Dan's Papers - April 25, 2008 - Err, A Parent - Raising children, learning lessons

Raising a child on the East End, like raising a child anywhere, has its advantages and disadvantages. But at the risk of every family in New York subletting their condos and moving here in a mass exodus, I have to say that it's 99% incredible.

CMEE in Bridgehampton has to be one of the most extraordinary children's museums in the country, and the nature programs at SoFo are a blast - you want snapping turtles? You'll get snapping turtles, 45-pounders dragged right out of the pond. There are great events at the Parrish and all the libraries, including my favorite, the Amagansett Library where we've done cooking/chemistry experiments and seen awesome wild bird presentations - ducking for cover as a red tailed hawk flapped its wings three feet from our noses. For performing arts, there's the "Kidstreet" series, top notch kid's theater at WHBPAC, CMEE's summer series, plus school musicals galore.

Then there are the cool, funky things - like the jail at the Bridge Hampton Historical Society that Stacey Dermont so kindly opens at my son's request when we stop by. Visits to Quail Hill organic farm. And, yes, the most gorgeous sandbox in the world - the beaches of East Hampton.

But it's the unexpected small town moments that seal the deal for me. Last Thursday, the most glorious spring day of this year, my son and I took a scooter ride in the neighborhood before school. He saw an elegant gentleman with a straw hat walking up the road and said, "I want to meet that man." He scootered up, introduced himself and me, and asked the man his name and where he lived.

The man was Bill King, an East Hampton artist known for his tall, lanky metal structures - some 30 feet high. We were right in front of his house, where dozens of his sculptures intermingle organically with the bare trees, reaching to the sky. Hudson asked King if he'd teach him how to sculpt. King nodded - "when you're a little older" - and encouraged us to look in his workshop and anywhere on his property. "Walk all around. Anytime you like," he said, and continued on his walk.

We explored the grounds, racing from one sculpture to the next, giddy when we found works obscured among the trees. King's pieces range from whimsical to sensual; sweet to awesome. Some sculptures were in progress, some groupings were a lesson in variations on a theme. We were on an art hunt, with treasures at every turn.

Of course, after just a moment, I'd realized that I knew King's work. I see it everyday when I take my son to the East Hampton Pre-K. There, sitting on a cube base in a grassy circle in the parking lot, is a long, lean metal sculpture of a man, its legs reach out about 15 feet. And in its hands, a book.

Inside, I saw the school's director, Maureen Wykane, and told her about our adventure - the curiosity and interest it spurred in my son, asking if he could learn to sculpt and wondering how King made those elegant, static "robots." I asked Maureen if she knew the name of King's sculpture outside. Of course she did. It's called "The Learner."