“So the town offered this building as an alternative space for us to relocate to while all of the construction is happening on our campus,” said Wendy Weiss, executive director of EEAC. “I worked closely with the town throughout the process, and they’ve been great community partners. They subsidized the move, so it didn’t have to be a big financial burden on East [End] Arts Council.”

The annex building was part of the town hall purchase in 2022. This space will allow the arts school, recording studio and administration offices to be housed in one building. The gallery will remain open through early 2026 for the annual members show. This gives EEAC time to find another gallery space in or around Riverhead.

“We hope to be able to find a new fine art gallery space in or around Main Street, because this building does not have like exhibition space, but it’s great for the school and the recording studio and the administrative offices,” said Ms. Weiss.

The downtown revitalization requires raising the gallery and school to sidewalk level. It also means some buildings will be rearranged and reoriented. This will protect the buildings from flooding and better incorporate them into the overall project.

“The gallery building is going to be moved a bit to the east to allow for a fire lane access between it and the hotel. Then the carriage house building is going to be flipped around and placed behind the school building, and the Fresh Pond Schoolhouse building will likely be placed behind the gallery building,” Ms. Weiss explained. “The entire campus will have fill to create a slope that leads down toward the river, and at the base of the campus will become an amphitheater, which will also help in the water collection.”

The construction also affected this year’s Endless Summer Soiree, which was moved to Saturday, Sept. 13, and is being hosted by Strong’s Marine in Mattituck.

“That is our biggest private fundraising event of the year. It’s crucial to us, maybe even more so … due to the changes that have been happening with the move and disruption operations and everything. It’s nice to see the community come forward to support things and understand,” said Ms. Weiss.

It is possible the Mosaic Festival, which takes place in May, will also be affected.

“We shut the streets down, and everyone does art in the street. We use the town square space for things like that, so we’ll have to [ask the] developers for more precise timelining of whether or not that will need to be relocated. That will be determined later,” said Ms. Weiss.

Overall, the outlook has shifted to optimism, and the move to the annex building is part of that equation.

“We are definitely looking at this as an opportunity. At the beginning, it felt very intimidating, but we quickly came together as a team,” said Ms. Weiss. “We are looking at things as opportunities, rather than challenges. We’ve really embraced it all and look forward to what’s to come.”

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“Live Music/Silent Film combines unusual silent films with extraordinary sound and music. It’s silent films that are surreal, that are early, that are pioneering. They are extraordinary, very adventurous and fun,” said Mr. Baldwin. “And the music is the same way. The sounds are unexpected and beautiful. We have an ensemble of four different musicians, and all of them bring a unique experience to the production. It’s highly unusual.”

The shows are not a traditional presentation of silent films as they would have been exhibited in their time. Instead, the films and the music combine to create their own, new work for the festival.

“We really mix it up. We remixed a bunch of Disney pieces last year because some Mickey Mouse is now in public domain. And so we took those and we twisted them around, mangled them in different ways and remixed those,” Mr. Baldwin said. 


The festival is now in its seventh year. This is the first time that it will continue for the entire month, with different selections for each weekend. The films span from the dawn of filmmaking to the late silent era, with a few contemporary offerings.

“We do contemporary silent as well as the original stuff, and the original stuff stretches from about 1895, and then we go up into the 1920s. We don’t do things much further into the middle of the century, but, you know, should we find something that’s great from 1960, we’ll use it,” said Mr. Baldwin.

One of the films for this year is “The Seashell and the Clergyman,” by Germaine Dulac. 

“It’s a surrealist film by a woman director from 1928, and it’s possibly the first surrealist film made,” Mr. Baldwin said. 

Other nights feature Sigmund Freud’s home movies and a selection of films about the moon. The final showing is AI videos based on Mr. Baldwin’s own dreams.

“We’re doing some AI as well, which are new. It’s very interesting. These are generated from my dreams,” Mr. Baldwin said. “In other words, I’m taking notes on my dreams and then using that as a prompt. AI films. Those are very contemporary. That’s a new experiment.”

The performances are Aug. 8, 15, 22 and 29. Advanced tickets are recommended. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for Live Music/Silent Films are $20 each or $60 for a series pass. Tickets may be purchased at: jamesportmeetinghouse.org.

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This one-of-a-kind live performance was created by musician-storyteller Jack Licitra. The cast features performances by Jack Licitra, Danny Kean, Rorie Kelly, Gianna Volpe and the Blue Hot Band. 

Described as a hybrid between a musical and a play by Mr. Licitra, the performance draws the audience into an imaginary venue where the music of New Orleans and Chicago is woven with the storied lives of the house band, who are being interviewed by a real-life DJ. 

“You’re introduced to the club, and you meet the characters and then you run into a little bit of the conflicts the characters have had in their lives,” said Mr. Licitra. “The piano player, Danny King, is blind, so he talks about his struggles and how music has helped him. The arc is really coming to the realization that the community of this club is really what brings people together and the experience that we’re all looking for through music and life.”

Though he has extensive experience as a performer, Mr. Licitra never thought to turn those anecdotes into a stage production until he was struck with inspiration in his sleep.

“I’d been a long-time blues and jazz musician, but I had a dream while I was sleeping one night that I should write a play,” said Mr. Licitra. “
So the concept of developing a play or a musical was intimidating, but then I got to the idea about the play taking place in a blues and jazz club and the DJ as a narrator. I know radio very well, and I know blues and jazz clubs well, so then it was familiar territory.”

Mr. Licitra wanted to tell a story about the experience of being a blues and jazz musician and the power of the community in blues and jazz clubs. It was important to chronicle a music career that, while not necessarily financially sustainable, satisfies something deeper. 

“It’s not like pop music, where you’re in it for the fortune and fame. You’re pursuing this art that, you know, you’re always sort of in smaller venues or offbeat venues, and it’s a niche kind of music,” said Mr. Licitra. “It’s this quixotical pursuit of trying to be great at something that’ll never make you rich and famous, but just doing it for the love and the coolness of the art.”

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“We’re reaching so many different communities and creating a rather large accessibility, which is important to Northeast Stage. That’s part of their mission to make Shakespeare available to people. And I do think that’s unique,” said A.D. Newcomer, director of this year’s production and an alumna of Shakespeare and Company.

First proposed in 2019, it took many fits and starts to finally bring “Othello” to the stage. Amy Ippolito had always intended to play Desdemona, and despite life changes that included moving from Long Island to Virginia, she found a way to make it happen. 

“There was one day where I heard ‘Othello’ was getting picked back up, and then I texted A.D. and I said, ‘Over my dead body will anybody else play Desdemona,’” said Ms. Ippolito.

This production is being rehearsed in the tradition the original actors would have experienced, with something now called a “cue script.” Essentially, each actor would receive the last three lines of the actor before it was their turn to speak and then their lines, saving time and effort.

“It was more actor-led, because there was no one sitting outside of the playing space being like, ‘Oh, yes, and you enter here and you enter here.’ The actors had a little bit more agency. Shakespeare layered that stuff in for the actors, hidden stage directions,” said Ms. Newcomer. “For my line, ‘Upon my knees, what does your speech import?’ The directions are in there. The actor without the rehearsal time knows to do that dramatic action, and he brilliantly structured it that way.”

Ms. Ippolito and Ms. Newcomer have years of academic and practical experience with Shakespeare. Ms. Ippolito was introduced to Shakespeare’s plays nearly from birth. “I have very vivid memories of my dad, going through Shakespeare as a bedtime story, which is a really random thing to do to a 5-year-old,” she said. “Shakespeare has always been kind of looming in the background. I got really into soliloquies, which are a speech where the only person on stage is the actor, and the audience is the scene partner, and that became my focus of study.”

Ms. Newcomer was also steeped in a theatrical tradition, with her mom bringing her up to be a dancer and a flutist. Shakespeare was a strong literary presence in their home. “There were books all around and there was always the complete works [of Shakespeare]. But I just never really got exposed much to it till high school. I just was like, “Ooh, Shakespeare.” Like, it was mystical to me,” said Ms. Newcomer.

She did explore Shakespeare eventually, but an insensitive response from a teacher while reading “Romeo and Juliet” made her feel she wasn’t up to the task. Her confidence shaken, she let it go. “I literally walked out the door and said, ‘I’m not capable of understanding this, so how can it be fun for me?’ And I moved on,” said Ms. Newcomer.

Many years later, while working and living in Greenport, a chance encounter with a friend led her to reconsider.  She took a play out of the library and read it in a single sitting. “It was ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and I walked out of the coffee shop completely changed,” Ms. Newcomer said.

She has since studied Shakespeare extensively and gone on to teach, act and direct. She also runs Camp Shakespeare in Amagansett.

The cast of “Othello” includes Justin D. Harris as Othello, Colin Palmer as Iago and Ms. Ippolito as Desdemona, with Andrew O’Brien, Christian Lepore, Esmeralda Cabrera, John Bradley, Lee Meyer, Nicholas Auletti, Peter Peterson, Stuart Whalen and Wendy Peterson.

This production is made possible, in part, by public funding provided by Suffolk County and by Mattituck Environmental Services, the Daniel Rosenblatt Foundation, Friends of Mitchell Park, Helen and John Simonson, Friends of Westhampton Free Library, Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Patchogue Arts Council, Megan Bowles Yoga and others.

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Ms. Egginton has always wanted to be an artist. Some of her earliest memories are of being in nature, sketching and creating art. 

“I lived in Japan for three years when I was young, in the countryside, and I have a very distinct impressions of being absorbed in doing my art,” said Ms. Egginton. 

By the time she was in middle school, she knew she would make art her lifelong pursuit. 

“In seventh grade, I went to my guidance counselor and said, ‘I want to decide what art school I’m going to go to,’” Ms. Egginton said.

She has spent her life creating art and teaching others to do the same. More than anything, she wants people to connect with their inner artist and realize that being creative is an inherent quality all people possess. 

“An important mission for me is to help people get out to nature, and to observe and reflect on what they see and to try to record it,” said Ms. Egginton. “I’m a real believer that art is a part of everyone’s life. You’d want them to have it be a part of their life and a pleasure and to make it personal. Everyone has art capabilities. [Making art] is something you’re born with.”

The natural environment is a subject that Ms. Egginton returns to again and again in her work. Even in her abstracts, the colors and textures are drawn from her surroundings, whether in coastal Massachusetts, Westchester County or her summer home in Wainscott.

“I paint very regularly. I participate in a en plein air painting group called The Wednesday Group. Every Wednesday, we go to a different location,” Ms. Egginton said. “That’s my favorite thing to do, paint watercolors en plein air, to be out in nature, and observe the beaches and the gardens and the parks.”

This exhibit will allow Ms. Egginton to show a very full representation of her artwork. Because she produces so prolifically, she will a diversity of watercolors, prints, monoprints and collagraphs.  

“I am hoping that people will walk through this gallery, that some of the images will catch their attention enough to spend a little bit more time looking,” said Ms. Egginton.

Ultimately, Ms. Egginton’s art is a celebration of our natural world and her place in it. 

“I’m producing art that reflects the natural beauty of our surroundings, because I’m just so happy living here,” she said.

The post East End artist Egginton to show at Riverhead Free Library gallery appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

Christopher Burns, co-owner and director of Exit 73, runs the studio with his business and creative partner, Bob Fox. The two have been close friends since childhood growing up in Riverhead. Burns has always been interested in art. “I drew a lot as a kid,” he said. “I would have a blank piece of paper and just doodle on it all day.”

Burns cites long-time Riverhead High School art teacher Vinny Nasta, who died in an air show accident in 2008, as a mentor. “He was a big inspiration,” he said. “When I saw how good he was, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” Burns’ original plan was to become an illustrator, but a visit to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he met an animation student, Hansel Perez, inspired him to switch gears and pursue animation as a career.

When he graduated from SVA in the early 2000s, there were essentially two hubs for a career in animation: one in Los Angeles and the other in New York. The animation industry in New York City was robust, home to cable giants like Comedy Central and MTV. Each locale had its own vibe, and Burns decided to stick with New York, landing a job at Comedy Central on a show called “Shorties Watching Shorties.” From there he went to Disney, then MTV and eventually Augenblick Studios in Brooklyn.

“We did some awesome projects,” Burns said. “There was a lot of Adult Swim stuff, Comedy Central stuff, more adult-oriented animation, which really fascinated me. It wasn’t just for kids. I gathered seven years of experience at that studio, and with my four years of prior work, I was more than 10 years into the field. I felt confident that we could probably start something on our own.”

Burns enlisted Fox, who also studied at SVA and ran in the same social and creative circles, as his partner and the duo began deliberating where best to set up shop. Coming back to their hometown seemed an appealing option, but their industry peers were skeptical.

“This was around 2012. It was not the world it is now, with everything so globalized,” Burns recalled. “So it was perceived as risky coming out to the East End of Long Island. We’re far away enough from the city where we could be considered obsolete from the scene. So there was definitely some hesitancy.” 

Riverhead was familiar and inexpensive, allowing the partners to get a solid foothold and begin establishing themselves. “We were just ready to get serious and settle down with our fiancées,” Burns said. “We were just thinking about the future and how we grew up in the Riverhead area. That was kind of the main decision: why don’t we try to go back to our hometown and see if we can make this animation thing work.” The partners’ future wives were also from the area, making it a four-way decision, but in then end, the support they knew they could rely on by moving back home was the key factor. “That’s what let us take that risk.”

Once Burns and Fox took the leap, they were able to quickly capitalize on their contacts from years of working in the city and started building a client base. “The rest is sort of history,” Burns said. “We were able to stay afloat and we celebrate our 13th anniversary in March.” 

After some time working out of Fox’s basement studio, Exit 73 moved to an open office in a 100-year old brick building on East Main Street, where they occupy the corner office. The space boasts a bank of windows and a minimalist design.  Their Wacom Cintiq displays allow the animators to draw right on the screen, and are powered by custom-built computers. The animation is created using the Adobe suite of products, while they use the Unity engine to develop video games.

One frame at a time

While a significant sector of today’s industry is focused on 3D, Exit 73’s strategy of sticking with traditional, frame-by-frame animation is part form, part function. “There is definitely a risk there,” Burns said. “Every movie that’s considered animation definitely leans heavily into the 3D. I always was a paper-pencil kind of guy. Technology was not my strong suit. Honestly, learning a third dimension to draw or act out these scenes didn’t really click with me right away.”

Another obstacle was that the 3D animation technology of the early 2000s required large teams of artists to effectively create. “I like small teams,” Burns said. “I find it nice to wear a lot of hats. Being on a small team, and still competing with bigger companies, you kind of get creative with how you can stay ahead in the same field.” 

Exit 73’s production process typically begins when clients come to the studio with an idea. Often they will have the audio recorded already and have an overall style in mind. From there, the team will draw a simple plan called a storyboard which allows them to figure out the pacing of the action, what the key plot points are and when to hit them. Once complete, these drawings are put into an animatic, essentially a storyboard synchronized with a soundtrack. This is followed by layout, which creates a smoother, cleaner version of the sequence. Next comes “in-betweening,” essentially filling in the gaps from still images to full animation, followed by post-production, which adds all the artistic nuances to create the final product.

The whole process can take anywhere from days to months, depending on the project and how much back and forth is required with the clients. “Something that is three minutes can take anywhere from three weeks to, like, two months,” Burns said, which is typical when dealing with larger clients like Nickelodeon. “Then there’s projects where it’s a little more intimate, and you’re talking directly with one person. That we can get done in [around] eight days.”

While Burns and Fox will jump in anywhere as the need arises, Burns typically handles more of the character animation while Fox crafts the backgrounds. “I probably focused more on my character animation, since I’m more specialized in that skill, where Bob is like a jack of all trades,” Burns said. “We both share the workload. If I’m falling behind, he’ll jump on and vice versa.”

Well-positioned

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Exit 73 was well-positioned. In fact, many of the restrictions imposed at the time actually boosted the business. Since producers were not able to gather to shoot live action content, animation was in demand. 

“Anyone who looks behind the scenes at live action stuff, it’s not just actors,” said Burns. “There’s lighting people, cameramen, gaffers and all that. What goes into making a television show involves upwards of 60 people in one place. When the pandemic hit and there was these restrictions, all of a sudden, live action was put on hiatus, where animation is something that could continue production, since we didn’t run the risk of running into a lot of people.”

Working in their own “pod,” Burns and Fox continued producing commercially viable work. “There’s just two of us at the studio, and we’re very comfortable with each other,” said Burns. “But to manage just two people, when we live in the same zip code, it seemed reasonable to continue production.” 

“This was around 2012. It was not the world it is now, with everything so globalized,” Burns recalled. “So it was perceived as risky coming out to the East End of Long Island. We’re far away enough from the city where we could be considered obsolete from the scene. So there was definitely some hesitancy.” 

Exit 73 takes on a variety of projects, but their mainstay is short-form content that is optimized for viewing on a smartphone. The clips and shorts are relatively simple to produce and can be turned around quickly. “Most of our bread-and-butter is between ten seconds and three minutes, which is perfect for the internet age,” Burns said. “Social media is a huge thing; people like 10 second clips now. All the formats have changed, everyone’s looking at content vertically. What’s nice about that is, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re not worried about movies that take six years to make.”

The partners recently completed an in-house passion project, a video game called “#blud,” which is available on all consoles and on PC via the Steam platform. They also produced the new intro for the “Baby Shark” series and 10 shorts to coincide with the roll out of the new season. They are also working on a project for a new three-on-three women’s basketball league. 

Exit 73 also gets a lot of repeat business from bigger networks who have been impressed with their past work. 

“The industry is tiny by most metrics,” Burns said. “So if you kind of establish yourself as being reliable, you can find work fairly easily.”

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Ruby Ann’s artwork was part of the Gen-Art 2024 Open Juried Exhibition which closed in December. Billed as “an all-ages national show exploring creativity across the generations,” the show featured 70 pieces of artwork created by approximately 40 genX’ers, millennials and boomers. Her two pieces — one a portrait of Mexico’s celebrated artist, Frida Kahlo, and the second a line of small colorful rainbow hearts with faces on them — were created with a material all kids love: Play-Doh.  

The budding artist explained in a shy voice what inspired her two pieces. “My babysitter was wearing a heart shirt and that’s where I got the idea from. It’s made from Play-Doh, paper and gold glitter glue. I just made the hearts with my hands. I put a face on them and let them dry. And it only took me two days. And one day at school, we had to pick a famous artist, and I picked Frida Kahlo because she’s my favorite. We have the same birthday!” Ruby Ann said.  

In 2020, the McDavids enrolled their daughter in the Peconic Community School in Cutchogue, or “PSC” as Ruby Ann calls it.  “Ruby Ann is very expressive. Ever since she was little, we were looking for ways to see where that creativity would take her,” said Eve McDavid, her mother. “The art community is really rich, and it makes the experience of art part of her identity as she grows, to see herself as an artist.” 

Ruby Ann’s Kahlo piece was first exhibited at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. Her dad Arthur joked that “it was on loan from the Parrish!” It is really important, he added, to nurture her creativity and the joy of art. “I couldn’t imagine a better birthday present for me on my 40th birthday than my daughter being chosen for the Gen-Art exhibit,” Mr. McDavid said.

Another picture she drew was of a boy who was mean to her at school. “It helped her to process her fear,” he added.

“She’s been developing her art skills over the past two years. I’ve been telling her you can grow up to be an artist, and you can start now,” said Melissa Pressler, Ruby Ann’s teacher at East End Arts. “I’ve seen a big shift in the way she carries herself now; being in the exhibit has brought her a lot of confidence. I feel like I’m mentoring a 7-year-old who’s going on 17!”

Both of Ruby Ann’s pieces were sold: the smiley hearts Play-Doh went to her grandparents, and the Kahlo piece to an anonymous buyer.

East End Arts is hoping to hold more student exhibitions in the future. “With the creative process we learn a lot of life lessons as we go. It’s all about using art to navigate our life and our feelings,” Ms. Pressler said. 

Teaching art in the public school system for two decades, Ken Jackson, who juried the East End Arts exhibition, has seen lots of student artwork. “She’s an impressive little girl. I saw how young she was and I said, this child has to be in the show. Kahlo is a serious piece … It looks like a much older person did it.”

He added that he believes art boosts children’s confidence and maturity when they see art “as an avenue they can go down.”

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The giant ball comprises approximately 75 cloth triangles — each made from strips of denim in various shades of faded blue, that have been wrapped, knotted and tied together. “I’d be at home or at the beach, tearing the jeans into long strips. I’d have friends come over and help. I didn’t cut them with a scissor because I wanted the texture of the denim being worn out,” Ms. Davis explained. 

Most of the hundreds of pairs of jeans used in the sculpture were donated by the thrift store at Baiting Hollow Congregational Church, just down the road. 

“And every time we opened our front door, there were bags of jeans from neighbors who donated,” said the artist’s husband, Mark Alhadeff.

Ms. Davis, who grew up on her grandparents’ farm in Ohio and remembers “being too short that I got lost in the cornfield,” pointed out that farmers today still wear overalls. “Denim is such a hard-working material.” In creating the piece, she said, she felt like she was surrounded by all the people who wore the jeans. “What did they do in these jeans? I was thinking as I was in my studio. The connection with some of them that were worn by farmers, is that the nexus of jeans and labor is agriculture.”

“The fasteners on the sphere are stainless steel so they’re all-weather,” said Mr. Alhadeff. “It’s hurricane-proof. We tested the steel and denim over three months and it’s fine in wet weather. ” 

“If there’s degradation of the fiber, that’s part of life, and I’m also okay with people touching it,” Ms. Davis added. “I want people to get personal with it.”

The couple estimated the sphere weighs 1,000 pounds; the wood and armature are about half of that. “So, my son who’s an engineer, and me, a pseudo-engineer, worked on the framing,” Mr. Alhadeff said. They also anchored solar lights inside to illuminate the sculpture at night.

A $2,500 grant for the project came from the New York State Council on the Arts; the remainder of the cost was covered by in-kind donations from people who contributed their time and expertise. The idea for a sphere came to Ms. Davis while she was crafting balls at home from salvaged fabric and sheets. “I was an earth science teacher at one point and I’m a space head. I love planets and the idea of circular objects,” she said. Some of the first balls she shaped are part of the contemporary artwork on display at Vine + Sand bed and breakfast in Southold. 

Since January, when she decided to go big, she’s spent hundreds of hours on her newest project. 

The history of denim, from original Levi Strauss jeans, followed by the riveted pockets, to the Gold Rush miners, cowboys and farmers who wore them provided inspiration for the sphere. “Denim crosses all walks of society,” Ms. Davis said. “It also symbolized freedom in the ‘60s and it’s so fashionable that most people have several pairs of jeans.”

After Ms. Davis received the grant, she held multiple meetings with local farmers to decide the best location for her sphere and answer questions about installation and insurance. “We wanted to make sure it wouldn’t impact any crops that were growing or the farmers’ ability to farm. The other issue was finding a safe location … where people driving by could safely pull over and take pictures of it,” said Rob Carpenter, director of the Long Island Farm Bureau. “It’s pretty big, so it can’t be put up on a wall. Visually if you drive by it at night, it’s a beautiful piece of artwork, with the way the light shines on it.”

An opening reception for “Harvesting Memories in Blue” will take place Saturday, Aug. 31, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the 9/11 memorial across the street from the sphere. The huge piece will be on view for only three weeks because of the planting schedule. Where will it go next? 

“It’s unknown right now,” said Ms. Davis. “Several people are interested in it. It could go indoors or outside. It might be for a commercial property.”

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Her dedication to the organization has been further solidified since she took over the role of Executive Director in June.

“I took a big leap of faith,” Ms. Weiss said. “I kind of teased that I was part of that ‘great resignation,’ I left a really big position job to work in a non-profit. It was my first nonprofit experience and then it just snowballed from there.”

As a board member Ms. Weiss participated in the organization’s innovative efforts to keep the arts council active during the pandemic. In 2021, Ms. Weiss resigned from the board to join the non-profit’s team as a Membership & Gallery Coordinator and then later that year, she transitioned to the role of Creative Director.

In that role she facilitated all of the organization’s major exhibitions in their gallery and numerous other East End Arts member satellite gallery spaces. She also oversaw the marketing and membership initiatives. 

Ms. Weiss described both roles as a “natural fostering of relationships.”

“Everything kind of wove together,” she said. “So in this new role here, I’m going to continue with all of that.”

Ms. Weiss said the board unanimously voted her into the position of Executive Director.

“Wendy has significantly engaged the professional working artist community on the East End,” Board President John McLane said in a press release announcing Ms. Weiss taking the top job at the organization. “We cannot be more optimistic about the opportunities in front of East End Arts in the next several years.”

A donor had once told Ms. Weiss that East End Arts is good at combining inclusivity and excellence, which stuck with her and is something she hopes to continue. 

“Something I’m really looking forward to in this role is really starting to look at the organization from a higher elevation and start to see how we can strategically plan things to not only enhance what we already do, but make way for the things of the future,” Ms. Weiss said.

Aside from fundraising, which Ms. Weiss said is a priority for any non-profit, she plans to expand and seek sponsorships and underwriting for two of the organization’s current programs: the Arts and Music Program for All Abilities that works mainly with people with developmental disabilities and organizations that also provide service to them and the Satellite Gallery program.

“I think us being a regional arts organization is a little unique here,” Ms. Weiss said. “Each fork is very localized but our [organization] can be a little more enveloping to kind of unite the north and south forks and to kind of bring people together in a different way.”

Another goal of hers is to be a major player in the downtown revitalization efforts in Riverhead, which includes the creation of an amphitheater on East End Arts property as well as a Town Square neighboring their campus.

“This is our headquarters and our home base,” Ms. Weiss said. “So being partners with the town on those kinds of things, there’s lots of exciting things on the horizon there too.”

According to Ms. Weiss’ Linkedin profile, she most recently worked in a variety of administrative roles in the medical industry. Ms. Weiss was a graduate of Riverhead’s Mercy High School. She later earned a marketing degree from Johnson & Wales University.

Ms. Weiss is taking over for Diane Burke, who had been the organization’s executive director since 2019. Ms. Burke left the role to take a position at a Manorville-based nonprofit. Before leaving, Ms. Burke put together a transition plan, which aside from recommending Ms. Weiss become the next executive director, included recommendations to invest in supportive development and marketing staff. Ms. Burke contacted a “substantial donor,” who then gave $50,000 to fund the transition plan.

Ms. Weiss said her favorite parts of the job are working with her colleagues and community members and helping to curate the organization’s gallery exhibits.

“I have met, know, and gotten to know even better some really cool people,” she said. “It’s such a friendly group, there’s really a collaborative mindset. It’s just such a magical thing to kind of be a part of.”

The post Meet East End Arts’ new executive director appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

In an effort to keep its mission going, Wading River Historical Society holds a spring Art Fair fundraiser during the annual Duck Pond Day festival — a longstanding Wading River tradition.

In preparation for this year’s event on Sunday, June 9, historical society vice president Jane Alcorn was sorting through a large collection of donated art pieces from the past year. She came across many multiples and generic pieces — but one painting in a pile of original artwork immediately caught her eye.

“It looked different from the others — it was obviously old and it looked more finely done,” Ms. Alcorn said. “I thought, ‘This is not just your run-of-the-mill painting.’ ”

She went home, looked up the artist’s name and discovered she had her hands on an authentic painting by renowned Danish-American maritime artist Antonio Jacobsen of the clipper ship Red Jacket.

Through further research, she learned that some of his paintings had sold for prices into the “thousands of dollars.” One even hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Alcorn immediately sought out professional advice and called Shawna Brickley, a Shoreham-based appraiser who works for Rob Zanger Rare Books and Art, based in Middletown, N.Y. For nearly 25 years, Ms. Brickley has worked with a number of auction houses and specializes in handling artwork by the “old masters” — European paintings pre-1800s — and Modern works. 

“This kind of thing is very common; people come to [appraisers] often with things they feel are valuable because they’ve been passed down to family or they’ve been told by a loved one who has passed away that the particular object is valuable,” Ms. Brickley said. “Sometimes, they have a feeling very much the way Jane did that something really sort of stands out as having some potential to be a valuable object — and in this case, she was absolutely right.” 

According to Ms. Brickley, Mr. Jacobsen immigrated from Copenhagen to New York in the late 1800s. He settled in West Hoboken, N.J., right across the Hudson River from New York Harbor, and began painting ships during the time when commercial shipping was transitioning from wind to steam power. 

Mr. Jacobsen received a commission to paint an entire fleet of important shipping lines, including vessels produced for the White Star Line — the company that commissioned the Titanic. The artist was just starting out when he painted the Red Jacket. 

The Red Jacket was built in 1853 in Rockland, Maine, and towed to New York, where it set sail for Liverpool, England, setting a record for the fastest ever transatlantic crossing for a sailing vessel. 

The story gets even more interesting, as Jacobsen painted the ship in 1907 — decades after the Red Jacket was shipwrecked. The year of the painting is when the wreckage completely disappeared into the sea, Ms. Brickley said.

“[It’s a ship that’s] been painted and memorialized many, many times, but this particular painting is really special,” Ms. Brickley said. “It appears that he may have painted this particular painting in homage to that.” 

Before putting a price tag on a valuable item, there are several factors an appraiser like Ms. Brickley has to look out for. 

With this piece, one of the things that stood out to her was the painting being in its original frame from 1907, which is unusual as artwork from this period was typically reframed, Ms. Brickley said. 

Mr. Jacobsen was also known for painting on board and by first glance, and the texture of the brush strokes and the real paint on the canvas is a clear indicator of its authenticity, she said. She also learned through her research that Mr. Jacobsen had also painted the Red Jacket ship in 1871, when it was on its way from New York to Boston.

With all of these bits of information put together and the condition of the piece in mind, Ms. Brickley estimated the value of the painting at under $10,000 — specifically in the $5,000 to $7,000 range.

“This is a really, really fine piece of artwork that doesn’t belong in a yard sale,” Ms. Brickley said. “Lots of these things are lost to history because people don’t recognize what they are — it was rediscovered and as an object it can be appreciated and learned about, that to me is really so wonderful.” 

Ms. Brickley’s advice to those cleaning out a loved one’s estate is to call a local appraiser who can come and help. 

“It really pays to find out because it doesn’t always jump out at you,” Ms. Brickley said. “A lot of what goes into establishing an estimate or an historical context for a piece of artwork is learning the history of it and finding out exactly what it is that you have.”

Ms. Alcorn said the historical society trustees voted to sell the painting through a gallery that Ms. Brickley works for — unless offered an ideal price from a private buyer sooner. The money will be used to benefit the organization’s maintenance projects and its programs. 

For those who want to get a glimpse, the painting will be on display during Duck Pond Day at Wading River Historical Society on North Country Road. 

Ms. Alcorn added that if this “cautionary tale” teaches anyone anything, it’s to trust your gut and before throwing any heirlooms away, maybe give it a second thought.

“We’ve gotten so many paintings over the years that I have no idea where it came from,” Ms. Alcorn said. “People have to be careful — don’t just toss it.”

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