Artists Go Outside The Box For Peconic Land Trust Birdhouse Fundraiser

Birdhouses assembled from playing cards, gourds, twigs, seashells, honeybee boxes and a variety of other materials make up the collection of 32 birdhouses in the Peconic Land Trust’s second annual Birdhouse Exhibit and Auction, which kicks off this weekend. Thirty local residents, all active members of the community, agreed to take part in the fundraiser to support the Peconic Land Trust, a Southampton Village-based nonprofit that was established in 1983 to preserve Long Island’s working farms, natural lands and heritage.

The birdhouses will be on display and available for bid for seven weeks at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, one of the Peconic Land Trust’s four locations.

Artists had the option of creating a birdhouse out of found materials or decorating a wooden birdhouse made by Brian Kennedy of Fixhampton from wood donated by Riverhead Building Supply. Some decided to go outside of the box, like John David Rose, a local architect, who created a Piet Mondrian-inspired birdhouse that stands 4.5 feet tall and contains eight birdhouses in one.

“We’re thrilled. It’s a great cause. They’re preserving so much farmland, doing a great job,” said Mr. Rose, who was the architect of record for the land trust’s newly expanded headquarters in Southampton Village. “So we got invited to participate, and I thought, you know, let’s step up to the plate and do something really special.”

Another artist, Harvey Bernstein, an industrial design professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, designed a birdhouse inspired by a robin’s nest in his front yard in Sagaponack. He surrounded his birdhouse with a figure made out of garden wire, artistically re-creating a moment he saw recently, when the mother robin opened her wings to shield her babies on a rainy day.

An opening reception will kick off the fundraiser on Saturday, June 29, and community members can bid on the birdhouse of their choosing until the closing day on Saturday, August 17, when the highest bidders will be announced.

The Peconic Land Trust began the Birdhouse Exhibit and Auction last year at Bridge Gardens and raised about $7,000, Kathy Kennedy, the land trust’s senior outreach manager, said. She is hoping to raise at least the same this year, in addition to attracting more visitors to the garden grounds.

“I feel like not enough people know about [Bridge Gardens],” Ms. Kennedy said. “They drive past and don’t see that it’s an open garden. And, so, we would love to be able to raise people’s awareness of this space for them to come and enjoy.”

Ms. Kennedy has been collecting all of the birdhouses over the last week to start setting up the exhibit space. For Mr. Rose’s large piece, she said she will need a hand transporting it over.

The 5-acre garden space was donated to the land trust in 2008 and has been its stewardship center ever since. It has 24 community gardens available for lease, a rose garden, an herb garden and a large vegetable garden that provides produce to the Sag Harbor Food Pantry, all of which are incorporated into various community activities.

It is open for free to the public seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and until dusk on Fridays.