harbor Elementary School for their daughter. That region would also allow Mark to continue working as a cabinet maker.

“The Hamptons have been a very good for the cabinet making business,” said Webber. “I had no idea how important it would be for my art practice. The light, the community, the friends we made through our daughter and the many creative artists out here is really amazing.”

Mark Webber Works in his studio in the Hamptons

The only negative: the house was located off a road called Mount Misery. “We were like really, Mount Misery?” said Mark. “But what it did have made it an easy choice.”

A bonus was that the studio only needed cleaning and adding a wall, though the house required renovation and landscaping. In the basement with high ceilings, Francine carved out a space for her large printer; the darkroom never got used. “We share space in the separate studio, but I do seem to get to use most of it,” he said.

Mark Webber works on a wooden sculpture outside his studio

In nearby Wainscott, Mark works on cabinet making and fine woodworking in an 1,800-square-foot studio that he shares with a business partner. There, he has access to fine tools to build larger pieces, and lots of storage for wood.

Mark Webber’s large studio where he makes cabinets

In the home studio, which is forty feet from the house, he works on smaller pieces. The large south-facing windows make for dramatic lighting on a sculpture, highlighting subtle lines of a piece. The studio comes with a roll-up garage door and is spacious enough to store materials such as stone, discarded brick, rubber, and Hydrocal, a dry powder used for solid and hollow casting. He credits one of his former teachers from Windham College for encouraging him to find materials at the dump, which he has done ever since. Initially, he used the studio for mixed media pieces on paper left at the house by the previous owner, Ted Davies, an artist known for his woodcuts.

Mark Webber molds a sculpture

In the Hamptons, Mark pursues his passion of kayaking and sailing on the ocean and bays. Years ago, he paddled with friends from Montauk to Block Island. Now he can do it more often, and this contact with the water inspires his artwork.

His workdays don’t generally follow a pattern. Sometimes, the cabinetmaking business demands his time and his creative work is done later. He likes it that he doesn’t often know what he’s going to make. Soldering copper wire together, mixing Hydrocal on a glass table, and gluing up paper help him decide what to make. Other times, he depends more on his skill and craftsmanship than creativity. He doesn’t collaborate with other artists and prefers a quiet workplace. “Music is great, and I love listening, just not while I’m making art,” he said.

To get ideas for his art, he observes the world we live in, as well as allowing himself to be free from himself. “Then what can move through a channel, can emerge fresh and clear of my ego, and be, just be,” said Mark.

Mark’s studio features large windows where light comes in

Visit Mark’s folioeast page here

HC&G features folioeast artist Michele D'Ermo in The Decorating Issue

Cozy Cottage

Artist Michele D’Ermo paints herself into a sweet little corner of East Hampton Village

by Heather Buchanan, Photographs by Tria Giovan

Read the original story on HC&G Here

Michele D’Ermo’s painting Voyage

Expect the unexpected. As mottoes go, none could be more fitting for Michele D’Ermo, who spent her youth eating club sandwiches with Cher and swimming with Peter, Paul, and Mary at her father’s hotel, enjoyed a long career as a chiropractor for Broadway actors, and worked as an éminence grise for 1stdibs founder Michael Bruno before ultimately settling into a life of painting in the art studio at her East Hampton Village cottage, where a clawfoot bathtub is perfectly positioned . . . on the back porch.

Even as her milieus have changed, her passion and joie de vivre remain the same. “I have an edge and a lot of emotion,” she explains. “I’m Italian and French, so what can I say? Working with people you love and who love you is my personal golden rule.”

Her father, Dominique, a French Resistance fighter during WWII who later owned restaurants and hotels in Washington, D.C., “always had the feeling that the Germans are coming, and when I left New York on March 9, as the coronavirus crisis was mounting, I had that sense as well,” D’Ermo says. “Thank god I have this little spot to run to.”

Painting titled Purple Haze hangs in D’Ermo’s guest bedroom

This little spot is a charming, unassuming property with a one-bedroom, one-bath cottage and several small outbuildings, including a pool house and her art studio. She found the tiny gem on Easter Sunday 2003, after a day of house hunting. It was the last property she saw, and the most modest. “I walked in and said, ‘I’ll take it,’” recounts D’Ermo, who “found out that the talented Joe D’Urso designed and built the house. It’s different when a designer actually lives in a home, and I know when something is done well and has the right flow.”

The interiors boast D’Urso trademarks, such as open shelves in the kitchen, and her own tasteful, eclectic decor, including a mid-20th-century dining room set that belonged to her mother and an early prototype of a Jonathan Adler sofa. An impressive number of “outdoor rooms” on the small property are delineated by borders of “privet and ivy and boxwood, interspersed with roses and lavender,” she says. “They know how to look good and smell good.”

A trellised climbing rose graces the entry to her art studio, where she makes large abstract canvases of up to eight by 10 feet. Her preferred medium: oil sticks, which lie scattered across a table in small bins. These “giant crayons” (albeit expensive ones) give her striking, ethereal paintings a richly hued depth. “The central theme of my creative process is interweaving memory and imagination,” she explains. “Imagination alters memory, creating a work of art that is not connected to a specific time and place. This timelessness allows for nature to be evoked, not described.”

Works in progress in the studio include True Blue I and True Blue II for Michelle D'Ermo's collection.

The East End’s natural beauty, especially the ocean, inspires her. “The horizon line plays a large force in my paintings,” she says, “so witnessing it every day on dog walks is a study in and of itself. I love to paint with the color blue, particularly ultramarine, which was originally ground from lapis lazuli into a powder in the 14th century.” Although she didn’t train formally as an artist, she honed her eye while growing up in the nation’s capital and spending time in the National Gallery of Art. “I don’t think you can make an artist,” she opines. “You are born an artist, and so I just dove right in. Art is much more about doing than talking.”

She began painting to focus and unwind after treating and healing patients all day long during her years as a chiropractor, a period of opening her heart to clients, which included Bruno. “I’m a very kumbaya sort of person,” D’Ermo reflects. “Michael said to me, ‘You know how to take situations and handle them, but it doesn’t feel like work.’” Instead of a quiet retirement, Bruno convinced D’Ermo to join him at 1stdibs, where they were soon traveling the globe in search of prized antiques and artifacts.

“I was used to treating sprained ankles for cast members of Evita,” she says with a laugh. “What did I know about this huge world?” A whole lot, it turns out. She stops to smell a David Austin rose in the backyard and recalls a few words of wisdom from her father: “Live well without the promise of tomorrow.”

HC&G features folioeast artist Mark Webber in 'Made in the Hamptons' Spotlight

Material Guy, Making Sculptural Works From an Array of Mixed Media

by Kelly Veloca, Photographs by Doug Young

Read the original story on HC&G Here

Mark Webber practices two very different kinds of work. His vocation: custom cabinetry fabricated for high-end Hamptons homes. His avocation: sculptures made with Hydrocal, a plaster-like material, and a mélange of found objects from construction sites and other sources. Although these two endeavors are vastly disparate, both are rooted in the art of fabrication. “There’s a craftsmanship aspect to cabinetmaking, whereas sculpture requires you to be more creative,” says Webber, a Connecticut native and longtime resident of Sag Harbor. “Sculpture does not have an inherent purpose, like a cabinet does. I have to think about different things when I’m making either one.”

Webber graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from SUNY Purchase in 1980, but soon shifted his focus to cabinetmaking to make a living. Around five years ago, however, he decided to “acknowledge my creativity again” and began experimenting with sculpture. He started working on wooden forms before transitioning to plaster and, more recently, Hydrocal, which he casts or shapes with hand tools, such as spatulas and knives. “All those years as a cabinetmaker gave me a solid base from which to start making sculpture,” Webber says. “It was like my springboard back into fine arts.” He has lately been pushing the boundaries of his pieces further, incorporating found objects— steel scraps, bricks, rubber—in order to bring a sense of tension and balance or create “an interesting compositional relationship.” 

An avid sailor and kayaker, Webber lets each design unfold naturally. “I find myself trying new things,” he says, “when I allow the process of discovery to take over.” Case in point: A recent piece exhibited earlier this year in SoHo began with twisted rubber left over from a cabinetry commission. After covering it in fiberglass tape to create an internal structure, Webber slathered Hydrocal on the surface with a spackling knife. Next, he affixed a stone to it with industrial adhesive and freshly applied Hydrocal. “A piece works really well when it looks very simple,” he muses. “That simplicity is its beauty.” 

EAST HAMPTON STAR "Opinion: One Last Winter Show"

Read the original story on the East Hampton Star website by clicking here.

Opinion: One Last Winter Show

Charles Waller, Smoke 2, 2019, Ink on mixed media, 25 x 23 in, $7500

By Jennifer Landes

March 19th, 2020

“Folioeast’s “Winter Salon” in East Hampton is a vast undertaking in a small space, a miracle of placement and size management with an eye for hanging artwork so that it melds into a cohesive whole. Although it is hard to measure an exhibition of so many artists and their unique contributions, it is worth examining the highlights and the ensemble.

Occupying a good portion of the eastern wall of the gallery is Charles Waller’s “Smoke 1-3.” Mr. Waller, whose dry wit often crackles in his work, seems to have been less of a presence on the East End art scene in recent years, and he has been missed. His three mixed-media pieces embellished with his ink drawings have a nostalgic air, offering tropes of old-school masculinity.

Set on backgrounds of faded old packaging or ads for cigarettes, or facsimiles thereof, are drawings of gargantuan smoking implements. Each one has a different main subject — a pipe dwarfing an overstuffed club chair, a log of a cigarette doused in a martini glass with a toothpick-speared olive nearby, a cigar overtaking an ashtray. They work so well together that the series should be a triptych even though each is its own piece. The obsessive nature of the works, their seriality, and the size of the subjects suggest a habit being broken or even a once-universal lifestyle being subsumed or suppressed. Mr. Waller offers a lot to chew on with a limited amount of visual information.

On the opposite wall, Beth O’Donnell’s photographic images on paper are minimal in their own ways as well. “Torn but Not Broken” is a blending of a photographic image, encaustic, and oil stick on gampi paper, which is made from the bark of a Japanese bush that produces a virtually fiberless translucent sheet. The artist builds up the oil stick around the edges but lets the wax highlight the image, which is an abstracted, possibly floral subject, or seems to be, in the context of her “Peony” photograph nearby. Both are very striking images that go beyond the merely pretty.

Kurt Giehl is another artist less familiar to this viewer, but his work is exciting to see in this setting. Mr. Giehl has different series of works but seems best represented by his abstracted seascape paintings. His focus is on where sea meets sky, overgeneralizing both elements so that they can become unrecognizable as natural phenomena and more like stacked colors on a flat plane. That each subject has a very specific location in its title (on view here is “North Sea II”) touches on both the irony and the sincerity of his practice. “Stripes,” his series of small square works with horizontally stacked compositional elements that hang together in a group of six, seem a logical progression from his imprecise treatment of natural scenes. With bands of black, white, gray, sand, and thinner bands of blue, each square evokes something tangible that is not quite in reach.

The poignancy in Francine Fleischer’s series of nests, photographed from above on plain white grounds, is always endearing. These evocations of home, the circle of life, and, ultimately, loss, give them a gravitas that transcends the decorative and the mere appreciation of their natural sculptural beauty.

It is exciting to see Carolyn Conrad’s return to her series of iconic structures, small-scale buildings she makes by hand with clay and wood and then photographs in a painted setting using natural light. This time, she has revisited those subjects to create a series of paintings in gouache on paper. The references to each step in the creative process build and boomerang on each other in a very satisfying and fascinating way.

Perry Burns’s work is often a palimpsest of darker imagery overlain with bright colors and floral motifs. Here, in “Four Seasons,” a work of mixed media on paper, there are areas that look like torn-off paper that might have built up on a billboard or city wall, but nothing that resembles anything tangi ble. It’s more like a neutral background than anything sinister. The four floral motifs in a varied color palette have ties to what could be interpreted as their different seasons. This simple piece — and the mysteries it offers — compel one back to it.

As promised, there is so much more, but not enough space to discuss each work and its own significant contribution to the whole. The exhibition has been extended to March 29, and Coco Myers, the owner of Folioeast, said she intends to stay open as of this writing by appointment. The pop-up gallery in the Malia Mills shop can also be seen from the street.

Be sure to check out the outstanding examples of work by Scott Bluedorn, Pamela Dove, Denise Gale, Jonathan Glynn, Melinda Hackett, Hiroyuki Hamada, John Haubrich, RJT Haynes, Dennis Leri, Christa Maiwald, Jane Martin, Lesley Obrock, Vivian Polak, Anne Raymond, George Singer, Barbara Thomas, Aurelio Torres, Sarah Jaffe Turnbull, Rosario Varela, Aaron Warkov, Mark Webber, and Dan Welden.”

EAST HAMPTON STAR "Opinion: Shape Shifting at folioeast"

A detail from Michele D’Ermo’s “Into the Sea”

Read the original story on the East Hampton Star website by clicking here.

Opinion: Shape Shifting at Folioeast

By Jennifer Landes

November 21, 2019

“Coco Myers said that when organizing the exhibition that became “For the Love of Painting” at Folioeast in East Hampton, she was inspired by painters who had been working for some time but had departed from their regular practices. The work the artists brought in was so fresh, in fact, that some of the paintings finished drying on the gallery walls.

So what do we have here? Shari Abramson, Michele D’Ermo, and Janet Jennings are all working in some form of abstraction that might also respond to landscape and/or the figure.

Ms. Abramson’s newest paintings share a cohesive palette of plums, pinks, mauves, and white, using mostly color to create darker tones and shadows. The larger canvases, “Inside Buddha’s Head” and “Dream Reflections,” seem to represent faces or facial features — one of a dog in the case of the former, and one of a human in the latter.

They have a moody, hazy atmosphere and summon up the subconscious.

“Inside Buddha’s Head” has a Georgia O’Keeffe vibe, conjuring a looming animal head over an uncertain background. In “Dream Reflection,” the canvas divides roughly into thirds, with a dark twilight kind of sky at top, a middle section of cloudy white, and what appears to be the suggestion of two eyes.

Ms. Abramson’s smaller works, 12-inch-square canvases, evoke studies of objects placed in interiors. But just as soon as these impressions appear, they also dissolve, leaving an intriguing enigma in their wake.

Compared to her older work, there is a definite shift here. Her paintings from a couple of years ago are more loosely organized, with the occasional use of strong linear elements, while these are blockier and more grounded in most cases.

Ms. D’Ermo’s most recent work indicates a marked shift as well. The artist has ordered her hazy and loose landscapes, often images evoking the ocean and waterways of the East End, around a horizon line. As such, they can be almost as abstract as a Mark Rothko painting, but more referential.

The latest works play with these compositional and stylistic modes. It begins as a subtle departure in “Moody Blue,” which refers to landscape in its ordering of compositional elements, but they open up and blur. A great expanse of white takes up most of the space, which employs her usual horizontal orientation. But the white doesn’t replicate or even refer to a typical cloud. If anything, it is more like a mushroom cloud, something capable of overcoming or obliterating things.

But then Ms. D’Ermo moves very rapidly into a significant departure. Now, the works stand tall on canvas or linen. One is even square. In “Into the Sea,” she hardens her subtle striations into real horizontal bands that no lon­ger carry direct ties to the landscape,

despite the painting’s title. The even patterning from top to bottom asserts the artist’s own vision, taken out of a realistic context. In the square work, “Untitled I,” the stripes become even sharper and now move vertically.

“Voyage,” which may or may not be the last work Ms. D’Ermo painted this year, feels like the fullest realization of this new direction. She has returned to an atmospheric vibration in the painting, but this almost seven-foot-tall work has left earthly concerns behind. A wide and fiery red-orange central swath is held back by deep blue sides, but just barely.

Shari Abramson’s “Mindshot” is a powerful 12-by-12-inch canvas./“Sea Cloud” by Janet Jennings demonstrates the artist’s further move into abstraction. Folioeast Photos

Ms. Jennings’s works in recent years have moved from recognizable landscapes bathed in atmosphere to close distillations of them, heading more and more into the abstract. These examples are a good foil for Ms. D’Ermo’s paintings, although Ms. Jennings’s remain horizontal in their composition.

Capturing a period from 2015 to 2019, the works show the artist returning again and again to a sea study that can dissolve into soft linear bands as quickly as it falls into focus on a stormy sky with light bay waves accumulating in the foreground. Titles such as “Sagg Fog” and “Sea Cloud” from this year seem to ground them into a sense of reality. “Sea Smoke,” from 2017, and “Dream Wave,” from 2018, highlight the artist’s tacks in a more imaginative direction.

The exhibition will remain on view through Dec. 8. A post-Thanksgiving reception will be held on Friday, Nov. 29, from 5 to 7 p.m., with the artists present and an extended view of their work.”

THE INDEPENDENT "from Milan to the Hamptons, famed fashion photographer, Jaime Lopez, tells his story"

Jaime Lopez

Read about the man behind the camera, a recent interview with photographer Jaime Lopez, his career photographing models and his current project taking portraits of folioeast artists.

Read the original story on The Independent website by clicking here.

“FAMED FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER, JAIME LOPEZ, TELLS HIS STORY

From Milan To The Hamptons

NOVEMBER 12, 2019 BY | NICOLE TEITLER

Native to Peru, Jaime Lopez came to New York to study graphic design at Parsons in 1980 only after being rejected from his choice university in Switzerland, which had hit its quota of Latin American students. Upon arrival Lopez, who only spoke Spanish at the time, was quickly forced to learn English prior to beginning his studies. Then, during an internship with photographer Alex Chatelain he came across his true calling. Since then, his photos have been published across the fashion landscape in Cosmopolitan, GQ, Elle, and other magazines. He now resides in Sagaponack with his wife, former model, Marilyn Clark, and two daughters, as he works on his latest project, a book capturing local artists.

How did you discover your love of photography?

When I got to 100 Fifth Avenue, I went up to the top floor and I didn’t walk out until I got an internship. I got a week-long internship with a fashion photographer — Alex Chatelain. I fell in love with the freedom of the pace and the amount of people that work together on a photoshoot. Then I switched careers.

What was your first hired shoot?

I moved to Milan to do a year abroad. I worked for anybody that would hire me. I originally went for only eight months but I ended up staying for 10 years. It was at the time Spain was being admitted to the European Union and all the major magazines had unprecedented editions in Spain. For a photographer to be there at that moment, a huge moment of growth, they didn’t have enough talent there. It was the best thing ever.

How do you know when an image is right for print?

It depends on the subject. If your subject understands your vision and is an artist, you will have the picture very quickly. You know that you got the picture and then you’re just curious about what else. You become like a scavenger trying to provoke other situations. Ninety percent of the work is done. Finding the location as you walk around, trying different attitudes, trying to find a more spontaneous picture.

Did you meet your wife, an East Hampton native, on a shoot?

In 1985, we were on a shoot in Florida. I was there for 15 days and models came and went. She was the only model involved with the pictures when she was not in front of the camera, helping out. It was weird but we had a better chance to catch up.

How do you choose black and white v. color?

The picture chooses itself. The location, the clothing, the model. The drama in the clouds or the story the picture is telling you. A girl that’s wearing all black leather, with a lot of art in the background, that’s better off in black and white. Something very colorful like red boots, whatever that is very flashy, that calls for color. Nowadays, with digital photography, it’s easy. In the old days, you had to mount the camera with black and white film and that was it, unless you had another camera with color film.

What is your favorite camera to work with?

Now it’s the Canon. With film, I used Nikons.

What is the book you’re working on?

It’s a wonderful project with around 40 Hamptons artists. When I got the studio, I told my agent I need a project. I started working with folioeast, the name of my gallery here on the East End. And I wanted to photograph all of their artists.

Where do you take these photographs?

It’s at my studio with a white background, where I tried to provoke situations that take you away from being scared of being in front of a camera. We play, we discover. Sometimes we don’t do anything. They are sometimes hiding behind a newspaper or with their hands in their pocket. Then I go to their studio and photograph them in their environment and that environment — the paintings, the backdrops, the tubes laying around. I try to photograph the energy of that art.

When did the project begin?

It began last summer. I’m aiming to have it done by spring 2020. We are trying to rush it now because a few artists work outdoors.”

HAMPTONS COTTAGES & GARDENS "An East Hampton Artist's Home is a Showcase for Her Work and Travels" by Coco Myers

The entrance to Beth O’Donnell’s house in East Hampton isn’t particularly unusual—simply a set of glass-paned front doors that lead into a foyer. But then the surprises begin, starting with a second set of doors: a pair of weathered mahogany Indian specimens dating from the 1800s.

“I bought them while we were renovating, although I didn’t know where we’d use them,” says O’Donnell, who adds that she’s never quite sure where she’s going to put any of the exotic furnishings and artworks she has collected from around the world. “My aesthetic isn’t a planned one. I just know when things feel right.”

The same sentiment applies to her adventurous, eclectic life. The Southwestern chapter, for instance, accounts for the collection of saddles and cowboy boots that dominate one of her guest rooms. In 1993, O’Donnell, her husband, and their three young sons moved from Winnetka, Illinois, to Tucson, Arizona. “Suddenly my kids were passing coyotes on their way to school,” says O’Donnell, who with her husband transformed a dude ranch into a successful rehab center. A few years later, they built Miraval, a resort and spa focused on well-being and holistic living. O’Donnell designed the interiors, which she accented with contemporary Southwestern art from the eponymous gallery that she opened in town and ran for seven years.

Then came Africa. During a 1987 safari, she fell in love with Kenya and bought her first camera. She returned often, photographing wildlife and local village children, which led to photojournalistic work (frequently published in The London Daily Telegraph and Marie Claire) and Angels in Africa (Vendome), a book that documents seven extraordinary African women from seven different countries. “While researching my book, I was spending so much time in Nairobi that I built a cottage at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” she says. “I became more knowledgeable about safaris, and my friends, and then their friends, started asking me to guide expeditions. I still do one or two safaris a year.”

No matter what continent she travels to, O’Donnell hand-carries or ships something home, such as the living room’s pair of beaded Nigerian armchairs, prominently placed around a large coffee table made from wood salvaged from beached dhows, or sailboats. “During my travels, I always bring back some form of wood,” she says. “It carries the energy of the country it comes from and triggers memories.” Her kitchen, not surprisingly, is a trove of wooden implements: a rolling pin from India, a peppermill from France, spoons from Zimbabwe, a grater from Honduras.

O’Donnell’s next move, inspired by a desire to expand her photography career from photojournalism to the fine arts, brought her to Manhattan. Newly divorced at 49, she enrolled in classes at the International Center of Photography. “They say there’s life after 50,” she reflects, “and I say there’s art after 50.” That summer, she visited friends in Sag Harbor, and the following summer she rented a house in Montauk. Soon, she was living in East Hampton full-time. In 2016, she and her partner, writer and television producer Paul Shavelson, bought their current home, an early-1980s farmhouse. “The exterior was a drab brown, so we decided to paint it black, and my designer friend Bernt Heiberg suggested that we paint the interiors black, too. We did, and it makes a dramatic backdrop for my collection of art and objects.”

Around this time, O’Donnell began painting and experimenting with encaustic wax, inspired by the work of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Peter Beard (she owns several pieces by the latter). “I love how they combined found objects, paint, and photography,” she says. But to do this kind of work, O’Donnell needed space, and so she decided to build a separate studio.

The 600-square-foot structure is an open studio in every sense of the word: large enough for easels, multiple worktables, and a loft space for Shavelson. Dubbed the Art Barn on Larkin Pond, after the natural pond on the property, it features industrial-glass garage doors that provide a wall of natural light and can be rolled up “on nice days, when I wheel a worktable or bring my easel outside,” O’Donnell says.

The artist also envisioned the studio as a place where people could come to see her work, as well as that of other artists, and to take part in salon-style evenings of art and music. Last summer, she and Shavelson hosted an exhibit followed by a live outdoor opera performance, accompanied by Shavelson’s son, a jazz pianist. “I like the idea of commingling different art forms, which is why I work in mixed media and why the decor in my house is a mix of styles,” she muses. “After all, art imitates life. Or is it the other way around?”

A version of this article appeared in the July 1-15 2019 issue of HC&G (Hamptons Cottages & Gardens) with the headline: Graphic Impact. 

Beth O’Donnell and her dog, Venus, take five outside her art studio, a 600-square-foot prefab structure by Morton Buildings.

Beth O’Donnell and her dog, Venus, take five outside her art studio, a 600-square-foot prefab structure by Morton Buildings.

The living room features beaded armchairs from Nigeria and a Kenyan coffee table constructed from beached dhow wood. Ostrich eggs are housed beneath its glass top.

In the main hallway, pillows fabricated from African Kuba cloth top a banquette.

Decorative Indian mahogany doors from the late 1800s beckon in the entryway; the bar dates from the 1930s.

In the dining room, Kenyan leather safari chairs and slipcovered seating from RH surround a table fashioned from an Indian bed.

The kitchen features a Wolf range and hood.

The four-poster in a guest room is from Ralph Lauren Home.

Artworks line the main hallway and study.

The bent-twig fan-backed chairs on the back porch are from Mexico.

The master suite is outfitted with numerous seating areas for enjoying vistas of Larkin Pond or reading by the fire, such as a wood-and-cane daybed from India.

The bathtub is sheathed in Caesarstone.

Belgian linen–topped built-in benches.

A wall in O’Donnell’s studio is dedicated to her latest mixed- media work: encaustic, oil, and ink on Japanese rice paper.

EAST HAMPTON STAR review "Folioeast Turns to Sculpture at Its Malia Mills Pop-Up Space with “On and Off the Wall”"

It’s not just the trees, animals, and flowers that go dormant here until the spring. After a long fall and holiday season, the next few weeks will challenge the heartiest of the year-round and off-season denizens to dare to brave the elements in order to partake in the scant cultural offerings and opportunities to socialize.

With so many taking well-deserved breaks, we are lucky that the online and offline project of Coco Myers, Folioeast, continues to return every year to the retail space seasonally vacated by Malia Mills on East Hampton’s Main Street. It isn’t a huge space, but she always manages to fill it thoughtfully with work by area artists.

In her latest exhibition, “On and Off the Wall,” she makes the most of the space with a grouping of sculptures from some new and familiar faces. It is a lively and fresh installation, allowing us to see old friends in unexpected ways. Intermittent pops of color enliven the space and the art around them, never overpowering, but just right. READ MORE >

HAMPTONS ART HUB review "Portfolio: Christine Matthäi Infuses Photography with Philosophy"

For Matthäi, art is a form of meditation. Works from her “Light and Sea” series examine the way
light hits water. They’re pleasing to the eye, produced in calming color gradients that merge sky
and sea in metallic silvers and blues, with occasional warmly tinted sunbeams. “I’m trying to
convey my feeling, my inspiration into visuals,” she said, adding that light and water “became more
abstract, shifting into formlessness like nature, birth, and death.” READ MORE >

HAMPTONS ART HUB REVIEW "ART REVIEW: David Slivka’s Ink Paintings Channel New York School While Correlating to his Sculpture"

There’s an enviable freedom inherent in pop up exhibitions, and I had to wonder if a gallery or
regional museum would take a flier on the way these works on paper were presented. Using shiny
bulldog clips to hang the heavy vellum paper, and letting the pale gray, wintry sunlight creep along
the wall to add a sliver of feeble sun to the gallery lighting, the curators added refreshing
provisional and improvisational notes of the casual to a show that would have seemed duller in a
museum—with uv-resistant glass dividing the viewer from the subtle surface of the ink and heavy duty wall texts with formal explanations.

READ MORE >

EAST HAMPTON ART HUB ART REVIEW “ColorPop” Tension in Works by Dayton, Jennings and Pagano

Shows like this do not emerge from nowhere, and folioeast founder Coco Meyers and her associate
Kay Gibson should be commended for their curatorial artistry in both the artist selections and
installation. Even the show’s title, “ColorPop,” seems to have taken on new meaning. More than just
a reference to the pop of color in the white-walled popup gallery and a nod to the contemporary art
movement, “ColorPop” is the synesthetic sound these works make in this small space; it’s the
sound a missile makes when it is fired from a distance.

EAST HAMPTON STAR review "Photo Finish: A Photography Show to End the Year Organized by Ned Smyth and Coco Myers for Folioeast and installed at Malia Mills"

Organized by Ned Smyth and Coco Myers for Folioeast and installed at Malia Mills, [Photo Finish] is striking in its concentration in an intimate space and in its subject matter.

A poster-size print on Plexiglas by Joe Pintauro beckons to the outside and passers-by. “Lifeguard With Broken Umbrella,” a picture of a male lifeguard perched on a stand with the promised broken umbrella, is part of a series that includes “Lifeguard With Broken Umbrella (Male)” and “Lifeguard With Broken Umbrella (Female),” also on view in the gallery. The group indicates that something different is afoot, an appreciation for the flawed, or something organic and edgier. more >

EAST HAMPTON STAR review "Myers Finds Links in Disparate Chains"

January is a surprising month on the South Fork. While the crowds die down and the only bluster is the wind (and snow), there are often quiet but significant efforts to draw full-time residents and weekenders away from their hearths and out onto the scene again.

In addition to other off-season exhibitions, there is now in Bridgehampton some new life bubbling to the surface at the Kathryn Markel Gallery. Each year Ms. Markel closes down operations during the winter, but makes her space available to independent curators and artist collectives. For the month of January, the gallery will be home to Folioeast, a mostly online assemblage of East End artists represented by Coco Myers, an East Hampton native, who after years in the media world came back several years ago to live here with her family. more >