Public Commissions

Right Here. Right Now.

2022

Commissioned by: LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton, New York
Medium: Cedar textiles, painted pine frame
Dimensions: 32 × 8 × 12 ft.
Photograph: Courtesy of the artists
Artists’ Registration Number: 2022.083.001
Created in: Germantown, New York
Exhibition History: Right Here. Right Now., LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton, New York, April 30, 2022 – April 30, 2024. Curator: Matko Tomicic

The work didn’t align with that exhibition, but Matilda, who also served on the curatorial committee at LongHouse Reserve, saw immediate potential and introduced us to Executive Director Matko Tomicic and his team.

When Matko visited our New York studio, he told us he had long admired our work, particularly Mary Queen of the Universe, our 2014 exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, which he described as his favorite show there. He was deeply familiar with our Scrollathon from that exhibition, where we collaborated with over 1,000 people from the East End community, and he invited us to create a major outdoor installation for LongHouse whenever we were ready. That open invitation became the foundation for Right Here. Right Now., a project that merged family, landscape, and material memory.

Commission Overview
Commissioned by LongHouse Reserve in 2022, Right Here. Right Now. marked our first major outdoor public sculpture, a project that grew from a long creative friendship with Matilda McQuaid, Acting Curatorial Director at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Matilda was one of the first curators to include our work in a major museum exhibition, the 2006 National Design Triennial, and has remained a guiding voice throughout our career.

While discussing an upcoming Cooper Hewitt exhibition on nature, we mentioned that we had recently purchased 19 acres in Germantown, New York, where we were experimenting with cedar trees felled from our land, cutting them into discs, or “cookies,” and linking them into textile-like forms.

Artistic Approach
As we cleared an area on our Germantown property to construct three sheds, the scent of freshly cut cedar transported us back to our grandmother Frances Hill’s cedar chest, where she kept magical fabrics. Those smells, textures, and memories became the seed for the sculpture.

The final structure, an open cedar passageway with symmetrical walls and a peaked roof, was installed in the sculpted landscape at LongHouse. Sunlight passed through the cedar surfaces, casting shadows that shifted throughout the day, creating an immersive and contemplative environment that felt both natural and constructed, architectural and handmade.

We began slicing cedar trunks into discs, known as “cookies”, and experimented with how to connect them. After testing wire and other materials, we discovered that zip ties, surprisingly humble yet flexible, provided the perfect link between strength and movement. Over the course of a year and a half, we worked side by side with our parents to handcraft thousands of cedar cookies. Each disc was sanded, drilled, and joined together to form large textile-like panels.

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Engagement and Impact
Visitors described Right Here. Right Now. as a bridge, both literal and symbolic. One longtime staff member remarked,

“This feels like a bridge between where we’ve been and where we’re going.”

The work invited people to slow down, to enter a space built from touch and memory, and to experience the warmth of craft at a monumental scale. It also reflected the values of LongHouse founder Jack Lenor Larsen, whose legacy centered on design, tactility, and the meeting of art and nature.

Matko’s openness and Matilda’s belief in the power of connection made this commission possible. Right Here. Right Now. stands as both homage and beginning, a passageway between memory and the present moment, between what we inherit and what we create together.

Context and Legacy
Installed during a period of transition at LongHouse following Jack Lenor Larsen’s passing, Right Here. Right Now. embodied both continuity and change. The work honored Larsen’s vision for the grounds as a living dialogue between landscape and art while signaling renewal for a new generation of artists and audiences.

For us, the project represented a merging of artmaking and place, the first time we fully wove the materials of our own land into a large-scale public work. It deepened our exploration of natural materials and family collaboration, themes that would continue with Cookie Monster at the Sarasota Art Museum the following year.