In The Beauty of Light, the artist and writer Etel Adnan asserts, “There is a collaboration between the objects that you use, and this is true beyond painting. I’m very sensitive to the role of objects in our lives.” This sentiment is one that Lauren Shooster can get behind (and is reminded of daily, given that her dog is aptly named after Etel). “I'm extremely sensitive to my surroundings – it doesn't really feel like a choice,” Lauren says. “I like pieces choosing their space as much as I choose them. Every time I collect something new, it feels like I've never been without it.”
Enter Lauren’s Sag Harbor-based gallery, SHOOSTER Arts and Literature (SAAL). Less a “curator” and more a collector, Lauren’s approach is based on intuition while paying homage to an artist or writer’s respective roots. “I carry many works by artists who spend a lot of their time out east; it seems like a really natural footprint to make,” she shares. “Since moving here, being able to meet and interact with some of these artists – or people that knew them – has been an amazing gateway to deepen my own understanding of and relationship to their work.”
In addition to a robust offering of art, objects, and ephemera, the library component can be considered the beating heart of SAAL. “We feature original commissioned texts about each artist and designer, which has made it so all of these generations coexist [or are] in conversation with one another. I think that, for me, has been the most interesting self-reflective aspect of SAAL and what it embodies or what I hope to communicate.”
A natural storyteller, Lauren’s earliest familial influences and experiences as an image director in fashion and interiors helped her hone an intentional curatorial vision. “Because you're pulling from so many different reference points to make an image, I ended up collecting a lot over the years. A lot of my work was influenced by literature, poetry, and films. When I was doing set design, I was collecting to create a world within a room.” But beyond aesthetics, Lauren is motivated by the way people live privately. “SAAL has been driven by curiosity and prioritising a feeling over a format. That’s my way of contextualising everything.”
That curiosity was put to the test after Lauren suffered a traumatic injury which left her bedridden and unable to return to set, ultimately laying the foundation for SAAL. “I was surrounded by all of my stuff and I had no one to share it with. What I was looking at and interacting with, and what was looking back at me, became my life and my saving grace. There's a reason why people bring things to hospitals: flowers, vases. You’re trying to create a sense of space – not just physically, but for someone's spirit.”
While the physical outpost is just one “piece of the puzzle,” for Lauren, it’s integral to maintaining SAAL’s vitality. Located in a residential pocket of Sag Harbor, the building was originally a historic ship chandlery and has been carefully restored to showcase art across time and space. At every turn, viewers are greeted with visual delight: a sage green velvet loveseat, Purvis Young’s Dark Green Horses running across the AC cover, an ornately carved Gino Maggioni desk. “A handful of people have said it feels like you're in Marfa when you walk in,” Lauren adds. “It really has that quality, where you're transported to another time. Overall, each piece stands alone, yet they also all work well together, and because the gallery's non-programmatic, I'm not confined by the same cadence or themes: just the general theme, which I would say is intuition or lack of self-consciousness in the work.”
This openness lends itself well to Lauren’s inquisitive nature. Both her artist-father and the poet John Ashbery have heavily influenced her relationship to intellectual curiosity. In that vein, Lauren isn’t partial to a particular medium, and contends that "image says what words can't – and when words can get close to that, for me, it's almost a religious experience.”
She continues, “Using Etel Adnan as an example of an artist-writer, there's a lot that you get from her work without context. If you read her writing outside of her political text, without knowing where she's from, you understand that she has a grounded perspective on what suffering is, yet her work is extremely optimistic. She says, ‘Love doesn't die when we die. It is our resurrection.’ I think that's related. The inner life and what you produce from that – and the connection between those things – almost has to be articulated in multiple forms to wholly understand or digest what the work is and who the person is.”
Our conversation, in many ways, feels like a work of art being drawn outside the lines – and across a shaky internet connection that’s added texture to our call. Still, it’s clear even through technological (and life) challenges that Lauren’s connection to her work touches every aspect of the gallery. “These are real people with real experiences, and I want all of that to show,” she reflects. “Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by exposing the ugly parts of my life, but that feels important to me and to the principles of SAAL.”
Life-altering events can make our worlds feel smaller, though that doesn't mean all hope is lost. In the case of SAAL, it can be an exercise in perspective – an opportunity to notice unexpected overlaps and challenging tensions, and reframe them as something generative and real. “You know, there’s a great Bernadette Mayer line from The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica,” Lauren remarks. “‘If I covered my face with beer and sweated till you returned, if I suffered, what else could I do?’ I think being present or curious is an antidote to suffering – or a gateway into it. Instead of resisting, you surrender.”
Lauren wears the TOAST Waxed Cotton Trench Coat.
Words by Rachel Schwartzmann.
Photography by Ash Bean.
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