25 Photos
Bella Recine made pins that read: #WeStandWithMayo." VALERIE GORDON
Acclaimed children's musician Brady Rymer took questions from students in the student newspaper class at the Eastern Suffolk BOCES Westhampton Beach Learning Center on Monday morning. KYLE CAMPBELL
LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton opened for the season on Saturday, April 30.
Carolyn Munaco will be opening her first solo gallery in August at the East End Arts' Barn. COURTESY CAROLYN MUNACO
Carolyn Munaco likes to use unexpected "canvases" to paint on like this reclaimed surfboard. COURTESY CAROLYN MUNACO
Carolyn Munaco sat at her dated Dell desktop on June 24 to update the Kickstarter profile she’d created just 13 days earlier for upcoming gallery project.
Mid-browse, the page automatically refreshed as the “Munaco Art in the Barn” campaign met its $2,950 goal, even surpassing it by several hundred dollars.
Ms. Munaco felt the sting of tears as the computer screen blurred in front of her eyes.
“I couldn’t believe it,” the divorced mother of three, who works as a part-time gardener, said with a humble laugh that evening.
Thanks to the money raised on Kickstarter—a web platform that helps fund creative projects by offering incentives to investors—Ms. Munaco’s latest installation will be a part of East End Arts’ JumpstART program final showcase on August 8 in Riverhead.
The artist is a native of Hampton Bays, and her inspiration harks back to childhood memories dotted with frequent strolls along the Shinnecock Bay shoreline, picking up sea glass and ceramic scraps, including of plates and tiles. While studying at Stony Brook Southampton in 1992, she decided to dedicate her life to capturing nautical life with a paintbrush and canvas, though it would be 16 years before she discovered her eclectic vision.
Ms. Munaco’s multimedia paintings jump off their two-dimensional canvases, her subjects brought to life through manipulated marine debris that resembles waves or tentacled sea creatures, for example. Next to stacks of canvases in her studio garage lie piles of driftwood and bins of trash discovered at South Fork beaches. Saws and ratchets hang from a pegboard above her workstation.
“People come in here, they’d think it was my husband’s,” Ms. Munaco said of her ex. “I’ve always been handy and willing to try.”
It hasn’t been without struggle. With the help of her father, the 43-year-old artist spent several years constructing the floors, cabinets and other features of her two-story craftsman home—only to have the bank recommend a short sale when she applied for a loan modification after her divorce.
Ms. Munaco wouldn’t sell the house, its yard strewn with children’s toys, its driveway transformed into a chalk masterpiece by her daughter, Lindsay. Instead, she took on odd jobs trying to make ends meet.
And she spent every spare moment in her garage studio, feeding her artistic spirit and meeting deadlines for clients who’d commissioned pieces of her artwork.
These days, a stack of small wooden pieces sits on her work table, waiting to be strung into homespun door hangers to sell in local shops. She has not yet found the time to hand-write local village names on each one, she explained.
“This is part of the bread and butter,” Ms. Munaco said, holding one up like a machete. “It pays for the food.”
In March she was one of 15 artists accepted to East End Arts’ JumpstART program, which offers workshops on the business side of art and will culminate with her solo show in downtown Riverhead. Earlier, when scouting for venues, Ms. Munaco had struggled to find a location that would complement her folksy aesthetic—until she walked past East End Arts’ Riverhead headquarters and spotted a small barn tucked around the corner.
“It was perfect,” she said of the rustic building. “It goes with my bohemian style perfectly.”
Soon after, Ms. Munaco turned to Kickstarter, knowing she would need new equipment and art materials to get her show going.
“I didn’t know I’d be asking for almost $3,000!” she laughed. “I’m human. That’s what I’ve learned. I hope a silver lining, a gold lining, I hope a platinum lining comes.”
For more information, visit munacofineart.com.
on Jun 29, 2014