Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) was a key figure of American post World War II art. As both a first-generation Abstract Expressionist painter and one of the preeminent portraitists of her age, de Kooning’s expressive gesture is unbound by any one genre. In 1975, Elaine purchased the traditional saltbox house on Alewive Brook Road in East Hampton. She commissioned local architect Hans Noe to design a studio and loft for the north end of the house in 1978. She later had two small additions and a deck built on the property. The Elaine de Kooning House and Studio is comprised of two distinct masses: the two-story, roughly two-bay by three-bay, front-gabled house (1968) and the one-and-a-half-story, roughly two-bay by five-bay, cross- gabled studio (1978). The two sections are connected by a one-story, L-shaped hyphen. The house features large exposed beams, a floating wooden staircase, a large open kitchen, a wide white brick fireplace, and wood floors. A one-story shedroofed sunroom with a large angled plate glass and metal window is located on the south elevation (builder Bill Sturgis, date unknown). The studio has large angled plate glass and metal windows extending on its north elevation, as well as a small bedroom and living area on the first floor, a second-story loft, and a wide-open working space with paint-spattered plywood floors. Since 2011, the Elaine de Kooning House has hosted events, exhibitions, and informal artist residencies with artists such as Laurie Anderson, Joe Bradley, and Mary Weatherford. In 2024, the Elaine de Kooning House began a joint residency program with the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
Exhibiting Artists
Emily Hopkins (b 1993) is a professional electroacoustic harpist and composer from Long Island, NY. Hopkins has earned a reputation as an avant-garde artist who mixes classical harp techniques with emerging music technology including pedal effects, modular synth, and other forms of sound manipulation. Emily Hopkins is a graduate of CUNY Hunter College’s Muse Scholar Program, holding degrees in Music Performance and Media Studies. Hopkins was a member of The Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of NY, performing in Carnegie Hall in 2009, and is a 2012 member of MTA MUSIC (Music Under New York). Her most recent notable works include being a featured performer in the DreamWorks feature film Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (2023) and the composer for the soundtrack to Heavenly Vessel, from The Line animation studio. She has introduced the harp to a new generation through her YouTube channel: youtube.com/emilyharpist.
Eric Haze (b 1961) began his career as a graffiti artist alongside the likes of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. After graduating from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1985, he forged a path in graphic design, opening his own studio in 1986. As a designer, Haze helped define the iconography of Hip Hop through work for clients such as the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J. He has participated in both group and solo exhibitions the world over. His exhibition, *Memory Image*, is a joint production of the Elaine de Kooning House and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
Han Qin (b. 1987) is a visual artist, researcher, and art journalist based in Long Island, New York and Hangzhou, China. A Chancellor Award adjunct professor within the art department of SUNY Stony Brook, Han was the recipient of the 2023 NYSCA award for Film, Media, and New Technology and is a founding member of the US Immigrant Artist Network and an Executive Committee member of the Chinese American Art Faculty Association. The exhibition ‘Little Images’ spans twenty years of Han’s career, taking inspiration from Lee Krasner’s own series of the same name and the circumstances in which that work was created.
Marie-Claire Chabauty is a visual artist from Montreal, Quebec, Canada and the inaugural artist-in-residence for a joint residency program hosted by the Pollock-Krasner House and the Elaine de Kooning House. The two historic sites, former homes and studios to three of the most influential painters in American history, welcome Chabauty to complete a series of intimate portraits of both properties and their surroundings. Chabauty's approach typically begins with photography before extracting the formal elements out of the images through paint. From Chabauty's artist statement: "I mostly use acrylic. I paint directly on the surface with bold colors. By focusing on shapes, the subject is reduced to its formal element and becomes abstract. I paint all the elements of one color, then all the elements of a second color, and so on and so forth. It’s like painting by numbers without a drawing to follow. By doing so, I provoke distortions, simplifications, overlaps, omissions. I enjoy the surprise of that first layer. The painting becomes its own narrative. Finally, I figure out how to balance out beauty and oddity, detailed and simplified, mastered and raw. I think consciously about visual language when I paint; shapes, colors, textures, composition. I don't think about the meaning of the image during the process. I trust that the final painting will have enough elements, and enough space in between those elements, for the viewer to project their own thoughts and questions onto the painting. In retrospect, I see the following themes surfacing over and over again: spectacle/spectator, relationships, strength/vulnerability, mortality/memory, time, metamorphosis, paranormal, mysterious, monsters, hybrids, mythology."
Rosalyn Drexler (b 1926) is a visual artist, novelist, playwright, and performer based in New York City. Widely considered a pioneer of the American Pop Art movement, Drexler’s multifaceted oeuvre defies easy categorization. In the 1950s, shortly after starting a family with the artist Sherman Drexler, she began touring the U.S. as a professional wrestler in order to escape the suffocating atmosphere of home life. Upon her return, she began exhibiting expressionist sculptures which she had made at home, before then starting her storied painting career. Drexler’s indefatigable spirit has led to the publication of nine novels, the staging of dozens of plays, countless group and solo exhibitions, and a body of work which confronts the sometimes harsh or grotesque reality of modern life with raw honesty. Roslayn Drexler is represented by Garth Greenan Gallery of New York.
Simon Waranch (b 1999) is a sculptor based in Dallas, TX. Formally trained in Venetian glass blowing techniques, Waranch’s practice also includes metal, wood, and silicone sculpture, as well as mixed-media two dimensional explorations. In all media, his forms, sometimes playful, sometimes sensual, sometimes classical, dance between object and organism, imbued with the artist’s own zest for life. In Waranch’s work, the boundary between art and life is dissolved, the one melting freely, ecstatically, into the other. A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and the College for Creative studies in Detroit, Waranch’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Longview Museum of Fine Art, the Imagine Museum, and the Museum of the Southwest. His work has been the subject of six solo museum exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions worldwide.
