(Re)collecting An Artists’s Dream is the inaugural exhibition (Spring Equinox 2021, Note 1) inside and out the Cottage to on the road of open air studio Shinnecock Hills. Organized by Hope Sandrow, composed of works by Artist Colleagues who participated in her projects…or she in theirs.

The exhibition’s context evolves from “Bird” (pictured left, top) and “Untitled, Single Red Flower with Books” (pictured left, third from top) by American artist Madeline Goodfriend Schonberger who’s summer studio/home The Cottage had been (1948 - until her death,1993). “Bird”, was created and realized in bronze, exhibited in a Metropolitan Museum of Art group show, the same year (1951) as Sandrow’s (and Skogsbergh’s) birth... and the Colt Summer Cottage burned to the ground.

The Cottage is sited on a hill where Sandrow’s encounter with a white bird (2006) might illustrate that the world is full of chance (or destined) happenings? A recent Town Study suggested it “may have been carriage house to William Merritt Chase ”. The pink floral wallpaper on a second floor room which Sandrow titled Women’s Study(room) produced (United Wallpaper Inc.,1948) same year (as Madeline purchased the Cottage) as the birth of  Deborah Willis (Note 2) who’s self portrait I Made a Space for a Good Man, while pregnant with son Artist Hank Willis Thomas, is exhibited. Goodfriend Schonberger’s Untitled (Single Red Flower with Books)  painted while a student at Pratt Institute (circa 1928), shown in another room where a similar flower is the wallpaper’s (United Wallpaper Inc.,1948) motif. Nearby Sandrow’s Placeholder: Untitled (Reflective).

The exhibit will unfold to include works by Artist Colleagues.

Collaborative projects are central to Sandrow’s personal art making: one informing the other. Her social practice includes Artist and Homeless Collaborative (A&HC, 1990 -1996 NYC) that she founded, directed with a NEA Special Projects Artist Grant sponsored by NYFA. On view (December 3 2021 - April 3 2022) at the New-York Historical Society is the exhibit “Art for Change: The Artist & Homeless Collaborative” (postponed since June 2020 due to Covid19) includes A&HC works led by the Guerrilla Girls, Vince Gargiullo, Sandrow, Kiki Smith, Judith Shea, Robin Tewes, Visual Aids. Other projects that the exhibiting artists participated in, include from last century: "Flag for the Nineties” commissioned by Vera List (1992); The Other Side of the Rainbow: Sexual Abuse with colleague Robin Tewes (1992); SECCA Artist in the Community Fragments Self History (1995); Creative Time’s Art at the Anchorage Material Matters (1995). This century: (Re)collecting an American’s Dream (2006); Platform: Genius Loci Parrish Art Museum. On site open air studio: En Plein Air (2008);  Headstand with Geoff Hendricks (2008);  Free Advice with Sur Rodney Sur (2008); Enigma of a Litmus Test - coop d’etat with Caterina Verde (2008) Sketches of Local History Shinnecock Canal Canoe Place (2015). Town of Southampton Arts and Culture Committee (2017).

Note 1: by Appointment only. Opening delayed (from June 2020) in respect to compliance with Covid19 precautions requiring masks and gloves at all times. Practicing social distancing, no more then two unrelated people inside. The Fujitsu central heat/air condition system fitted with UV, HEPA filter.

Note 2: Classmates and friends, both born in Philly and their Moms named Ruth, who met as they studied photography and film at Philadelphia College of Art.  Photographer Ray Metzker was their mentor and teacher, who made his best effort to protect them from sexual harassment, discriminatory and abusive conduct of his male colleagues, photography and film teachers. View three untitled photographs from Sandrow’s first photographic study, for Ray’s class, “Minton Home 1973”. Willis’s exhibit “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty” (Henry Art Gallery, 2013)  she curated included Sandrow’s  “Untitled at the Met” (1984).  The exhibit “Summer of Love” (Artsites, 2013) Sandrow organized included Willis photographs 1, 2, 3 from her series “Mother Wit; Waiting 1 and Washboard Stomach from her series  Body Builder.