The Leiber Collection, one of the Hamptons' most distinctive cultural destinations where art, fashion, and nature converge, is pleased to welcome celebrated East End artists Philippe Cheng, Donna Green, and Bastienne Schmidt for Artist Talks in the Garden on Sunday, July 12 at 3:00 PM.
Set amid The Leiber Collection's enchanting Sculpture Garden, this special afternoon invites guests to hear the artists discuss the inspiration behind their works in the current Garden of Friends exhibition, Ode to the Sea, and explore how the sea, light, landscape, memory, and the natural world inform their creative practices. There will be time to ask questions and dive deeper into their work.
Philippe Cheng's site-specific installations, Cadence I, Reconsidered in Blue and 10 Százalék = 350, Reconsidered with Blue, are part of his ongoing project, All the Light You Cannot See. Created specifically for The Leiber Collection, the works respond to the ever-changing relationship between sky, water, landscape, and light.
"The work draws equally from two sources," Cheng explains, "the sky above this land and the water that borders it, sources that trade their blue back and forth all day, each one a mirror for the other."
Cheng's attention has long followed light in motion, how it shifts across a given hour, a given season, a given stretch of land or water, and here that attention settles on blue itself, the color the sky and the water share, the color of this particular place.
His installation 10 Százalék = 350 also pays subtle tribute to Judith Leiber's extraordinary creative legacy. The Hungarian word százalék means "percent," while the number references one-tenth of the more than 3,500 handbag designs Judith Leiber created during her remarkable career.
Seen together, the two pieces ask the viewer to consider scale, of a sky, a sea, a body of work, a single blue moment within something much larger, and to recognize that "reconsidered" is not a correction but a continuation: the landscape and seascape, like the work, are never finished being seen.
Primarily known for her ceramic work, Donna Green ventures into large-scale sculptural assemblage with Tangled Shore, a dynamic work constructed from found objects collected along the shores of Long Island. Fishing floats, rope, wire, shackles, shells, seagull feathers, buoys, and fragments of discarded marine materials are woven together into a vibrant composition that reflects both the beauty and the complexity of the coastal environment.
Inspired by the rhythms of the Atlantic Ocean, a vital part of the East End landscape, Green transforms weathered remnants of human activity into a powerful meditation on the sea. The sculpture evokes the constant cycle of tides, storms, and renewal, while reminding viewers of the delicate balance between nature and our impact upon it. Objects once adrift or abandoned find new purpose, becoming symbols of resilience, memory, and interconnectedness.
With its energetic forms, vivid colors, and layered textures, Tangled Shore celebrates the visual richness of the shoreline while inviting reflection on the fragile ecosystems that sustain it. Marking an exciting new direction in Green's artistic practice, the work expands her exploration of the natural world from clay into sculptural assemblage, demonstrating how reclaimed materials can be transformed into an expressive and compelling work of art.
Like the shoreline itself, Tangled Shore is at once beautiful and chaotic, a place where nature and humanity continually meet, collide, and reshape one another.
Multidisciplinary artist Bastienne Schmidt explores the intersections of textile art, cultural storytelling, memory, and environmental consciousness. Drawing on a life lived in Germany, Greece, Italy, and the United States, she transforms repurposed materials into works that celebrate cloth as both an artistic medium and a vessel for personal and collective memory.
For Ode to the Sea, Schmidt transforms blue construction netting, woven textiles, botanical forms, nautical flags, and sculptural buoys into an immersive installation inspired by the shifting light on the water and humanity's enduring relationship with the sea. Seven sculptural buoys poetically evoke the Seven Seas, while a series of nautical signal flags draws upon the maritime language of communication and navigation. And as Schmidt explains, "I inserted blue botanical elements into my flags as a nod to the ephemeral Garden of Friends at the Leiber Collection." Together, these works create a visual dialogue between sea and garden, exploring themes of navigation, protection, resilience, environmental interconnectedness, and the memories carried across generations and oceans.
Admission to the Artist Talks is included with museum admission and supports The Judith and Gerson Leiber Foundation.
For more information, email info@leibercollection.org or call (631) 329-3288.