The Church Opens Its Doors for Community Residency Event

The Church will host its 2025 Community Residency Open Studios on Sunday, December 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Each winter, The Church holds the East End Community Residency, a dedicated cycle of its annual artists residency program that supports South Fork artists. This year’s cohort — A.G. Duggan, Robin du Plessis, Christina Graham, Laurie Hall, Eva Iacono and Nathalie Shepherd — has spent the season developing new work on site. Visitors are invited to stop by, meet the artists and learn about their practices and processes.

A.G. Duggan, a visual artist raised on the East End, works in drawing and painting with charcoal, pastel and mixed media to create abstract, temporal landscapes. Her work has been exhibited in Montauk, East Hampton and Southampton, including in “Art of the Book” at Southampton Arts Center and “Art on Paper” in New York in 2024.

Robin du Plessis is an East End and New York-based artist whose work spans multiple formats, using scale and materials to examine the human relationship to a changing environment. She also has experience in textile development and education and holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Christina Graham, originally from Brooklyn and now based on the East End, explores imminence and nonlinear space-making through gestural abstraction that centers the somatic and intuitive. Graham holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a BFA from RISD. She has received several honors, including the Al Held Archive residency, the Elaine DeKooning Memorial Scholarship and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Fellowship. She currently teaches art at Ross Lower School in Bridgehampton.

Laurie Hall, originally from Buffalo, studied textile design at the Rhode Island School of Design before beginning a 46-year career designing fabrics, dinnerware, home goods and accessories. Now based in East Hampton, she works full time in various artistic mediums that draw on her longtime love of design and color.

Eva Iacono, born and raised on Long Island, has lived on the South Fork for more than two decades. A longtime educator certified in ESL and Spanish, she spent nearly 30 years teaching, including six years in Barcelona. Her artwork focuses on portrait and landscape photography and portrait drawing in oil pastel and mixed media. She has exhibited widely across the East End and New York State and has held a solo exhibition at the Ammerman Library of Suffolk County Community College.

Nathalie Shepherd received a BFA from RISD and an MFA from the University of New Orleans. She has exhibited locally and internationally, including at Gallerie im Andechshof in Innsbruck, Austria. Her drawings and colorful paintings of figures, interiors and objects examine memory and personal history, often inspired by old photographs and illustrations.

The 2025 Community Residency Open Studios will take place at The Church, 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor. For more information, visit thechurchsagharbor.org.