Amagansett Artists On View

Places have lives of their own.

They have a draw, an attraction. And there is something about the East End that has always pulled in the creative types.

The powers that be at the Amagansett Historical Association think that is worth celebrating. The first-ever “Amagansett Art: Across the Years” opened last weekend to pay tribute to the generations of artists who have lived in the hamlet, used it as their subject and regard the East End light and its nature as inspiration.

“Amagansett should be put on the map, too,” participating artist Michelle Stuart said last week at her home on Windmill Lane down the road from the exhibit, which is on display in the Jackson Carriage House on the Historical Association grounds. “It hasn’t had an art show. That’s what grabbed me.”

Ms. Stuart, who is best known for her work using organic mediums—including earth, wax and plants—moved to Amagansett in 1992, thousands of miles from her childhood home in Los Angeles, California, she said. The two pieces she entered into the show, “Water Lily” and “Lotus,” both aquatint etchings with mylar scrim, are inspired by the two ponds on her property.

When the artist first laid eyes on her future East End home, it was an immediate love affair, she said. It also didn’t hurt that it was first owned by the late Conrad Marca-Relli, one of the New York School early abstract expressionists whose lithograph, “Villa Nueve,” is also in the exhibit.

“He brought down, basically, a barn from Vermont or New Hampshire and just had it pegged here,” Ms. Stuart said of Mr. Marca-Relli’s former home, which is now hers. “What’s not to like? It’s something between a Zen monastery and a Swiss chalet. It has a textural quality about it that I really like.”

But even though the house was built by an artist, it didn’t have the kind of studio Ms. Stuart wanted. It was in the basement, and even with two-story windows, it was damp. She often found herself wondering, “How the hell did he work in here?” she recalled.

So, she built herself a new one next to the pool and detached from the house. Skylit, open and white-walled, the studio is scattered with half-completed pieces and remnants of past projects.

“Maybe I don’t cut my ties very easily,” she mused. “I tend to make a mess. I’m not working with organic materials right now, but I did for a million years. I’m always inspired by nature. Nature is a great inspiration for me. It is, I think, for a lot of people, even who aren’t artists. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be out trying to preserve what little we have left.”

Painter Janet Jennings’s in-laws, who own Stony Hill Farm, can speak to that. Her husband, Job Potter, and his family have preserved nearly 100 acres of forest and field in the hamlet, and nestled into the fields is the artist’s studio.

“Come in!” Ms. Jennings gushed during a visit to her home on Hamlin Lane, pushing out the glass in front of her door. “Come outside, check this out.”

She half-skipped to the sliding back door leading out to the deck, her 7-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Bella, at her heels. The artist leaned over the wooden railing and inhaled the warm summer air, looking out over the adjacent stables and pastures.

“This will never change,” she breathed out. “None of this will change anymore. This house could always be expanded, but this” she paused, waving out over the land, “is never going to change. It will always be like this, so that’s good to know. I’ve lived here for over 30 years. I lived in the main house where Alec, Alec Baldwin, lives now. This house I now have for my studio. I literally just moved in a couple days ago.”

She paused again, gazing out over the pastures.

“It is a slice of heaven. Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” she said. “I don’t do scenes like this anymore, but this is inspiring. It’s definitely inspiring.”

Ms. Jennings said she has fallen away from painting pleasing landscapes of years past and moved toward more provocative, stormy horizons, always painted from her imagination. Her two pieces in the exhibit are watercolors intensified with oils—her “little secret process,” as she calls it.

The artist made the switch in her artwork in 2001, when the United States entered Iraq, she said. The New York Times was filled with photographs of the daily bombings in Baghdad, she said, and she empathized with the innocent victims.

“I still carry around those photographs,” she said. “I was like, ‘Gee, what if it were like that here? This beautiful landscape bombed.’ So I started to do these really dark paintings. They were basically ‘Baghdad meets Napeague.’ That kind of evolved into the storms. The other thing is I’m really scared of electrical storms. I just am. It’s usually the dog and myself in the basement. It’s a way for me to work it out.”

Right on cue, Bella barked at her owner.

“See, she knows,” Ms. Jennings laughed, getting up to give Bella a treat. “It’s conflict. It’s tension. It’s drama. And they’re fun. They’re more interesting than just your peaceful landscape. I don’t think they sell as well, because they’re a little hard to take, but I use a lot of what I’m going through in my life and how I feel about the world at large and flip it into my work.”

A portion of the proceeds from “Amagansett Art: Through the Years” sales will benefit the upkeep and preservation of Miss Amelia’s Cottage, the Roy K. Lester Barn and the Phebe Edwards Mulford House, according to curators Pamela Williams, Nina Kennedy and Elena Prohaska Glinn.

“This is a community, like the rest of the communities, that is very interested in art,” Ms. Williams said last week during an interview in the carriage house. “Kids out here grow up with art. They grow up with artists, going back to the time when people would see Bill de Kooning riding his bicycle down the street. We’re lucky, really. This place is beautiful, but it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if we didn’t have the artists and the writers and the musicians and the actors.”

“Amagansett Art: Through the Years” will remain on display through September 30 at the Jackson Carriage House on the Amagansett Historical Association grounds. Exhibit hours are from Wednesday to Sunday, through September 2, from 2 to 6 p.m., and thereafter, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m. For more information, call 267-2564 or email editor@hamptons.com.