Andrea Cote Hits the Road and Heads to Bridge Gardens

It’s funny how Labor Day marks the transition into the next phase of the year on the East End — not only in terms of the human traffic that, in early September, flocks back from whence it came, leaving open parking spaces throughout the region. But things also cool down in terms of the weather as temperatures suddenly dip and darkness falls just a touch earlier.

The seasonal movement of the sun is something that Hampton Bays artist Andrea Cote is keenly tuned into. Cote is the featured artist in the 2024 Parrish Road Show installation “To Belong to The World” which opens to the public this Saturday at Peconic Land Trust’s Bridge Gardens property in Bridgehampton.

The Parrish Art Museum’s annual road show, now in its 13th year, promotes interaction between local artists and the communities beyond the museum’s walls through off-site projects. In preparation for the road show, Cote visited Bridge Gardens and consulted with garden director Rick Bogusch, who advised her on plant material she might consider using in creating her series of botanically-inspired cyanotype-printed fabrics that will be on display throughout Bridge Gardens in the coming month.

In a recent phone interview, Cote noted that it came as a total surprise when the Parrish reached out to invite her to be this year’s road show artist.

“As soon as we had our first conversation, I said I wanted to visit Bridge Gardens,” said Cote, whose friend Josh Halsey is an environmental programs manager at the Peconic Land Trust. “We went and I met Rick and it was amazing.

“It had been this enchanted place I had never seen,” she continued. “I thought, ‘let me see this place, I really would love to do it here.’ It was a group conversation where I talked to Rick, he loved the idea, then we met with [Peconic Land Trust’s] Kathy Kennedy, she does outreach, and [vice president] Yvette [DeBow-Salsedo] and having Zoom meetings and it went from there.”

But it was Bogusch who gave Cote direction in terms of what kinds of plants she might incorporate into her prints. Though her monthlong show opens this weekend, Cote has actually been exploring and studying the plant life at Bridge Gardens for nearly a year — and making pieces for this exhibition.

“Rick said collect some nature. I collected pine needles and holly and berries and made my first cyanotype on the winter solstice, like December 23,” Cote explained. “Rick is very busy, he said cut what you want — there’s only a few snowdrops, go see them and take some.

“In winter, it was limiting, but I feel I’ve gotten to know more and more. We hung out recently and I felt like I got to see his vision a lot, he’s very into textures and there’s almost more greenery than flowers,” she said. “Rick is an artist himself and did landscape design.”

Creating the first print on the solstice was important for Cote’s series, and on other important celestial days throughout the year, she continued to make additional prints using plant material found at the garden — not just on the equinoxes and solstices, but because she needed a total of eight prints for the show, on other auspicious lunar and solar event dates as well.

“There’s a poetic element to it,” she explained. “Sort of astrological cosmic dates. The cyanotype process uses UV light. Because I did the first print on the solstice, I decided to use nature that is available at that time, most of which came from Bridge Gardens. The winter one used berries and pine needles. On the Mayday Beltane, the sun was making a strong show of shadows. One was done on the meteor shower.”

The final piece in the series will actually be created on site during the Parrish’s Autumn Equinox Program at Bridge Gardens on Sunday, September 22, at 11 a.m. using plant materials that are available on that date.

The reason the sun’s movement is such an important aspect of the process for Cote is that cyanotypes are a UV process — it’s the sun’s rays that determine how the final product turns out. One of the technique’s pioneers was 19th-century English botanical artist Anna Atkins who first used the cyanotype process to illustrate her books. Using nothing more than light and simple salt compounds, she was able to create detailed reproductions of her botanical specimens.

“I’ve been exploring cyanotypes for years. For 150 days, maybe in 2017 or 2018, I started one on the solstice and made one every day,” Cote explained. “I started tracking the sun, noting exposure times. It was one of those projects I took on.”

But Cote works in a number of different mediums and formats, so when the Parrish curators approached her about taking part in the road show, she asked which of her works they were interested in. They told her it was a display of her cyanotypes at Southampton Arts Center in 2018 that sparked their interest. As an artist-in-residence at SAC at that time, Cote had engaged the community in collaborative printmaking by constructing cyanotype mandala tapestries.

“I see cyanotype as a cross between printmaking and photography. It’s one of the earliest types of photography,” she explained. “There is salt that you mix together and put on paper, then you create a photogram, what you put down blocks the sun when it hits it. Whatever the sun hits remains blue. You process it with water.”

In her cyanotype pieces up to this point, Cote has focused primarily on using parts of her body in creating the work, including fingerprints, hands and even hair.

“I’ve done collaborations with dancers, artists, people in the community, but this was always more about the body prints on cyanotypes,” she said. “I didn’t use nature in the work until this project. My work has been more about our body and our human experiences, so it has been very interesting to start working this way, and it’s really welcome.

Because Cote has created this work at specific times throughout the year, she has found that the results will vary depending on the strength of the sun.

“It will be more intense in the summer, and the summer solstice print was exposed in minutes,” Cote explained. “I’m also improvising, looking at it, it’s a little bit of a guess. You anticipate it, but it’s not till you wash it out that you know what you have.

“The summer solstice one was five minutes, the winter one was 45 minutes to an hour,” she said. “Over that long, even if it’s really sunny, the shadows are changing so they’re blurry.”

Fortunately, Cote understands the process well, having learned a great deal about cyanotypes and how conditions affect them during her 150 day project.

“You can compose them in the shade and then move into the light,” she said. “What was also nice is in March, I had a short residency at Soundview Inn in Greenport. That was a great time to experiment. I did a seaweed character. The studio I was working in had a skylight, and it cast sunlight into the space, so I could move it around from sun to shadow.”

But there’s one condition that, when it comes to cyanotypes, just won’t work at all.

“I learned on overcast days you leave it out longer,” she said. “The only problem was when it rained.”

Let’s hope it’s clear for that workshop on September 22.

“Andrea Cote: To Belong to The World” opens with a reception on Saturday, September 14, from 2 to 4 p.m. and runs through October 14 at Bridge Gardens. Additional programing will include an Artist Talk at the Parrish Art Museum, 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, on Saturday, September 21, at 1 p.m. The Autumn Equinox Program will be held on Sunday, September 22, at 11 a.m. at Bridge Gardens followed by an Autumn Open House there on Saturday, October 5, from noon to 3 p.m. Bridge Gardens is at 36 Mitchell Lane in Bridgehampton. The gardens are open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.