Where to Spend It

Montauk holds a strong attraction for creatures from the planet Beetlejuice and its many moons. This week the Montauk gravity machine has attracted Denise Greenwood-Loveless, a sculptor from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who truthfully depicts with her colorful clay statuettes the breadth and depth and triviality of daily Beetlejuician life. She portrays the common folk who have a large fish growing out of their heads; the “noodle” fishermen whose bait is their own forearms and fists; the flat-toothed doggies with striped hides and randomly placed yellow eyes; the famous three-legged graphologist, aptly named Grapholina; various floundery flat fishes with unicorn horns; big male humanoids sitting naked in very tiny boats; sugar bowls named Max; and a zoological garden of Beatlejuice’s organic and inorganic life forms, many of which boast at least two heads and long, crooked, pointy teeth. Her matched set of Beetlejuician turtle hounds are brave and crazy enough to guard the doors of the biggest castle in The Hamptons. www.artofgreenwood.com

 

Christos J. Palios, who is and speaks Greek, has combined photography and computers to be able to artfully and skillfully photograph the inside of a bus, for example, from front to back, and be able to reconstruct the entire cabin within the boundries of a big flat picture. It’s geeky, yet good graphic fun. A Greek restaurateur ought to buy it. We had hoped to find out more about Christos when the hoardes of drooling, nubile young women dragged themselves away from his gaze. But they never did. Christos@giantcolorfulrevolution.com

 

Denny Wainscott from Frankfort, Indiana, carves and inlays gourds. His virtuoso inlaid brass work is admirable. The gourds he chooses are grown in California (he used to grow his own gourds until three years ago when illness cut his tending time). The rich walnut and caramel colors of the gourds are produced by Mr. Wainscott’s six applications of wood and leather dyes. The mathematically gorgeous cutouts and inlays make you want to reach out and hold them, for hours, and Mr. Wainscott encourages this. One holds and rotates the gourd in one’s hands with deep reverence. It is deceptively light. His larger and most complicated gourds are about as big as a 10-pound baby but they weight just ounces; they are the summit of gourd art. One of these gourds costs $12,000 plus. They are gifts for royalty. 

www.Morningdewgourds.com

 

An Annoyance: About half of the painters who sell their canvases at arts fairs across the country would not exist if Jackson Pollack’s swirly drippings hadn’t encouraged later artists to lazily let their paint do the thinking. There are Pollack imitators galore, and silly people who will buy them on the national arts fair circuit. The Montauk show had its unfair share. Zero is fair. There were also too many big green apples, etched baseballs, realistic ocean waves, unrealistic ocean waves, sunsets, beady jewelry, and cocktail tables with amethyst geode centers.