The first on the road performance, En Plein Air (2008), was inspired by Edward Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe (see painting below). For six months, every Thursday morning at sunrise, Hope Sandrow, Tom Edmonds (Southampton History Museum Director), Ulf Skogsbergh, and Margaret Kelly met on the road, replicating Manet’s famous painting in response to the pollution, traffic, jams, and sound pollution caused by commuting.

Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe is “testimony to Manet's refusal to conform to convention and his initiation of a new freedom from traditional subjects and modes of representation - can perhaps be considered as the departure point for Modern Art.”

En Plein Air  Tom Edmonds, Ulf Skogsbergh, Margaret Kelly and Hope Sandrow

on the road performances: Thursdays 6 - 9 am, April - August 2008   open air studio Shinnecock Hills

Tom Edmonds (Director, Southampton History Museum) and Hope Sandrow in performance of en plein air, 2008. Photograph: Dana Shaw

Edward Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe, 1878. Musée d’Orsay

November 29, 2007, commencing 5:44:41am (rush hour”): How do you do Cockle-doodle-do?

Sept 2007 - March 2008 (Duration of sign-posting)

Hand-painted on a discarded stockade-styled fence panel referencing Colonialists’ practice of claiming land from Native Americans by fencing “in” domestic farm animals such as the chicken (reference “Creatures of Empire How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America by Virginia DeJohn Anderson”). On lands once roamed freely by Native Americans alongside bears, foxes, deer, and chickens as far back as 14,000 years.

inspired by the spontaneous cock-a-doodling-do’s of passers-by in response to the calls of the Rooster Shinnecock and first-born sons. Sandrow placed the artwork, where she’d followed him across to Gissa Bu (2006),  to “exhibit the relationship of daily life to art for those passing by. 

“Tolls”, “greenhouse gases” and “commuting,” are vastly different contexts than the words "freedom, "romantic" and "adventurous" describing the landscape of Kerouac's hero yearning to explore in the book of the same title.” ON THE ROAD at this time: traffic jams, fender-benders to multi-vehicle accidents at this intersection tested commuters’ patience during years of the Bush Administration (2001 - 2009 included contested elections, 911, war with Iraq and Afghanistan, gasoline shortages, Katrina).

This performative work aimed to engage  “everyman/woman”. Including “the silent majority “ amongst drivers and passengers hidden behind windows they might roll down, and call out as Howard Beale, in the film Network (1976) encouraged:

“We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

Neighboring property owner Fran Panesci’s complaint - of the artwork, the hand-painted stockade panel along the road as pictured  - to town code enforcement resulted in a summons to remove the artwork, concluding the project. 

Update: Panesci accepted a sign made by the artist collective Auto Body installed (2017 ongoing) on her front lawn as part of Parrish Art Museum Roadshow.

ABOUT:

Tom Edmonds is a painter and (former) Director of the Southampton History Museum.

Ulf Skogsbergh is a photographer and musician/composer. Sandrow’s husband, and long-time collaborator in art and life.

Margaret Kelly is a plein air painter and antiques dealer

Hope Sandrow About

William Merritt Chase with  Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art students along the main road (Old Montauk Highway) of Shinnecock Hills.

Albert Chittenden photograph, collection Hope Sandrow