After Hours With Myrna Davis and April Gornik

Join Myrna Davis and April Gornik, co-curators of “Yes, No, WOW: The Push Pin Studios Revolution” on Thursday, December 12, at 6 p.m. for an exclusive look at the show from the curatorial perspective. Davis and Gornik will lead guests on a tour of the exhibition before inviting audiences to a discussion. Learn where the impetus and inspiration for the show came from, the perspectives they held during the selection process, and hear their reflections on the show as a whole. A Q&A with the speakers will follow the discussion.

As a former working member of the Push Pin Studios, Davis holds a unique perspective as curator, knowing the inside history of the studio from a first-hand experience. As co-founder of The Church and an artist herself, Gornik holds a unique perspective as curator, understanding how the pieces weave together to honor both Push Pin studios and The Church’s mission to honor Sag Harbor’s creative legacy to the greater art world. Together they treat audiences to a deeper dive into The Church’s final exhibition of 2024.

Myrna Davis has collaborated with artists, architects and designers as a writer and editorial consultant on a wide variety of projects in publishing and the arts. At Push Pin Studios 1960-1966, her roles included writing, editing, public relations, events, and fortuitously relocating the studio to a historic Beaux-Arts building that later became the longtime home of Milton Glaser Associates. She also worked at the Woman’s Home Companion, George Nelson Associates, and Columbia Records.

Davis wrote “The Potato Book,” with introduction by Truman Capote, and “Bouquet: Twelve Flower Fables,” with paintings by her husband, Paul Davis; and conceived “The Arcadia Seasonal Mural and Cookbook,” one of Time Magazine’s “10 Best Books of the Year.”

As managing partner of Paul Davis Studio, she has worked closely with clients in the U.S. and abroad. Davis is executive director emerita of The Art Directors Club in New York, and a graduate of Barnard College.

Myrna and Paul Davis settled in Sag Harbor in 1966, and in 1972 she co-chaired the Sag Harbor Preservation Commission organized by Nancy Willey which gained National Landmark status for the village. She is currently working with Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, serves on the advisory board of The Poster Museum in Manhattan, and is a board member of Save Sag Harbor.

Artist April Gornik’s paintings and drawings of land, sky and sea are anchored in observed reality and a world synthesized, abstracted, remembered and imagined. They offer the viewer an opportunity to explore dichotomies between past and present, expanse and its circumscription, intimacy in immensity, stillness and the inexorable momentum of atmospheric change. Her canvases — roiling seas, brewing skies, mountains and endless plains — internalize and engage nature’s proscenium. In these captured moments, the natural world triumphs and the mirror of time stares back.

Her work may be found in the public collections of the country and the world.

Tickets are $20 (members $10) at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor.