Peter Solow Encounters Echos of Humanity in Residency at The Church

On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

— “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Walt Whitman, 1856

For Sag Harbor artist Peter Solow, Whitman’s words strike a major chord. The idea that somebody from the 19th century might contemplate echoes of future generations by pondering the lives of those yet to come is a poignant reminder of the spiritual mark a presence can leave on the world.

People passing through a shared public space separated by days, years or decades has long been a source of fascination for Solow and it is a common thread in his creative process. His artwork is often of piazzas in Italy or other gathering places with the ghostly figurative outlines of souls who have passed this way before depicted alongside imagery of present day occupants. And this month, he is exploring that concept in depth as part of a three-week artist residency at The Church in Sag Harbor.

Through the use of painting, drawing and photography, over the course of his residency, which began January 2, Solow is combining these various traditional mediums in an effort to create a massive new body of work focused on campi and piazzas in Venice and Florence. But part of Solow’s creative process is also related to a more modern technology — specifically, the concept of using large format digital printing as a major component of his art.

“Actually, the project is extremely ambitious,” noted Solow, “integrating digital technology with traditional forms of visual arts — photography, painting and drawing. It’s also on a pretty large scale — four panels each five feet by 14 feet.”

That’s a massive work of art and using large-scale digital printing to accomplish it is a technique that has intrigued Solow for years. More than a decade ago, Solow and fellow artist Scott Sandell collaborated at Stony Brook University’s Southampton campus in a project that had them working with students and also on their own pieces — creating art that incorporated the large format prints. The technology left Solow wondering about its use in the furtherance of his own artistic process.

“As a resource for art of any kind, with a large format printer in terms of studies, you can blow up things, make them smaller,” he explained. “Initially, I thought it would be cool to lay bare the process I used to make my oil paintings, which was I’d take photographs — if I was in Italy or out here — make drawings from observation and use that as a resource for paintings.”

But after printing out some of Solow’s photographs during the Stony Brook Southampton project, Sandell suggested that he work back into those prints with traditional mediums, like drawing. Solow liked the concept and pursued the idea.

“That was like, 2010,” said Solow. “After doing this for a while, when I looked at my oil paintings and drawings, the question I had was, in combining these things did it have as much truth in it and did it hold together as much? Was it really authentic or was it a gimmick?

“It’s a structural form question — if you have something drawn or something painted, then you have a photograph, they compete with each other,” he added. “How do you make them work together in a formal sense? Is it truthful? I’ve been playing around with that question for 15 or more years while also doing traditional oil painting.”

With the residency at The Church, Solow has the opportunity (and more importantly, the space) to further explore incorporating large format prints into his work — and once again, he’s also getting a bit of help on the project from his old friend, Scott Sandell.

“Scott and I talk about it,” Solow said. “There’s this tactile feel from paint and even a drawing. Simply printing stuff out and Photoshopping it doesn’t work for me. I have to have a hand in it.”

The basis of Solow’s residency project at The Church is a series of images printed on large canvas panels, each 44 inches wide, that Sandell is sewing together as one large piece. Then it will be up to Solow to paint and draw back into them to create the new piece.

“I didn’t have space in my studio to do it. I was ready to abandon doing any of this stuff and go back to straight drawing and painting,” he said. “I have these composites printed out on a smaller scale. I went back to these composites understanding I was dissatisfied with where this idea I had left off, because I thought it was unresolved and I was not at the point where I was making things that had an integrity and truthfulness that paralleled the truthfulness of my paintings and drawings. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could pull it off, but to pull it off I needed the space to do it.”

And this is where the lower level studio area of The Church comes in.

“What I’ve got to do is create clarity, start painting back into the panels and make it into a coherent piece that works, he said. “I have three weeks to do it.”

This is a good time in life for him to explore the concept. For more than two decades, Solow had to fit his own painting in between his full time job as an art teacher at Pierson Middle/High School and his work with the nonprofit Reutershan Educational Trust, which provides visual arts and architecture educational opportunities to Sag Harbor students. Solow has also led several student groups on art-themed trips to Italy and though he retired from Pierson in June 2021, he still leads the European trips.

“I’m taking kids to Florence to make art at the end of February for four days. We’ll also hold two Reutershan workshops at The Church, a digital printmaking mixed media workshop with Scott Sandell in February and another with [fashion designer] Mary Jane Marcasiano who is doing recycled materials in fashion design, using a portable sewing van outside.

“One of the cool things about me doing this is that many of the kids doing the digital art making will go to Florence,” he added. “They’re going to come and learn what I do, and get some introduction. If all this works it will be a miracle.”

Questioning the validity of any artistic process is an instinct that comes naturally to Solow as a result of his own arts education at Cooper Union, where he earned his BFA.

“My painting had always been about experimentation,” said Solow. “Second generation Abstract Expressionists were my teachers. They always had this process that it was not about knowing or illustrating preconceived ideas, but discovering stuff.”

Which brings us to Whitman and the echoes across time. Along those lines, Solow cites Alberto Giacometti’s 1948 sculpture “City Square,” which he saw at MoMA, as an inspiration. The piece features tall, thin figures making their way through a shared space.

“My experience in New York City with Giacometti’s sculpture was like moving to New York and having the circumstance of choreography that exists on the street,” he said. “People who are anonymous to each other happen to be on the street moving around each other. It’s the idea of shared experience and groups of people.

“When I saw Giacometti’s ‘City Square,’ this is my experience in New York. The idea you’d be in a city with millions of people, but still strangers to most of them,” he added. “Whitman said, ‘You’re not a stranger to me.’’

Solow finds the same attraction in Italy, specifically, in the piazzas and town squares that function as a gathering place for humanity and have for hundreds of years.

“When I’d see Martha Graham and George Balanchine dancers, I saw the individual movement of dancers. It was about the movement in space,” Solow explained. “I thought of piazzas as being this same kind of choreography, and I saw it in the work of Balanchine and Graham. There’s such an understanding and concentration on movement in space. That was part of it.”

Among the photographs of present-day people that Solow works into his artwork is his own daughter, Kathryn, but also ever present is another figure who is more mysterious.

“This is my muse — a girl in black walking though the piazza,” Solow said, pointing to a photograph taken in the early 1990s of a young woman walking away from his camera. He doesn’t know who the girl is. He never met her. But he has included her in countless compositions ever since.

There’s a good chance she will be included in the massive work he is now creating at The Church.

“Every single one of these things is an adventure. It’s the largest one I’ve done,” Solow said. “I was always very processed oriented in painting. Because of my Ab Ex instructors, I embrace those ideas of process and art not being about knowing. It’s an opportunity to discover, invent things and have no plan ahead of time. Like choreographing an abstract painting, it’ll be a good experiment.”

When asked if he’s nervous at all about the uncertainty of the ambitious project on which he has embarked, Solow responded, “I very rarely use the word ‘happy.’ A month ago, someone said, ‘How do you feel?’ I said, ‘Happy, because I was in my studio working.’

“The thing about this is, it may not work,” Solow confessed. “Artists make up myths and I’ve been telling myself a story that I can do anything as an artist. So I’ve been saying ‘I can pull this off.’ Forget talent, you need to have good ideas about process, you have to practice and have a love for what you’re doing — and you also have to have a sense of humor

“…But we’ll find out.”

Peter Solow’s artist residency runs through January 22 at The Church. For more information on upcoming events there, visit thechurchsagharbor.com. The Church is at 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor.