East End Artists Open Studios

The Artists Alliance of East Hampton’s 2015 studio tour will provide an opportunity to experience the variety of work being created on the East End and to engage in illuminating conversations with the artists, 16 of whom will open their workspaces on Oct. 10 and Oct. 11 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

Recent visits to three of the participants offered a sense of what visitors can expect to see.

Sheila Rotner’s house and studio are a stone’s throw from Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, and halfway around the world from India, where she was born. Raised in Argentina and educated in the United Kingdom, Ms. Rotner practiced architecture in England until moving to Washington, D.C., in 1973.

“When I came here, I couldn’t call myself an architect without going through five more years of study. I worked for a while as a designer, but I got more and more into painting and expressing my interest in geometry visually.” She and her husband moved to Sag Harbor in 2007, and “luckily we found this house, which already had a studio.”

While her two dogs capered on the patio outside, Ms. Rotner pointed out a variety of pieces linked by her interest in geometry and its expression through a variety of materials. On one wall is a series of works in which strips of old paintings are woven through squares of wire mesh, then painted over. She has also begun to weave strips of paper into canvas.

Two pieces of aluminum, each bent on a diagonal axis, sat on the floor. “The pieces aren’t welded,” she said. “The aluminum is cut and bent. The idea is so simple, really. I start off with a root rectangle,” a not-so-simple geometric form. Four paper-hanging sculptures, each torn in spots and threaded through with cable, were displayed on a table. One is made of tar paper, the others from 300-pound paper.

“I’m thinking of working with aluminum or copper, since they won’t tear, but I’m amazed at how strong these are. The tar paper is acid-free and takes color beautifully,” said the artist. She paints the pieces with a blend of acrylic and mica dust. “I mix them myself, with different grades of mica dust depending on the degree of luminosity I want. I try to get luminosity rather than brightness.”

One artist she discovered after moving here is Dorothea Rockburne, whose Parrish Art Museum retrospective she saw in 2011. “She is obviously working with a different kind of geometry, but I was just getting into cutting and folding when I saw that show, and I was excited because it sort of gave me permission to do what I was doing.” Another material she has worked with is glass. “I’m very interested in transparency, shadow, and light.”

Another architect-painter is Peter Gumpel,whose Old Stone Highway studio in Springs is reached by an exterior circular staircase. While he is no longer practicing, the last project of his eponymous firm was the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. His long career in architecture was paralleled by one as a painter.

“I’ve painted all my life,” he said. He went to the High School of Music and Art, then to Pratt, before attending the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. “When I was a senior at Music and Art I chickened out and said, ‘I’m not sure I’m a good enough painter to support myself.’ So I became an architect. But the entire time I practiced, I painted and sketched and drew.”

While he went through a number of phases, including abstraction and oil painting, he eventually settled on watercolor as his medium. “I like the challenge of it. You really only get one chance, because you can’t paint over it.” Many of the works in his studio are landscapes. “Even though my work is realistic, rather than just making a replica of what I’m seeing, I try to capture the spirit of it.”

While he sometimes works en plein air and is a member of the Wednesday Group of painters who work with the landscape, he has concluded that “I’m not really a good plein air painter. I paint slowly, and watercolors are, as I said, very unforgiving. When I paint outdoors, I have to paint faster, because the light or the character of the scene is changing, and it doesn’t work for me.” He primarily works from photographs, which he sometimes takes while out with the Wednesday group. “If I don’t take my sketch book, I’ll take my camera.”

Set back from a quiet street and surrounded by tall pines, Bernice Faegenburg’s house in the Northwest Woods, where she has spent weekends for 25 years, is an unlikely-looking studio.

Her large paintings will be hung or propped up against walls and furniture throughout its living spaces for the tour.

Ms. Faegenburg majored in fine art at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and English at the university’s main campus, then earned an M.A. in art ed- ucation at Pace. Her education has continued throughout her career. “I’m interested in processes,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to try new things, and I’m still learning.”

She has been studying Japanese brush painting for years, “though it takes 20 years to become a master at it.” On a wall in her kitchen hangs an etching made using the chine collé process, which involves the passing of papers and glue through the press at the same time. “It’s tricky to do. I’ve done it the right way, and I’ve done it and made mistakes.”

While she has a basement studio, much of her work has been created out- side, including “Exploding Spring Evening,” a large painting hanging in her kitchen. “I laid the canvas on a big sheet of plastic in my backyard, then laid a sheet of wire fencing over that, took a big squeegee, and painted over the grid.”

Many of her paintings are triptychs whose components can be combined in different ways or hung as separate works. A typical piece will include acrylic paint, silkscreened images — she used to teach silkscreen printing — photographs, and strokes used in Japan- ese brush painting. Her work mixes fig- urative components, such as flowers or birch trees or constellations in a night sky, with abstract elements. Large images are offset by smaller, contrasting ones, to create canvases that are almost collage-like in their complexity. Ms. Faegenburg’s work has been shown at the Florence Biennale, in Tokyo, Athens, Mumbai, and throughout the United States.

Complete tour information can be found at aaeh.org.