Breaking Bread: The Thanksgiving Collective Show at Tripoli Gallery Gives Thanks for Artists

The final months of the year are at hand. Traditionally a time of reflection and taking stock, this is a notoriously emotional season, filled with the holiday festivities that bring light and joy, but also a sense of melancholy, especially for those missing a loved one. The arrival of one year’s end and foreboding anxiety over the start of another evokes strong sentiments as we contemplate exactly what it means to set out for another spin around the sun.

This week as we prepare to flip the calendar page to January 2025, how can we help but wonder what the year — and the world — might have in store for us in the months ahead?

For Tripoli Patterson, owner of Tripoli Gallery in Wainscott, the end of the year has come to mean embracing the company and talents of those he holds dear by surrounding himself with artwork and people he loves. On the last Saturday in November, Patterson hosted a food and friend-filled opening at his gallery for the 20th annual Thanksgiving Collective — a yearly exhibition which runs through late February and highlights work by the artists he has shown throughout his two decade career (including some family members) in a salon style setting. The tradition began in 2005, back when Patterson was in his early 20s and before he owned a gallery, but even then, he was already curating and producing contemporary art shows in places as diverse as New York City, Australia and North Carolina.

Titled “Breaking Bread,” this year’s Thanksgiving Collective is massive — in fact, it’s the largest show Patterson has ever assembled, with 300 pieces of art created by a total of 144 artists.

“With this exhibit, I’m tapping into my flow stage and not getting hung up on small details,” Patterson explained during a recent visit to the gallery. “I’m attempting something very challenging. I started this show two months ahead of time and it’s the most ambitious exhibition I’ve done — and in a very short amount of time.

“What I’m recognizing in this exhibition is there’s still a lot of empty wall space,” said Patterson as he surveyed the installation. “There are 300 pieces of art and there’s still wall space. I’m happy with that and it’s one of the successes of this show. Each work needs to be viewable. There are some scenarios where I wanted to go lower on the wall, but certain pieces you don’t need to see up close, so those can go higher.”

Though his life began on the East End in the 1980s, Patterson, an avid surfer, has grown up around the world — including on the island of Bali in Indonesia where his family moved when he was still in his early teens.

Surfing is a lifelong passion as well as a metaphor for many of Patterson’s endeavors. He’s one to go with the flow and take things as they come. Even the placement of the artwork in the “Breaking Bread” installation mimics the movement of ocean waves. Patterson described how, in preparation for the show, he drew an undulating white line across the expanse of three massive walls in his gallery to indicate the shape he wanted the mounted work to take — culminating in a wave break where two of the walls meet at a right angle.

And what a collection of artwork it is. There’s a section in this show dedicated to portraiture, another for abstract works, some wall space for photorealism and several animal-themed works as well. There are also sculptural pieces and mobiles, as well as a small, reverential alcove near the gallery’s entrance that pays artistic tribute to people who have been very important in his life.

In this way, “Breaking Bread” is not only truly personal, but also pays homage to the strong artistic ties that Patterson has developed over the last two decades — years in which he’s not only produced and curated unique shows that highlight East End artists, but international talents as well. This is why the end of the year has become an annual occasion for Patterson to honor the ties that bind him to the creative world and express gratitude for the influence so many artists have had on his life.

In fact, Patterson has made a tradition of it, as evidenced by 2024 being the 20th year for his Thanksgiving collective.

“This year, I made a list of all the artists I’ve shown in the past. I got to 197 and reached out to them through emails or their galleries,” Patterson said. “I also made a list of the artists that I wanted to show and that I’ve been in conversations with.”

From the work of artists from an earlier generation, such as Ross Bleckner, Robert Dash, Willem de Kooning, Keith Sonnier, Saul Steinberg and Julian Schnabel, to the well-known artistic names working on the East End today, including Jeremy Dennis, Alice Hope and Almond Zigmund, this show has something for all, and Patterson encourages people to come view the work as they would any installation at an art museum.

“I reached out to all the artists and began asking them for something small. I came up with the title ‘Baking Bread,’ but it’s not too tight a theme,” Patterson said. “They’re tapping into another consciousness, like when you think of someone and they call you. It’s synchronistic — my objective was to achieve and cross bridges when we got to them.”

Because the holidays are a time of remembrance when absences are keenly felt, Patterson has taken the opportunity to dedicate this year’s show to the late Lisa de Kooning, who died at the age of 56 on the day after Thanksgiving in 2012. Though she experienced her troubles and demons in life, Lisa de Kooning, daughter of famed artist Willem de Kooning, had a vital and positive influence on Patterson from an early age, not only in terms of his life, but also in the trajectory of his career in art.

“I had a flash and I was paying attention to details about Lisa, how thankful I was about my relationship to her,” Patterson said. “She introduced my parents and was my godmother, so that felt right. I wasn’t close to her when I did the first collective, but she helped me open my first gallery on Jobs Lane in 2009, and that led to the Tripoli Gallery of Contemporary Art. We did her first solo show together in Southampton. So I wanted to bring Lisa back to the collective.”

Patterson said he can feel her presence in the gallery space, and much of what’s on view in this show provides not only memories, but a level of comfort that we can all seek out at this time of year.

“It’s a reflection of the past and insight to the future,” said Patterson of this show. “I think annual things are like that. There are so many inconsistences in life, it’s nice to go back to the familiar — like exploring in the jungle, then going back to base camp.

“All the shows are about life rather than anything else,” he added. “‘Breaking Bread’ is to celebrate ourselves.”

And as Lisa de Kooning famously said, “There’s always another party.”

“Breaking Bread” features work by: John Alexander, Linda K. Alpern, Vahakn Arslanian, Michael Avedon, Alice Aycock, Yevgeniya Baras, Andrey Bartenev, Jonathan Beer, Katherine Bernhardt, Ashley Bickerton, Todd Bienvenu, Ross Bleckner, Dianne Blell, Stefan Bondell, Katherine Bradford, David Bromley, Mark Cora-Mooroom Bungaree, Otis Hope Carey, Sue Carlson, Sylvia Channing, Michael Chiarello, Matt Clark, Bob Colacello, Dan Colen, Lottie Consalvo, Scott Covert, Justin Crawford, Jennifer Cross, Scott Csoke, Quentin Curry, Lautaro Cuttica, Mira Dancy, Robert Dash, Verne Dawson, Willem de Kooning, Alice Dellal, Jeremy Dennis, Trefny Dix, Anh Duong, Sally Egbert, Sabra Moon Elliot, Jameson Ellis, Hannah Epstein, Ryan Estep, Sam Falls, Nick Farhi, Travis Fish, Herbie Fletcher, Roy Fowler, Connie Fox, Eric Freeman, Saskia Friedrich, Daniel Fuller, Rhys Gaetano, Félix Bonilla Gerena, Daniel Dewar & Gregory Gicquel, Iván Girona, Ron Gorchov, Jeremy Grosvenor, Kurt Gumaer, Hiroyuki Hamada, Jeanette Hayes, Mary Heilmann, Juan Jose Heredia, Bengt Hokanson, Sven Hokanson, Alice Hope, Soren Hope, Judith Hudson, Genevieve Hudson-Price, Bjorn Iooss, Tara Israel, Lee Jaffe, Yung Jake, Marcus Jahmal, Deborah Katon, James Katsipis, Benjamin Keating, Sean Kinney, Laurie Lambrecht, Brianna Lance, Robyn Lea, Robert Longo, Melanie Luna, Brendon Lynch, Chuck Manion, Liz Markus, Kunle Martins, Dave Matterhorn, Dan McCarthy, Laith McGregor, Nick Mead, Angelbert Metoyer, Robert J. Miller, Lola Montes, Felicidad Moreno, Peter Ngo, Mamoun Nukumanu, Miles Partington, James de Pasquale, Matisse Patterson, Enoc Perez, Joel Perlman, Max Price, Jonathan Rajewski, Scott Reeder, Rene Ricard, Alexis Rockman, Rachel Rossin, Dominique Rousserie, Esther Ruiz, Mason Saltarrelli, Sally Saul, Mia Scarpa, Christina Schlesinger, Julian Schnabel, Enis Sefersah, Nathalie Shepherd, Bruce Sherman, Emmett Shine, Lucien Smith, Ned Smyth, Agathe Snow, Caroline Snow, Bosco Sodi, Keith Sonnier, Saul Steinberg, Gordon Stevenson, Billy Sullivan, Susan Tepper, José Luis Vargas, Claude Viallat, Igor Vishnyakov, Ross Watts, Nick Weber, Lauren West, Jerry Wilkerson, Lucy Winton, William Wood, Thomas Woodruff, Ozzy Wrong, Darius Yektai, Nico Yektai and Almond Zigmund.

The 20th annual Thanksgiving Collective, “Breaking Bread,” presented by Tripoli Patterson and James Cruickshank, remains on view at Tripoli Gallery, 26 Ardsley Road, Wainscott until February 24, 2025. For details, visit tripoligallery.com.