FEATURES

ARTIST JOSEPH LA PIANA CAREFULLY RESTORES A SPRINGS COMPOUND THAT ONCE SERVED AS A RETREAT FOR ART WORLD HEAVYWEIGHTS

Every house has a tale to tell. Some of these stories can be tedious and overblown, while others can regale a listener with rich anecdotes filled with details of a provocative past. Unbeknownst to artist Joseph La Piana, he stumbled upon a rather down-at-the-heels property with just such a mystique. While searching for an East End residence, he would continually drive by a Springs compound, consisting of a house and two barns on a spacious tract of land. It was a property whose condition ranged from, in his words, "really rundown" to "total disrepair." Yet La Piana was drawn to it. "I saw this dichotomy of architecture from the old to the new," he explains. "The house was from the '60s and the barns were turn of the century. Somehow the lines really worked together. I didn't know exactly what it was, but the place appealed to me."

Further investigation divulged that the house had a provenance. It belonged to the now 91-year-old artist Hedda Stern, who lived and worked there and also welcomed several Abstract Expressionist giants into her home. Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko had all been frequent visitors and had spent time working at the compound.