A gallery space at 4 N. Main in Southampton that's open to new ideas

It seems unlikely that Ray Sweeney was responding to some paranormal “Field of Dreams” promise—“If you build it, they will come”—when he started converting the interior of 4C North Main Street in Southampton Village into the kind of space that artists dream of when they think about exhibiting their work.

Still, the end result echoes the film’s payoff: Mr. Sweeney created the venue, and now the artists, and others looking for a place to accommodate their activities, are showing up.

The first exhibition in the space, now known simply as 4 N. Main, of oils on canvas both large and smaller by Paton Miller, opened on Saturday, November 28, for a two-day run. The next show, opening on December 5, will feature works by adult students who have studied with Mr. Miller in his School of Drawing and Painting in Southampton.

“It’s important for artists to see their works out of the studio,” Mr. Miller said in a joint interview with Mr. Sweeney at 4 N. Main last week. He acknowledged that when he first saw the large, open loft-like room formerly occupied by Hampton Interiors, which has now moved into smaller quarters next door, he immediately thought it would be a good space to rent to give his students an exhibition of their own.

Then, as he continued to take in the height of the restored original tin ceiling and the expansive wall space, he realized that what had now become a gallery of sorts could accommodate the outsize works he created for a show at the Angel Orensanz Foundation on Norfolk Street in New York, based at one of the city’s oldest synagogues, which had been transformed into an arts center.

“It’s a very big space, and can overpower smaller works of art,” Mr. Miller said of the Orensanz venue. “They can get lost in there.”

The artist painted some big pieces, 78 inches by 104 inches, that could stand up to the imposing space and hold their own. The large pieces that didn’t sell had been tucked away for two years, he said, and he wanted to see them out of the studio and have them photographed before setting the space up for his students.

When he saw the big works in the 4 N. Main space, he got the idea to set up a show of his own before yielding the space to his students. After checking with Pamela Williams, the Amagansett gallery owner who represents him, Mr. Miller got in touch with a friend and neighbor, Carol Reed, to ask her to curate a show for him, offered as a collaboration with Ms. Williams.

Ms. Reed, who has described Mr. Miller as an “extraordinary regional artist” who “reveals beauty and strength in all he paints,” has developed and curated shows at the Los Angeles County Craft Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the World Trade Center Gallery in New York. She was also the curator of American folk art for the House of Blues and, in that position, “put together a collection of some 8,000 pieces of outsider art,” according to Mr. Miller.

But it was Mr. Sweeney who provided the canvas for Mr. Miller and Ms. Reed’s curatorial efforts. Feeling his way through the process, and guided at several turns by Mr. Miller, he shaped a mission for the centerpiece of the complex at 4 North Main Street that he bought in the spring of 2007. That objective, stated loosely, would be “to create an affordable space for artists to come in, supported by all kinds of programs,” as Mr. Sweeney summarized it last week. After 20 years of service in the New York City Fire Department, Mr. Sweeney retired in 2004. He had started coming out to Southampton 20 years ago with his wife, Therese, a nurse at Southampton Hospital who was, at the time when he met her in 1989, working during the summers as a traveling nurse based at the hospital.

The couple bought a house in the village early on, and Mr. Sweeney said that he began buying and cleaning properties, mostly for rentals, about 10 years ago, taking advantage of what he called the “lending boom.” Asked to estimate the beginning and end of the “boom,” he said that, historically, it probably started around 1997, adding with a laugh that it ran “from the day I got involved to when they wouldn’t lend to me anymore.”

In the 4 North Main Street property, Mr. Sweeney has five certificates of occupancy for downstairs retail spaces fronting the street, upstairs apartments, and a cottage out back. In the spring of this year, he helped the owner of Hampton Interiors move out of 4C and into the smaller and more manageable space next door. As he began to clean 4C—taking everything out, removing fluorescent light fixtures, restoring the tin ceiling, putting exposed plumbing back inside the walls, and painting—he started to see the large room’s potential for exhibiting art.

With that use in mind, he installed track lighting and began testing the waters of the local art scene, specifically among the owners of existing galleries. Two expressed interest: Peter Marcelle of the Hampton Road Gallery in Southampton, and artist and Westhampton Beach gallery owner Michael Paraskevas. Neither seemed ready to follow through and take over the space, though, and Mr. Sweeney found himself in a temporary holding pattern.

Enter Mr. Miller, who first heard about the converted space through the East End art world grapevine and contacts at Riverhead Building Supply. Since Mr. Miller believes that “most of what happens is at the opening receptions,” the two men hit on the idea of renting the 4 N. Main gallery space to artists for weekend-only exhibitions.

In order to make that concept workable, they knew the exhibition rentals would have to be kept affordable. And, in order to keep those rentals affordable, they knew the space would have to be rented out to other groups and individuals for other activities and events.

“We need other programs to create the affordable space,” Mr. Sweeney said.

“A knitting club, yoga classes, groups of all kinds ... Much of this is available elsewhere, but this is an intimate space” that is, he said, ideally suited for small group activities. And having more groups sharing the room for different uses will keep the cost of renting it within reach for just about anyone, he said.

Mr. Sweeney has already made progress on renting part-time for alternatives to the gallery use at 4 N. Main. He was scheduled to talk to a pilates instructor this week, and he has already signed up Loreen Enright, who teaches singing and performance classes for children in the space, and also puts on Sandcastle Music Productions culminating performances there.

The next Sandcastle production will be “A Southampton Christmas” on Sunday, December 13, at 2 p.m., directed by Ms. Enright, with children enrolled in her classes presenting a repertoire of Christmas favorites. All are invited to the sing-along performance, which will be followed by caroling through the village. Warm apple cider and homemade cookies will be served back at 4 N. Main after the caroling. (Donation is $10, or free for children 5 and under; for more information, e-mail Sandcastlemusic@optonline.net.)

And, back on the exhibition front, there will be an opening reception this Saturday, December 5, from 5 to 7 p.m., for an exhibition of works by Angela Errico, Pamela O’Neill Ornstein, Ella Andracchi, Dana Little, Joanna Paitchell Lee, and Bonnie B. Cohen, all artists who have been studying with Mr. Miller for a number of years.

For the most part, the works on view are oils with some acrylics on canvas, Mr. Miller said, adding that Ms. Errico, in addition to her paintings, is exhibiting a bronze sculpture of Don Quixote. After the opening on Saturday night, the exhibition can be seen by appointment by calling Mr. Miller at (631) 885-1289 or Ms. Errico at (516) 510-5499 through the month of December.

And, having rented 4 N. Main as a gallery space for himself, in collaboration with Ms. Williams, and for his students, Mr. Miller is now turning his attention to charity. He has been involved with both the Southampton Youth Association and Southampton Youth Services for a number of years, and serves on the board of the Paul Koster Memorial Fund, which has recently teamed up, he said, with the Have A Heart Community Trust. Since setting up his show, he said last week that he has started to talk to other board members at the various charities about the idea of renting the 4 N. Main Gallery for January and February and setting up some fund-raisers or benefit exhibitions.

Nothing has been firmed up yet, but Mr. Miller is clearly excited about the possibilities. “His largesse is apparent,” he said of Mr. Sweeney. “Ray is making it feasible to do things here.”

For his part, Mr. Sweeney, who coaches three basketball teams up the street at Our Lady of the Hamptons School, said that “whenever I go to clean a property, it’s with the neighbors in mind.” Noting that his gallery address “is not Jobs Lane,” he said that he intends to enforce a 9 p.m. curfew for any events at 4 N. Main, so as not to disrupt the residential atmosphere of the neighborhood. Beyond that, he wants to be as encouraging as he can to area artists, teachers, social groups and other people who might have a good part-time use for the space and can’t necessarily afford to pay big numbers for rent.

Mr. Miller had his own way of encapsulating Mr. Sweeney’s approach.

“Ray has had a natural outlook for residents, a civic-minded approach,” he said. “You don’t run into that very often.”