Viewing Dates: APRIL 10-12, 2024
Reception and Auction: April 13, 2024, 5pm-7pm at CAST, 53930 Main Road, Southold, NY
What do you do with 16 enormous, 125-year-old church pews that have outlived their usefulness?
The Center for Advocacy, Support & Transformation (CAST), in Southold, NY was facing a dilemma. When the organization, which serves low-income individuals and families, needed more flexible space than their home in the former 19th Century Methodist Church could provide, they concluded that their handsome but cumbersome pews had to go. That’s when North Fork Contemporary (NFC) suggested the “New Views for Old Pews” project.
NFC put out a call to artists, artisans, crafts persons, and anyone with a flight of fancy, for ideas and drawing plans for up cycling the old pews. Suggestions included painting them, chopping them, stacking them, reconfiguring them, making them useful or not, for indoor or outdoor spaces. Thirteen artists were selected to actualize their designs – Hideaki Ariizumi, Glynis Berry, Scott Bluedorn, Christian Demchak, Garance, Jay Hodges, Larissa Killough, Joyce Orrigo, Will Paulson, Verona Penalba, Brad Ascalon, Adam Straus and Allan Wexler.
The transformed pews will be sold at a public reception and auction at CAST’s Trieber Hall on Saturday, April 13, 2024. Barry Bergdoll, Professor of Art History at Columbia University, and former Architecture Curator at the Museum of Modern Art will serve as auctioneer.
Financial support for the project has come from North Fork Side by Side, Peconic Green Growth and private contributors. CAST, NFC and contributing artists will share the proceeds from the sale.