East Hampton artist Scott Bluedorn will join a live-stream panel on affordable housing and preservation with Southampton Housing Authority Director Curtis Highsmith, Jr., Architect Bill Chaleff, AIA, and Preservationist Josh Halsey. The panel will be moderated by Corinne Erni, the Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects at the Parrish Art Museum. The live-stream will be held on Friday, January 15, at 5 PM.
Highsmith’s mission is to develop mixed-income housing opportunities in Southampton Town. Chaleff, LEED AP and principal of Chaleff & Rogers Architects, P.C., is a long-time advocate of “Green” architecture, affordable housing and sustainable planning and design. Halsey focuses on land and water preservation, and biological and environmental aspects in agricultural production at the Peconic Land Trust.
The program was created in conjunction with Parrish Road Show: Scott Bluedorn: Bonac Blind, an interpretation of duck blinds used for camouflage by local hunters that also serves as a dwelling. The project addresses the affordable housing crisis and the gradual disappearance of Bonac culture on the East End. Originally moored off Landing Lane in Springs, Bonac Blind moved to the Parrish Art Museum Meadow in December 2020.
According to Bluedorn, who also participated in the Museum’s 2019 Artists Choose Artists exhibition, “The Bonac Blind is a multi-faceted art intervention: A floating, off-grid microhome that references traditional Bonac culture of fishing, farming, and hunting while also serving as a comment on the erosion of this culture due to the compound problems of housing crisis, climate change, and modernity.”
“I’m pleased to dig deeper with this distinguished group of experts on housing and preservation to address the issues that Scott Bluedorn raised with his visionary Road Show project, which found great resonance when it was first moored in the Springs and now at the Parrish Meadow, bringing home some real problems in the Hamptons, which are alienating communities and marginalizing the cultural heritage,” said Erni, who organized the exhibition.
An intentionally ironic solution to housing, the Bonac Blind proposes that a camouflage shed can be remade into a tiny and affordable floating house, complete with off-grid amenities such as solar panels, solar batteries, a simple bed, and a hot plate. The Bonac Blind is fully functional and decorated with original artwork. The project also references the current trend of tiny homes that are sustainable, resilient, and adaptive — as well as the desire to separate oneself (physically and hermetically) from a facet of Hamptons culture.