Local Artists Find A Home On The North Fork

When Ciaran Tully, John Stuart’s assistant, discovered an array of landscape, cityscape and still-life images hiding in his boss’s commercial photography archive four years ago, he said, “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you have all this stuff just sitting in your files.”Over the last 30 years, Mr. Stuart has shot advertising campaigns for a variety of clients, from Mercedes-Benz to the U.S. Postal Service. But he has never exhibited his personal work. With a little encouragement, Ms. Tully has convinced him to open up—with rich, colorful images of hot air balloons hovering above Albuquerque, or a winter beach with a swirling sky and waves breaking over sheets of ice.

“I’m a person who always had all this chaos around me, but my images are completely opposite,” Mr. Stuart, a part-time Southampton resident, said last week during a telephone interview from his home in Manhattan. “They’re very quiet, controlled. Serene purity to them.”

The landscapes fit perfectly into John and Joanne Rosko’s newly opened Gallery Crossing in Peconic, where they will hang from Thursday, July 31, through Monday, August 11, inside the small gallery that sits near the junction of the North Fork and South Fork wine trails.

Up until last year, the building had hosted a number of businesses, including a bakery and used furniture store. The couple is now trying its luck with Gallery Crossing—a 60th birthday gift from Mr. Rosko to one of the talented artists he knows: his wife.

For a number of years, the Southampton-based painter had found it difficult to showcase an entire collection of her work in a local gallery, Ms. Rosko explained, until now. Not only can she exhibit her own pieces, she can also give her fellow artists a 25-foot-long space of their own. It sure beats, say, a dentist’s office, she said, where one of her own paintings hangs.

“In the economic downturn, a lot of galleries closed, and the galleries that were viable were focusing more on the successful artists,” Mr. Rosko reported. “The lesser-known local artists were doing other showings. I use the dentist’s office as the worst thing I heard.

“It’s really weird, with the chairs there and all the tools,” he continued, “and then there are a couple paintings. It really detracts from the volume of art.”

Since the gallery’s soft opening in June 2013, the Roskos have showed more 50 artists—two at a time—from the East End, each of whom gets two weeks to hang his or her work, coupled with an artist’s reception on the exhibition’s first Saturday.

“Basically, we sent out an open call to everybody,” Mr. Rosko said.

Longtime Hamptons resident Pingree W. Louchheim answered. The artist, who will be showing alongside Mr. Stuart, first picked up a paintbrush after trading in her camera.

Now an oil painter, Ms. Louchheim recently completed “Black Barns,” resting on the easel inside her Sagaponack studio. The windowless barn, sitting atop a stark white blanket of snow, is a near replica of one of her photographs, though she has taken some artistic liberties. The large shrubs on the side of the building are nowhere to be seen, for example.

“When I went to college, and I wanted to be a photographer, my painting teacher said, ‘Well, it’s so easy. We’re working here, sweating hard. You just go out and click.’ Boy, is that not true,” Ms. Louchheim said last week during a studio visit. “You have to get the right moment, and it’s there, and you click, and it’s not going to come back. Whereas a painting, it’s there for weeks. If you don’t like the tree, you paint out the tree. You can add your own sun.”

Though Ms. Louchheim and Mr. Stuart have different styles, their two collections paint an accurate picture of East End art, the photographer explained.

“I think they blend nicely. It’s different viewpoints,” Mr. Stuart said. “Hers is very local and sort of fantastical, and mine is more photographic, but it has a painterly quality to it—especially because what I’m showing there will be on canvas.”

Ms. Louchheim agreed. “I’m really anxious to see his work,” she said.

Work by John Stuart and Pingree W. Louchheim will be on exhibit from Thursday, July 31, through Monday, August 11, at Gallery Crossing in Peconic. An artists’ reception will be held on Saturday, August 2, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Hours are Thursday through Monday, noon to 7 p.m. For more information, call 765-8377, or visit gallerycrossing.com.