Dozens of East End citizens gathered in the lobby of Guild Hall on Friday evening, shaking out umbrellas while the rain drizzled outside. The crowd wasn’t there to see a play or meander through an art exhibition, but to attend a panel on how the immigrant population affects the local economy. Although the first immigration forum, hosted by U.S. Congressman Tim Bishop, New York State Assemblyman Fred Thiele, and Southampton Town Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst in March, was somewhat hostile, Friday’s event proved to be calmer, as participants were asked to write their questions on note cards. Many of those questions steered the discussion topics for the evening and people on both sides of the issue seemed to agree on certain points made by the panel.

“I think we can all agree that the immigration system is broken, though we might disagree on the solution,” noted David Dyssegaard Kallick, one of the panelists and a senior fellow at the state’s Fiscal Policy Institute. Other panelists added that economics is at the heart of the immigration argument.
“I think people are angry about how hard they have to work just to get by,” said Joe Gergela, of the Long Island Farm Bureau, responding to a question on why immigration is an emotional topic. His response elicited applause from both sides and dovetailed comments Bishop made earlier in the evening.
“This is an issue which inspires emotion and anger, but anger won’t solve the problem,” said Bishop. ”I want us to come together with the same set of facts.”
Kallick reported that 22 percent of the $1.02 trillion GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for New York State is generated by immigrant workers. In Suffolk County, immigrants account for 13 percent of the population. He noted that these immigrants work in a variety of fields and added that day laborers are a “tiny” portion of the immigrant workforce.
According to Gergela, these foreign-born workers are a vital part of agricultural production on Long Island. Suffolk County is the top agricultural producer for the state, he added. Gergela said enforcing immigration law wasn’t the job of farmers, but the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Noting the role of the federal government, Gergela added that ICE “raids” on local businesses would weaken the economy.
“During the harvest season, if you take away the workforce on these farms it could lead to bankruptcies,” said Gergela.
Maintaining a stable workforce is already a concern for local farmers, noted panelist and Dowling College fellow Judy Brink. Citing a 2008 survey on Long Island farms, Brink said around 68 percent of respondents reported that it was already difficult to maintain their workforce and losing even one worker would force them to sell their land.
For local farmers, attracting and sustaining a legal workforce is extremely difficult, due in part to complicated requirements and a dysfunctional visa system said immigration lawyer Melinda Rubin. Farmers must provide housing, which can be prohibitively expensive on the East End. For H2B visas, which are reserved for landscape, construction and hotel workers, a cap has been set at 66,000 visas nationwide, which Rubin said doesn’t satisfy the country’s labor needs. The visa process, she added, is laborious and long with some immigrants waiting years before receiving a visa.
“The government has made it easier to do the wrong thing instead of the right thing,” said Rubin of illegal immigration.
Although some complain illegal immigrants strain local resources, Rubin argued that illegal immigrants pay sales tax and contribute substantially to the Social Security system. Deporting the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants all at once, Rubin added, would cost around $206 billion, over a five year period, and would result in a $1.8 trillion loss in annual spending.
Kallick, however, disputed these figures and said it was futile to estimate these costs because mass deportation is a near impossible task.
“You don’t want a situation where people have to carry their identification papers on them at all times,” added Kallick. “We need to focus on how we can increase the legal workforce.”
Attendees of the forum, however, disagreed on whether the solution lies in a comprehensive reform of the immigration system or beefed up enforcement of the current immigration regulations.
Elaine Kahl of the Suffolk County Coalition for Legal Immigration believes stopping illegal immigration begins with enforcing the current laws, adding that local government should be diligent in upholding these laws.
Southampton Town Councilwoman Sally Pope said immigration law is a federal matter and the town won’t deputize its police force to carry out these laws.
Thiele promised there will be more forums before the summer season ends. He added that housing will likely be the subject of a follow-up forum.
Of Friday’s event, Throne-Holst said, “This is a process that is unfolding. There are a lot of facts out there and we want to bring them together to create a useful and healthy dialogue.”

Above: Fiscal Policy Institute Fellow David Dyssgaard Kallick says the immigration system is broken.

Popularity: 7% [?]

By Marianne Levine

This Saturday, August 23 marks the fifth annual Guild Hall “The Garden as Art” Tour. An East End tradition that started with Guild member Alexandra Munroe’s suggestion that a gardening tour might be a creative way to fundraise for Guild Hall’s many educational and community programs. It’s executive director, Ruth Appelhof, welcomed the idea so enthusiastically that it swiftly led to a mid-winter scouting trip with two interested Guild Hall members. 

“Carol Mercer and Erika Shank met with me in the depths of winter. We pulled on our snow boots and basically looked around at some gardens,” Appelhof recalls fondly. She stresses that “The Garden as Art” tour has always been a collaborative undertaking. That chilly peek into a few iced-over back yards five years ago germinated into an event that currently includes seven lush summer gardens and additional admission to the spectacular gardens of the LongHouse Reserve and Madoo.

This year’s “The Garden as Art” tour commences with a special cocktail party and additional garden viewing at the home of Dina Merrill and Ted Hartley on the Friday, August 22, and proceeds the next morning with a breakfast at The Maidstone Club prior to the actual garden tour. This year’s tour looks at the gardens from a historic perspective.  From the beginning “The Garden as Art” organizing committee decided that each year should have an underlying and unifying theme. This year’s lecture, given by New York Times writer and garden historian, Mac Griswold, of Sag Harbor, places the gardens on tour within the context of gardening design and its history on Long Island. This is the first year that the lecture will focus specifically on the seven gardens on view. Appelhof credits Griswold’s involvement as an exciting component of this year’s discussion as “she is able to look at a garden and relate it to famous gardens from the past and to gardens from here and around the world.” 

“The Garden as Art” tour has developed and changed with each year. The first year’s tour focused on the gardens of local artists. The freshman committee selected five gardens that had artworks on display or had the artists’ studios open out into the garden, but the committee, which quickly turned into a group of 12 garden enthusiasts, realized early on that they needn’t limit themselves to these gardens since the gardens themselves were works of art. Appelhof points out, “like architecture, gardening is a creative art, but in gardening there’s an uncontrollable natural element which always creates infinite intensities and wonderful transformations.”

This is especially true on the eastern end of Long Island. Appelhof notes, “What’s so unbelievable is the richness and variety of the gardens we show on the tours. The climate here does lend itself to beautiful gardening, but we also have gardeners and designers of great taste and with the means to develop that taste.”  Because there are so many gorgeous gardens to choose from, the tour has offered new ones to view each year.   Appelhof declares “we really owe it to the people on our tour to showcase new gardens annually, because we have quite a loyal following.” The gardening committee also endeavors to keep the gardens close to Guild Hall so that it is more convenient to drive between them and gives participants a chance to linger and enjoy the gardens, most of which have never been on public display.

“Our committee members know so many people in the community who love gardens and gardening and who talk about them all the time that it was easy to find gardens for the tour,” Appelhof states, and adds, “in the end it is really the community out here that comes together and supports us in this project which in the end helps us to fund our educational and community programs.”

For those who want to add yet another garden to the already hefty array of horticulture, there’s a special benefactor’s luncheon after the Maidstone Club lecture at the home of Guild Hall Board of Trustees members, Cheryl and Michael Minikes. Appelhoff cannot find enough positive words to say about their magnificent grounds, “There are just acres and acres of flowers. It’s just breath-taking. You almost need a guide. You could actually get lost in this garden.  It just goes on and on.”  

In the end the Guild Hall’s executive director admits planning “The Garden as Art” tour has been a personal pleasure, not only because the gardens are so beautiful, but also because the organizing committee has been so enjoyable.

“We’re all such good friends now. We get together socially even when we don’t have the committee meetings, which take place once a month, and it’s so wonderful because we’re all such different people who really come from such different walks of life, but we really enjoy each other’s company.”  And Ruth Appelhof is certain others will enjoy the fruits of their labor. For tickets and more information about “The Garden as Art” tour contact Danielle Zahm at 631-324-0806.

 

Popularity: 8% [?]

Larry Rivers’ “Double Portrait of Berdie” is in the new exhibit at Guild Hall.

By Marianne Levine

 The name Larry Rivers conjures up many images and stories for those familiar with his life and work, and both will be celebrated once again in River’s first posthumous show, “Larry Rivers: Major Early Works” at Guild Hall in East Hampton starting with a free opening reception on Saturday August 9 at 5:30 p.m.  For those not familiar with Rivers’ art, it will be a fresh look at his mid 20^th century work, which combines aspects of abstract expressionism and pop art. Christina Mossaides Strassfield, the show’s curator, explains that Guild Hall wanted to “honor him after he passed away in 2002, but it all came together only recently with the creation of the Larry Rivers Foundation.  He had such close ties with Guild Hall.  He even made us a birthday cake for our 50^th anniversary.” And she goes on to relate that to her great satisfaction almost all of his major early works will be on display in the intimate setting of Guild Hall’s Moran Gallery.  On exhibit will be some of his most famous pieces such as “Double Portrait of Berdie” from the Whitney Museum of American Art, and “The History of the Russian Revolution” from the Hirshhorn. Some, if not most, of the work on exhibit was created in his Southampton studio.

Ms Strassfield explains that they decided to display work from the 1950s and early 1960s because it was “an important time for him.  He had studied with Hans Hoffman and could have been a second-generation abstract-expressionist, but he went against the prevailing trends and decided to do something different. He created figurative work with pop art images and yet still used the movement and brush strokes from abstract expressionism.  He wasn’t a minimalist.  He was true to himself.” The decision Larry Rivers made to buck the artistic trends and characterizations of his time highlight his grand individualism.

However well-known and important his work may be in the context of 20^th century art history, Larry Rivers was first and foremost a true American character.  A man who started life as Yitzrok Loiza Grossberg in the Bronx, and subsequently renamed himself Larry Rivers as a jazz saxophonist and Juilliard student in the 1940s, he was befriended by the likes of Miles Davis while at school. He only became interested in painting in the later part of that decade, and had to support himself as a musician while studying fine art. Although painting and fine art may have eventually become his most notable forms of artistic expression, Rivers never stopped performing as a musician or actor, and he refused to limit himself to any one genre by eventually writing poetry, plays, and painting the Cedar Bar menu and designing stage sets as well. At one point he even became a grand prize winning contestant on a game show. 

With all this talent and energy, Rivers’ own interesting life and personal relationships were bound to be at the forefront of his reputation, and may have at times taken the focus off his important and influential work. In other cases his collaborations with friends such as Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara may have been an advantage. Ms Strassfield adds, “There was a lot of camaraderie between the artists. He was friends with Jane Freilicher, who first got him interested in painting, and he knew Jackson Pollack and deKooning and poets such as John Asbury and Kenneth Koch who really supported each other.” And when they all ended up at some point or other relocating to eastern Long Island in the 1950s, Rivers joined them, with his sons and mother-in-law, leaving behind a difficult marriage and unhealthy life style so he could, “get out of the city scene for a bit – away from the drugs and drink, and go someplace fresh and clean to do his work,” according to Strassfield. 

Although Larry Rivers is certainly a man of his time, and an important artist of his era, Strassfield mentions that a lot of his work seems quite fresh today, and especially she noted his short Beatnik film, “Pull my Daisy” which will be screened along with a Lana Jokel documentary “Larry Rivers: Public and Private” throughout the run of the exhibit.  Guild Hall will also be hosting more events such as the panel discussion, “I Remember Larry” on August 10 at 10 a.m., and a gallery talk by Christina Mossaides Strassfield on August 23 at 3 p.m. Ms. Strassfield sincerely hopes that the show will “renew interest in Larry and re-examine his place in art history,” since in many ways he was an artist who not only refused to follow the pack but also was ahead of it.

 

Popularity: 4% [?]