LongHouse Reserve is a must see in the East Hampton Townships’. It is the lifetime labor of love of the internationally known textile designer, Jack Lenor Larsen. He is the world’s foremost advocate of traditional and contemporary crafts. As an author and a collector, he has opened the eyes of many to the wonders of fine art sculpture and fine art craft from around the world.
At LongHouse he created both an indoor and an outdoor environment that speaks to the placement particularly of fine art sculpture within the landscape. “LongHouse Reserve exemplifies living with art in all its forms.” The “Study In Heightened Perspective” is a tangible and perfect example of how height and distance work together to create the magic of perspective. When overlaid with red azaleas or covered in a dusting of snow, the simplicity for expression of scale with distance is remarkable.
Study in Heightened Perspective
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
Study in Heightened Perspective
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
“Jack created an installation massing the red azaleas along with red-painted cedar posts called “A Study on Heightened Perspective”. The heights vary, creating an optical illusion.
Courtesy of Garden Design Magazine, 2016
LongHouse itself is fashioned after the Ise Grand Shrine, in Ise, Mie, Japan. The emperor is crowned King of Heaven here, and the structure is rebuilt once every 20years to be certain that the craftsmen will remember how to detail this construction forever. The seventh century Ise Shinto shrine is “pre-Japanese and believed to beSoutheast Asian before the influence of China and Buddhism.
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
The Ise Grand Shrine
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
Below are four of our favorite works at LongHouse and worth seeing when you go!
Certainly at the top is the de Kooning Place. The breadth of a weeping BlueAtlas Cedar is a perfect backdrop for the “Reclining Figure” by artist William de Kooning, ca. 1969-1982.
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
Eric Fischl’s bronze 2002 “Tumbling Woman” is a memorial to the victims of 9/11. The power of this piece is incredible and especially as we rarely see sculptural works by Fischl.
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
Kiki Smith laid amongst the ground cover “3 Sheep and 3 Fallen Maidens”.They seem nestled together and at peace.
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
Yoko Ono’s “Play It By Trust” is a 16’ x 16’ white cement and marble dust chess board with all 32 large chess pieces in white marble. Ono was the first to transform the concept of chess from a game of aggression to one of peace,making it a metaphor for hope.
Image Courtesy of Learning from Longhouse by Jack Lenor Larsen
