Architecture And Art: A Natural Fit

In the middle of a field off Upper Seven Ponds Road in Water Mill, Gayle Pickering set up her wooden easel facing the dilapidated Corwith Red Barns—her favorite models.

“I’m an architect, but all I really want to do is paint,” she mused, looking toward the three interconnected buildings that she inherited from her father, Paul Corwith. “These have been painted by everybody. Ralph Lauren’s used them in his ad campaigns, Wolf Kahn has painted them. They call them the ‘Gucci Barns’ because they have the red and green stripe, which is now falling apart.”

One day, Ms. Pickering, who is based in Sag Harbor at Pickering Design, will raise enough money to restore them to their former glory, she said. But until then, she’ll preserve them through her paintings, which will be on display at “Art by Architects,” an exhibit featuring work by members of AIA Peconic, a chapter of the American Institute of Architects, that opens on Friday, July 13, at the Rogers Mansion in Southampton.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that architecture and art are intertwined, curator and participant Ric Stott explained during a telephone interview last week. They’re practically one and the same, he said.

“Historically, form and function work together,” Mr. Stott, a principal of Southampton-based Flynn/Stott Architects, said. “The axiom goes, ‘Form follows function,’ which is a modernist expression, but it’s true. Think about the simplest of tools we use, for example, a sailboat or bicycle. Those two items, to me, are beautiful, but developed that way out of necessity. Architecture is art. Most of the things we do have some kind of artistic quality to them.”

For some architects, the fascination with buildings and construction precedes a passion for art, or vice versa, and the exhibit’s artwork will reflect that, Mr. Stott said.

For him, a future in architecture seemed to be in the cards based on his genetics alone.

“I guess I have a mixture of both those things,” he said. “My father was an engineer and my mother was an artist. The same thing with my grandparents on both sides. I think each of us have both of those things in us, and it depends on what opportunities we have in our lives to make those decisions and see how those come out.”

The convergence of the two happened for John Whalen of Brigehampton-based Stelle Architects while studying art and French at Saint John’s University in Minnesota. There, the East Hampton native found himself in an unexpected love affair with the buildings on campus, which were designed by Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer.

But he never gave up his first infatuation: art.

“I kept taking printmaking classes to keep my hands in the art,” he said during a telephone interview last week. “I still paint, not as much as I’d like to.”

Painting allows Mr. Whalen an opportunity to decompress, he said. More and more these days, he’s interested in industrial scenes, he reported. He will be entering a 12-by-9-inch, five-color block print, “Ships at Port of Providence,” into the exhibit.

“I did it a couple years ago, but I’ll stick that in because it’s a cool little print,” he said. “There’s something about the industrial compositions that’s so strong and powerful. Most of what I do is representational landscapes. I paint loosely, and certainly not photo-realistically.”

Neither does Ms. Pickering, she said, and her architectural training often betrays her, artistically-speaking.

“When you draw a building for architectural plans, you draw it looking straight on,” she said. “Whereas when you’re doing a painting, it’s far more interesting if you do it as a perspective. I struggle with getting the perspective right because I’m used to drawing it straight on. So that’s my architecture coming out and mangling the buildings.”

She laughed to herself. “There’s a charm to it. They say, ‘Write what you know.’ I paint what I know. And architecture is just like giant sculpture, basically. You’re making a 3-D mass and then you’re inhabiting it. They’re both aesthetics. They’re both visual. They go hand-in-hand.”

“Art by Architects” will open with a reception on Friday, July 13, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Rogers Mansion in Southampton. Admission is free. The exhibition will remain on view through August 26. Museum hours are Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $4 and free for children 17 and under. For more information, call 283-2494 or visit southamptonhistoricalmuseum.org.