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Arts & Entertainment

East Quogue Artists To Be Featured at Quogue Library Exhibit

A wide variety of work from East Quogue artists and photographers will be on display at the Quogue Library all through April.

If you are interested in seeing breaktaking art work from talented local artists, you're in luck. An exhibition featuring selected works of East Quogue artists at the Quogue Library will be on display through April.

Don't expect to see just a few watercolors from a handful of artists at this exibit, instead, look forward to viewing works like an oil painting of three colorful Adirondack chairs on a porch, a beautiful portrait of a young child on walking toward the beach, and a unique photograph of a pattern reflected on the water. And those are just a sampling of what viewers can expect.

The exhibition, rather than focusing on any one branch of art, will feature a wide variety of styles and mediums produced exclusively by artists who reside in East Quogue, said Quogue Library Art Gallery Committee Chairperson Rose Mancusi.

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"We've diversified the exhibition with photographers and artists, oil paintings, watercolors, reality and abstract artwork," she said, explaining the exhibition salutes East Quogue artists. She noted that East Quogue has a high concentration of talented artists, and that she and the Committee wanted to highlight them to the community.

Among the artists chosen to have his work on display is Peter Beston, who will be showing his three oil on canvas paintings, "Restless", "Rain in the Channel" and "Shell Dance."

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Other artists include Peter Hill, Meryl Spiegel, Carol Galanty and Bruno Gaget, all of whom are photographers; as well as Neva Setlow, a universal artist; Edith DeChiara, a mixed media artist; Julie O'Daly, who does kaleidoscope work; and Lance Corey, a painter.

The works will be displayed in the Quogue Library's state-of-the-art gallery used exclusively for this purpose. Since opening at the Quogue Library several years ago, the gallery has become an integral part of the library and the community. For this exhibit, all of the artists featured have agreed to donate 20 percent of any proceeds from selling their works back to the library.

“I think it's going to be interesting,” Mancusi said of the reaction she expects from the community for this exhibit. “We try to have cutting edge art as well as traditional, realistic, and abstract. It's going to be a real mix.”

"I think it's incredible that not only has the Quogue Library agreed to put this show on, the community of East Quogue has put in a huge amount of support," said Beston.

Beston explained that his three pieces being displayed in this exhibition were painted after real life intersects with his sense of design and composition. With "Restless," he explained, he liked that although the subject matter is usually seen as restful, the eye continues to move around the painting because of the design and color. With "Shell Dance," he said, he found inspiration while walking on the beach in Quogue last summer. 

"Last summer I spent every day walking on the beach," he said. "I love the broken shells, the ones that have been bashed in the waves."

His third piece, "Rain in the Channel," was inspired by a scene from his home country of England, in Little Hampton, where an old jetty stretches out into the English Channel. In that scene, he said, he was intrigued by both the structure itself and the way it has been worn by the ocean.

Photographer Peter Hill, who will have four of his portraits in the exhibition, said that he never has a set thing to look for when taking portraits. Instead, he lets the photographs speak for themselves.

He said he looks for "a good expression, or something telling.  He also said that he only works with film, no digital cameras.

“I think there's some magic involved, some kind of alchemy,” he said.

The portraits, all of which are black and white, feature Henry Geldzahler, former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Ed German, a DJ from the local radio station 88.3. The other two portraits feature women friends.

Other works that will be on display include colorful collages, abstract paintings and beautiful and unique photographs. Mancusi said that she's proud of the reputation the gallery at the library has received throughout Long Island for being both cutting edge and for displaying artists of the higest caliber, and she's eager to unveil this latest exhibit to the public.

"That's something we feel we should be showing our patrons," she said, referring to the wide range of work in this exhibit. "It will be very interesting when we put it all together."

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