“I started making couches about 1969 or 1970. I needed some place to sit down, which is the best reason for making them, I suppose.”  —John Chamberlain.

Artists often come to be associated with specific mediums or bodies of work when in fact their practices are much more expansive. Visual artists are frequently also musicians, designers, performers, filmmakers, writers, furniture makers, and so on. An encounter with one of the couches made by John Chamberlain, an artist best known for his metal sculptures, can be surprising, but the reality is that artists integrate their studio practices into all their life activities.

This presentation focuses on East End artists who have produced functional furniture as an extension of their creative practices—as a means of problem-solving, as an element of designed living, and as a way to foster social spaces. Functional Relationships: Artist-Made Furniture presents work by Scott Bluedorn, John Chamberlain, Liz Collins, Quentin Curry, Peter Dayton, Connie Fox, Kurt Gumaer, Mary Heilmann, Yung Jake, Donald Judd, Julian Schnabel, Karen Simon, Strong-Cuevas, Mark Wilson, Robert Wilson, Evan Yee, Nico Yektai, and Almond Zigmund.

In conjunction with Functional Relationships, Guild Hall commissioned two projects as further explorations of this common practice: Lindsay Morris’s photographs of interior spaces show how artists utilize furniture and shape their domestic environments, while Almond Zigmund’s installation Wading Room in the Marks Family South Gallery provides an artist-designed environment for activation through public use and a series of participatory programs.

This exhibition was organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.

Mary Heilmann: Water Way is the artist’s first large-scale solo presentation at an institution on the East End of Long Island, where she has been an integral part of the region’s creative community for decades. Heilmann grew up along the California coast, in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles. She became a competitive diver as a young teenager, frequently engaged in body surfing, and later became involved in the beatnik and surfing cultures, all of which have had a strong influence on her work. Heilmann moved to New York City in 1968, where she still resides, and has a home and studio Bridgehampton.

Throughout her life, Heilmann has consistently chosen and prioritized living close to water, which has had a profound impact on her artistic practice. She remembers making a watercolor of the ocean when she was about sixteen years old. This proximity to the ocean has influenced the way she considers light when she is conceiving a painting. For example, at sunset and moonrise she looks at the sand, the sky, and the sea for inspiration for her bold color palette. She characterizes her work as autobiographical, as she translates her observations into abstractions and often gives her works titles that offer viewers hints about her ideas. Whether reflected in her imagery or in the titles she gives her works, water has long been a recurring theme throughout her practice. She often translates waves into geometric, hard-edge patterns and likens this to the way a diver must conceptualize the physical geometry of the body when planning a dive.

Guild Hall is pleased to present an exhibition that Heilmann has had a strong desire to stage—one that brings together more than 40 works from a focused area of her output. The exhibition includes works on paper, ceramics, and paintings from the 1980s to the present.

This exhibition is organized by Melanie Crader, museum director and curator of visual arts, with Philippa Content, museum manager and registrar, and Claire Hunter, museum coordinator and curatorial associate.