Peter Dayton's 'Dark Garden' Is at Home at Guild Hall

Guild Hall in East Hampton is home to a long-term installation by artist Peter Dayton. “Dark Garden” is a site-specific creation for Guild Hall’s stairwell leading from the lobby to the balcony of the Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan Theater.

After a nearly decade-long career as a punk rock musician, Dayton returned to visual art upon moving to East Hampton in the mid-1980s. Dayton’s exploration of flowers began when he found discarded issues of House and Garden magazine from the 1950s near his home, and his collages utilize photocopied flowers from seed catalogs, which links his practice to the work of Andy Warhol and other pop artists. He chooses visually arresting images of flowers without leaves and stems — images devoid of sentiment, emotion or specific references — allowing the flower forms to create their own patterns.

“I became aware of Peter Dayton’s work a couple of years ago when I first visited Harper’s East Hampton location where they have a table designed by Peter,” said Melanie Crader, Guild Hall’s director of visual arts. “Intrigued, I asked around, and the artist, Christine Sciulli, kindly offered to make an introduction. Upon visiting Peter’s studio, I knew we would work together in some capacity in the future. When we decided to embark on the site-specific installation in the stairwell, I immediately thought of Peter, and we are all so pleased with how the project turned out.”

“When Melanie Crader approached me about the possibility of doing a site-specific installation in the stairwell at the new refurbished Guild Hall theater, I was very, very interested,” said Dayton. “I made a presentation of floral images, and to my surprise, they chose the most challenging one. I had made files with my printer previously that were meant to represent flowers in a new way and detached from nature using black and odd colors and then took that as a starting point.

“In ‘Dark Garden,’ the stark black and white repeated background lends a serious element to the piece, while the flowers on top, with their oversaturated garish colors, lure the viewer into a new, unnatural world. Nature would never look like this. One of the techniques I often use, and is again used here, is the repetition of one flower being repeated over and over. The single begonia flower in this installation is the same flower that only changes its scale and color. Dark Garden is a place I find to be slightly foreboding and weird but oddly beautiful too.”

Peter Dayton attended art schools in Europe in the 1970s and graduated in 1979 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he studied visual, video, and performance art. Initially he pursued music as an art project, then became a professional musician, first in the punk rock band Le Peste, then under his own name until 1986. He turned his attention back to visual art in 1988. Dayton’s work often references various art historical movements and concepts such as minimalism, pop art, abstract expressionism, and feminism. He simultaneously explores and critiques commodity culture and art historical movements through varied materials, techniques and presentations. He lives and works in East Hampton.

Melanie Crader will sit down for an interview with Peter Dayton at Guild Hall this Sunday, November 3, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 at guildhall.org/programs. Guild Hall is at 158 Main Street in East Hampton.