Greetings from Cherry Grove: Works by the Residents of the 2018 Fire Island Artist Residency is an exhibition of art by the five artists who were selected to participate in the FIAR summer 2018 residency. Anna Campbell (New York) will be debuting an enormous new photographic work of athletic bodies in the sun created alongside the artist’s rigorous study of our collective queer past. Jose Figueroa (Oakland) will be exhibiting evidence of his daily text and image observational recordings of his days in Cherry Grove, from clothing optional beach blankets to intimate community gatherings. During residency, Kiarash K (Germany) mined his internal psychoanalytic response to being submerged in an LGBTQ enclave to begin a series of haunting paintings and drawings, a selection of which will be included in our exhibition. Brooklyn’s Leeanne Maxey’s own observational beach drawings, assembled still lives, and more recent paintings explore her close relationship to communities both intolerant and inclusive, allowing them to clash and coalesce in paintings that blur the lines between photographic and magical realism. Finally, Montgomery Perry Smith melds the body, specifically orifices, with the flora of Fire Island in a series of delicate, meticulously crafted experiential sculptures that assert the beauty of queer sexuality.

Greetings from Cherry Grove: Works by the Residents of the 2018 Fire Island Artist Residency will be on view at the Bureau from Friday, May 3, through Sunday, June 2, 2019.

Opening Reception: Friday, May 3, 6 to 9 PM

Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) is an organization founded in 2011 which brings lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identifying emerging visual artists and poets to Fire Island, a place long-steeped in LGBTQ history, to create, commune, and contribute to the location’s rich artistic history.

Each summer FIAR provides free live/work space to five visual artists and three poets who work, socialize, and immerse themselves in the Fire Island community for four weeks, during which time they are visited by a handful of renowned figures from the visual art and writing communities who interact with residents through intimate visits, dinners, and discussions, providing support and feedback. The greater Fire Island community as well as visitors from New York and Long Island are invited to attend free public lectures by these esteemed guests. This has been made possible through a partnership with Arts Project Cherry Grove, who invite FIAR to hold our programming in the historic Cherry Grove Community House, a landmarked LGBTQ historic site. In this way, FIAR hopes to bring both new creative perspectives and prestigious art professionals together in this extraordinary location to foster the creation—and preservation—of queer art-making in contemporary art.

This exhibition is made possible with the support of the following major sponsors:

New York State Council on the Arts

Between Bridges

Image: Jose Figueroa, Cherry Grove Beach Front, 2018