In His Art, Halsted Wells Is Inspired to Action

Creativity can often be an effective catalyst for conveying a message by driving home a deeper point or a more compelling argument. To that end, the intersection of art and environmentalism is the focus of a new exhibition that went on view at Keyes Art Gallery in Sag Harbor on January 21.

The show, which officially opens with a reception on Friday, January 27, from 5 to 7 p.m., features photographs and videos by garden architect and Sag Harbor resident Halsted Welles. It includes landscape portraits, long-form time-lapse videos and triptychs made up of digital stills of gardens that have been built and maintained by the artist’s atelier-style design firm, Halsted Welles Associates, over the last 40 years.

“His garden portraits are long-shot videos of day to night, and they’re absolutely stunning,” said gallery owner Julie Keyes. “I’m always looking for artists who are passionate about what they paint and do — and this is his life. Halsted’s work is just incredible, because his roots are in garden design and home design, and it’s also evident in his art.

“He is passionate about all of it.”

But beyond providing beautiful insight into the many ways in which nature and the built urban environment interact with one another throughout the course of a day, a week or a season, as Keyes explains it, Welles’s artwork also offers a jumping off point into discussions related to important issues of preservation right here on the East End at what many see as this critical juncture in terms of development, water quality and climate change.

To that end, on January 21, Keyes hosted a summit of sorts at her gallery and invited concerned citizens as well as individuals involved in local environmental organizations to gather and formulate a plan for working together toward a common goal — preserving and protecting the East End’s watershed.

“We are very blessed. We live in a community where people care. It’s very unique,” said Keyes. “But we all get into the minutiae of our lives, so what we really want is for organizations like the wildlife refuge people, people from the Shinnecock Nation and the Peconic BayKeeper to work together on things like water quality so it’s not done in isolation in their own silos.”

Though his firm is based in Brooklyn and his work as a garden architect is centered largely in New York City, as an East End resident, Welles is also keenly aware of environmental issues locally and was one of the participants who took part in the January 21 discussion at Keyes Art.

“This show is a backdrop for a conversation with disparate groups that are doing good — but working together for the greater good and a common thread, that idea is Julie’s,” said Welles. “I brought my interest in local watersheds and thought that should be the basis of the conversation. When people know about the ground they walk on and the air they breathe and water they drink, it makes a difference. If we’re able to segue out of these political boundaries and into a natural one founded by watersheds, then the citizenry would have a common interest in resilience of life in a watershed.

“It’s a big problem. My hope is that by educating one to their habitat, it’s a way to address the issues and not sit around waiting for top down edict or legislation,” he said. “We need to understand the ground where we live and advocate for the right thing for our biome and watershed. If I have any addition to this effort, besides providing the wallpaper, it’s to emphasize the watershed as a natural boundary to understanding and governance, rather than these political boundaries that don’t appreciate it except based on special interest. It’s planting the seed.”

In creating his video and photographic artworks, Welles taps into the environment by revisiting the urban gardens that have been created by his firm over the years. His inspiration comes from watching the slow interaction of the natural elements on the landscape.

“The interesting thing is that we’ve not only designed and installed gardens, but also have contracts to maintain the gardens,” he explained. “As opposed to other crafts, like architecture or interior design in which a project never looks better than right after the paint dries, a garden grows and it takes three to five years to come into its own.”

For that reason, the garden architect’s vision is not static, but one that evolves with time. Similarly, Welles is a patient artist and the Keyes exhibition includes time-lapse video images of gardens that his atelier has built and maintained for over 45 years.

“With the GoPro camera and the ability to hang out, I’ve created loops that are in the neighborhood of anywhere from eight to 30 minutes,” Welles said. “I’m showing a few gardens that were shot anywhere in the neighborhood of a month or so — some more, some a little less.”

In the subtleties revealed by the lingering views of the garden landscape as captured by the camera, Welles discovered beauty that a single moment in time could never capture.

“I was fascinated by the movement from the bright light to the dark of the shadows,” he said. “What was most interesting was when it rains. The raindrops look like fairies dancing in the garden. There are things in the garden which you would never see that I captured.”

One of the most intriguing pieces for Welles was when he turned the camera on a dogwood tree that was just coming into budding. He trained a Go Pro camera on the tree in order to capture a time lapse sequence of it flowering, budding and dropping its petals.

“Then we looked at the footage and we were shocked at the light and the way the shadows moved across the brick wall and paving,” he said. “It got so much more interesting than a blossom dropping.”

Though in his artwork Welles has captured the beauty of weather patterns and the ever-changing light, he doesn’t necessarily refer to himself an artist.

“I’m an advocate of the intersection of nature and the built environment and I rely on a whole bunch of talent and skills, not just making the gardens themselves, but creating the photography and still images,” he said. “A few years ago, I had a client who is a composer. She was planning a recital in one of the halls at Carnegie Hall, so I did a whole background to this concert of all four seasons. The music added to the visuals and the visuals added to the music. I’m showing that piece, or an abridged version of it, in the gallery.

“I’ve been at that my whole career — turning gardens into art and art into gardens.”

Halsted Welles’s exhibition of photographs and videos remains on view at Keyes Art through February 9. The opening reception for the show is 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, January 27. Keyes Art is at 45 Main Street, Sag Harbor. For details visit juliekeyesart.com.