I sat down with artist and community activist April Gornik for another episode of “Winners Only Club.” April is a pillar of the Sag Harbor community. I’ve met her on several occasions previously, in talks and events on the East End. However, I first knew of her in 2016 when I was still in college in Boston. I read an article in the New York Times on how the Sag Harbor Cinema had tragically burnt down and how she was spearheading the reconstruction of this historic space.
We discussed topics ranging from the redevelopment of Sag Harbor, the appeal of unpleasant weather conditions in art, April and her husband Eric Fischl’s support of The Sag Harbor Cinema, and the founding of The Church. View the full interview here. And enjoy some of the highlights below.
LuLu: April, I’ve known you for a long time, but I remember first reading about you in an article when I was in Boston about how you were saving the Sag Harbor Cinema. Today, we’re at The Church in Sag Harbor. Would you like to introduce yourself?
April: Well, I’m an artist, first and foremost. I have been an artist since I got out of school, moved to New York, and started showing. You’re sort of born an artist. And I’ve had many consecutive one-person shows. But I also have another full-time job that’s self-imposed, which is as a community activist. I ended up being given the opportunity by fate. I ended up chairing the effort to buy and rebuild the Sag Harbor Cinema, which was a very old cinema in the center of the little village. It is historic. It has a historic facade from 1938, an old Art Deco facade when people who designed cinemas were actually using cheap materials to do so. And that’s because it was taking place immediately after the depression. So one of the problems with the fire is that when the fire came through… It actually devastated it quite severely.
It was actually something that I had been asked to spearhead by the owner the previous summer before the fire happened. The fire, bad as it was, also mobilized the community because it was. After the fire, it looked like a horrible missing tooth and otherwise healthy enough that people were anxious to fix and make better and save. So, that was about a four or five year process of not only getting people to support it financially. And Eric, my husband, Eric Fischl, God bless him, was the first person that stepped up and said, what about if I, if we, gave a million dollars, just kick this off and make it happen? And I was really against it because, I mean, obviously, that’s so much money, but he was perfectly willing to dip into our savings and get the whole project going.
Other members of the community from different disciplines, people with good hearts and money came from very wealthy donors, and then also from a little girl who came to us when we were sitting at a table at a festival that was happening down at the harbor and gave the people who were working the table trying to raise awareness about this effort, 35 cents. It all mattered, like literally everybody who contributed made a difference.
LuLu: I can tell by how knowledgeable you are on the subject and how involved you must have been in the restoration process. I am wondering: if it wasn’t a historical building, if it wasn’t a historical landmark, would you be as eager to have contributed your time, energy, and money and so much of your effort into rebuilding the cinema?
April: The cinema is an odd and very specific feature of the town because of the Art Deco sign that’s in front of it that says “Sag Harbor.” It’s very classic Art Deco. Never mind the history even, but that sign tends for most people to represent both the quirkiness, and the specific unique quality of Sag Harbor.
LuLu: Whimsical?
April: Whimsical, yes, it’s also “home.” I mean, I know I’ve talked to many people who say that when they go on a trip, even if they’re coming back from JFK, when they get back to Sag Harbor, they just like to go down Main Street because they just want to see the sign. They feel like they’re really back.
And I love the history of Sag Harbor, which is quirky and bizarre. Sag Harbor survived many booms and busts. It was one of the first integrated communities in America. It’s Native American, it’s African American, and it’s principally white Irish immigrants at the time that it first formed, but it’s remained an integrated community for all this time since the 1830s and ‘40s when people came here: some to escape the potato famine, of course, in Ireland, but a lot of the members of Black and Native American community became great whalers and traveled the world on whaling ships and were some of the first people to be in the Pacific. So it’s just a remarkable place.
And the cinema and its sign and for a lot of people here after 1978 when the owner from whom we bought the cinema had first purchased it himself, they started showing what we call European art films. So there is a whole history of that. It was seen as a kind of an eccentric anchor of the village.
LuLu: You held a convention about the Affordable Housing Project.
April: We did. I’m not behind any particular affordable housing project — just need to add. But I am definitely concerned, like everyone else in this village, about affordable housing and the future of both workforce housing and also housing for people who’ve lived here all their lives because we’re being priced out by a certain amount of overdevelopment, which has been galloping and I hope it’s slowing down.
A lot of people who spent the pandemic here have gone back to New York. But Sag Harbor became very, very popular during that time. And there were efforts to buy people out of homes… And there was a lot of opportunity seen here, so that coupled with rising rent — because of the popularity, has threatened the fabric of this village, and there was a profoundly moving letter that was written to The Sag Harbor Express by [now Sag Harbor Village Mayor] Tom Gardella, saying that he was afraid that his children couldn’t stay in Sag Harbor even if they wanted to, because they couldn’t afford to live here. And that made me insane. I just thought it was one of the most moving, sad things I’d ever read. So one of the reasons, one of the inspirations for the housing conference day that we held last May, was to bring people together so we could talk about the problems that this village faces and also the problems that communities internationally are facing because of the disparity between haves and have nots.
LuLu: How did you go from Ohio to Canada to here?
April: I had gone to the Cleveland Institute of Art for art classes, and the Cleveland Institute of Art is a five-year college, and I actually got tired of being there and wanted something more. There was an article in Art in America Magazine, which I think said, “Is this the Greatest Art School in North America?” And it was about the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, which I’d heard about because it was a famous, at that time it was a school famous for conceptualism. That was like in 1976, and I just kind of jumped ship the last year. Because I thought, I don’t wanna stay here anyway. And I got my BFA from there. That’s where I met Eric. And it was pretty impulsive when I think about it because I applied in June. I was like, “I’m outta here.: And then I ended up there, and it was a big adventure. And then from there, I ended up staying a little bit longer, waitressing and whatnot. Then moved down to New York. Ultimately, with Eric, although he was not inclined to make that move originally. And we’ve been in this section of the country ever since.
LuLu: Why Sag Harbor and not another Hamlet of the Hamptons?
April: Well, Eric, after we’d been living in New York for, I guess, like five or seven or eight years. He was just feeling so antsy and really wanted to place outside the city. I mean, it is, you know, Manhattan in the summer. It’s sweaty and sticky, and we just wanted to get out of town, and he wanted to buy something. So we ended up buying a small house here. We rented a little bit before then, and the house we found was in Sag Harbor, and it was a sweet old farmhouse not far from here, and we subsequently, just to like kind of fast forward, we would spend at first like two months here in the summer and then it was three months and then by the time we ended up moving out here full time, it was like at least six months we were spending here and not in the city. We were renovating our loft to be more like the house that we subsequently built out here. The new house that we built in 1999 — It had a great studio set up, and we realized that we preferred to be here than there, so we decamped quietly… That’s how we ended up living in this house full-time in 2004.
LuLu: What about strange weather conditions interest you?
April: You know, I think that there’s something really sensual and physical and enormous about weather and weather behavior and being able to stand in front of a two-dimensional surface and take that in from such a small size compared to what it’s depicting.
LuLu: The name of this podcast is called Winners Only Club. What’s your definition of a winner, and what’s your definition of a loser?
April: My definition of a winner would be someone who’s happy with their life. I don’t care how that manifests itself, but it’s not about things that you get or whatever. Loser. I would think of Donald Trump. He’s the absolute definition of a loser.
If you’re a winner in the art world or a loser in the art world, that’s much more complicated. I’d say 99% of the artists that I know are hard on themselves. Like you’re your own worst critic. So it’s hard to be a winner in your own eyes entirely, but, just to be able to be an artist and make a living, wow, win.
LuLu: How do you get started if you are an artist in today’s world without having shown anything in any show yet? How do you do that?
April: Boy, what a question. I’m really not sure because I think that the social media universe has completely changed the way artists direct themselves in the world, get their work shown. One thing that I really love about having The Church here and doing shows like the one that we’re sitting in, is that people can have the experience of the physicality of a work of art. And I think it’s really, really important that children learn to use their hands, that are given art classes.
LuLu: You named The Church, The Church. Was it because of convenience or for other reasons?
April: This church was named The Church because it was deconsecrated like 12 or 14 years before we bought it. And the Methodists who owned it ran out of money and a congregation, basically. So they felt that they were forced to put it on the market, and they did. And then what happened subsequently was that it was owned by three different people at various times. The church loomed over the street with tarps in the windows.
When we first saw it, bits of snow were sneaking through, and it was just a really sad sight. And every single person in Sag Harbor would, when they wanted to talk about it, say, “Do you know what’s happening with the church? When are they gonna finish the church? Did they sell it again? I can’t believe the church sold again. The church. The church. The church.” So when we bought it, people went, “I can’t believe you bought the church.” And I said to Eric, “I think we just have to call it The Church because everybody calls it that.” And not really for any particular reason of hoping that there would be some spiritual impact or anything. But I think it kind of has, if there’s some fundamental spirituality in people being in a space and bonding together, having a shared experience.
Winners Only Club is a business, comedy podcast soon coming to your TV (Channel 20 Southampton, Channel 20 East Hampton) hosted by LuLu Romano. You can also watch on YouTube.