Dan's Papers - January 30, 2009

It's the dead of winter in the Hamptons. What's a mother to do? Fortunately, there's plenty for kids out here, even off-season. Ice skating at Buckskill and on the North Fork, workshops and classes a CMEE and the Parrish, Guild Hall art classes and kids movies at Bay Street Theatre on Saturday mornings, events at the South Fork Natural History museum and Quogue Wildlife Refuge.

My partner and I aren't the schedule-the-kid-up-to-the-minute types. Like many families, we like having a lot of free time with our son. After all, he LIKES hanging out with us now. So other than school, a dance class and basketball on Saturday morning, he's all ours.

With my partner busy with real estate for a good part of the weekend (Hooray to that), he and I usually end up together all day Saturday, doing whatever we choose from moment to moment. Last Saturday, we stayed in Amagansett to buy a birthday present. The day unfolded in a way that I hope he remembers forever - if not in his mind, in his soul. It's one I won't forget.

Walking to the sportswear store, we passed an art gallery. "Let's buy Poppop some art," he suggested. I said I had something else in mind. "Okay," he said, "But after the sport store let's go to the art store."

The "art store" was the Pamela Williams Gallery. Williams, I later learned from Dan's Papers art critic Marion Weiss, handles some of the best local artists out here. On that cold and frosty morning, there was just one woman, (who turned out to be Williams) in the gallery working at the front desk. I always assume that gallery people aren't thrilled to see a child coming in, but I figured we'd take a quick look and be on our way.

Not possible. Hudson immediately spied some clay figures on the desk and asked about them - he had made and glazed a little clay pot at school a few weeks previous. Williams told us about the artist and the pieces. He was then drawn to an unusual sculpture that incorporated mirrors. Interesting and engaging in and of themselves, the sculptures had a trompe l'oeil element from mirrors that made things "appear" - like a baby in an otherwise empty cradle - proving that people can see things differently if they try. Williams followed Hudson to works by the same artist, showing him how the mirrors were used, taking him outside to see one wood/mirror sculpture through the window, and actually lifting his 50-lb. self to see a sculpture that evoked a Trojan horse.

As Hudson went to each work, Williams explained, asked questions, and entertained comments on pieces like Kim Boulukos's Giacometti-like horse sculptures, and Charles Waller's sculptures constructed from a variety of objects and images, that, according to Hudson, "look like they should do something but don't." He immediately recognized the tall elegant metal sculptures created by our tall elegant neighbor in Northwest, William King. "He's going to teach me how to bend metal," Hudson announced.

We stayed at least a half hour, revisiting some pieces, discovering others. On the way out, he looked at the clay figures again, and asked if he could have a postcard. Then he spied a small bundle of long cinnamon sticks on Williams' desk - a sculpture in itself. He asked what they were, and Williams explained as though she was describing a piece of art, ending with "Would you like one?"

He walked out happy. Referring to the stick and the card in his hands, he said, "I got two things." But in fact, he got more than he'll ever know.

The Pamela Williams Gallery on Main Street in Amagansett features The Winter Show: Painting, Photography, and Sculpture by Twenty Artists. The gallery is open Fri., Sat. and Sun., 11:00 to 5.