Clubhouse Hosts Live Mural And Graffiti Competition

There was celebration in the air at the Clubhouse in Wainscott on Sunday night. Families, friend groups and artists filled the back patio, which featured a stage, picnic tables, and an open bar. The sound of reggae music, played by Winston Irie and Friends, got people out of their seats as olive-shirted Clubhouse employees brought around plates of food. Drinks were sipped or sat on tables, and the mood was lively.

Among the crowd there were new additions beyond classic summer white jeans — one man sported a “Fully Vaxxed” T-shirt underneath a suede jacket and another wore a Blade cap, which just made the intermittent airport noises of takeoffs and landings feel a bit louder. The main event that night was The Hamptons first annual Live Mural and Graffiti Competition, presented by Clubhouse Hamptons in collaboration with the White Room Gallery and Rich Mothes studio. I stopped by on Sunday night to hear the final judging, and Saturday afternoon to see some of the first artists at work.

The event started at noon on Saturday, June 12, when half of the participating artists — to allow for spacing out — set up work-stations along the newly white-washed Clubhouse back fence to start painting. The other half of the artists worked on Sunday, and throughout both days visitors could watch them work or chat about the piece as they made it. Some spray-painted or splatter-painted, some used brushes, and one took a more unorthodox approach — Matt Classens, strategic events director at the Clubhouse, hit tennis balls covered in paint against his mural, a blue splatter creation (that wasn’t entered into the competition itself).

The idea for the contest came from the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, known for its graffiti and street art, Matt Rubenstein, entertainment director at the Clubhouse, said. He plans to continue the event in future years and utilize the back patio space for other happenings.

To join the competition, artists paid a $50 entry fee and sent in samples of their work. They were competing for the first-place prize of $1,500 as well as second and third place. According to Classens, 26 artists made murals. Each worked within approximately an 8-foot-by-6-foot space of fence, and their creations were judged by a group of jurors, including artists Eric Fischl and Rich Mothes, Andrea McCafferty and Kat O’ Neill from the White Room Gallery, and Rubenstein and Classens from the Clubhouse.

Over the course of two days, the back fence was transformed from a blank white expanse into an eclectic mix of pieces and styles. From colorful abstracts to more figurative work, the murals showcased each individual artist’s approach.

First-place winner Margaret Zubarriain’s piece was entitled “Art Journal Pages.” In it, writing stretches across the square of fence as a woman, facing away from us and rendered in blue, turns to the right. Three huge hands imbue the mural with motion, and one holds a pencil. The drawings that inspired the mural came from Zubarriain’s sketchbook, from the beginning of the pandemic, and the words came from her journaling.

“I’ve done a couple murals out here, I’ve done one at Gurney’s, and I just want to start getting more involved in this artist community out here,” she said. “I have this company, Lehigh Mural, and more exposure is great. And also, just feeling like I need to make art right now. It’s a weird year, it’s a weird time.”

Zubarriain has been teaching at East Hampton High School for five years and heard about the contest from another teacher there. She wasn’t the only person from EHHS in the contest — Keira Atwell and Emily Kennedy, two sophomores in Zubarriain’s drawing and painting class, created a mural that depicted an open-mouthed woman, green and shown from the torso up, with a yellow stripe across her eyeline blocking out her vision.

John Jinks came in second place with an abstract piece that seemed inspired by the four elements and Rich Bollinger cinched third with an eclectic, collage-style mural. But judging couldn’t have been easy — not only were the pieces all very well-done, but they all differed tremendously in style.

Lori Campbell’s mural “The Odd Couple” featured a sort of diptych of two creatures. One, on the left, is a sort of a green Oscar-the-grouch-looking figure seated on a purple armchair. To his right, an abstract red creature sits outside.

“One is inside, he’s disapproving of the one who’s outside. The outside one is intrigued by the one inside,” she explained of the two.

Campbell described her intention of making the two figures interact like characters in a play. The painter, who usually works in oil on large canvasses, was glad to be outside working with other artists and explained her approach to the piece further.

“I try to find the humanity in inanimate objects. I feel like a chair is its own person,” Campbell said.

A few work-stations to Campbell’s left, Erling Hope was painting away on his piece which featured an iridescent figure surrounded by swirling patterns.

“I’m exploring the way that icons and patterns can interact,” Hope said, and joked that, at the moment, the two were “cohabitating” rather than interacting.

Hope usually makes cabinets, not murals, and he described the new medium as an enjoyable challenge.

Kaitlin Beebe was another newcomer to murals, and her piece “Self Series” was inspired by a series of self-portraits she had done.

“[They’re] meditations on trying to quiet my inner dialogue,” Beebe said.

Unlike in a studio setting, artists had limited time to work, but Beebe explained that the restriction forced her to go with the flow and be at peace with what she got done.

When I walked over to her, Candice Flewharty was dabbing a few final peach brushstrokes onto the face of a figure she explained was her daughter. Her piece was of a group of bathers at a waterpark (“waterpark people,” as Flewharty calls them) and came from a series of paintings she had done previously.

“Well, my children are [big waterpark fans] so I pretend like I’m taking pictures of them, and at first I was, but then I noticed some very interesting people in the background, so I started taking pictures of them. They’re always models, whether they want to be or not,” Flewharty said.

After taking the photos, she makes watercolors or sketches before turning them into final works. The figurative and portrait painter has worked in murals before, previously doing a series of birds for the Audubon Society.

Other works depicted an angel flying over a shark’s gaping mouth, a huge wave cascading over the words “The Hamptons,” colorful blocks of pattern, two women running across the beach, and anthropomorphized bowling pins dancing and playing the saxophone — the Clubhouse has 10 lanes and hosts a bowling league.

Around the corner from the back fence, past a few games of cornhole and some sofas, another expanse had been set up for painting. Spray-paint cans of many colors sat by the wall, ripe for the taking. Some amateurs went for the obvious, writing their names in big capital letters, but there were abstract shapes, stars, a watermelon, and a huge eye. All gleefully rendered, of course.

The Clubhouse is at 174 Daniels Hole Road, East Hampton. For more information, visit clubhousehamptons.com.