Real LI

You can say Rima Mardoyan-Smyth is a woman with many talents. She’s fluent in more than four languages and when she’s not selling real estate in the Hamptons, something she has done for more than two decades, she’s pursuing her interests, which includes art.

In fact, her work can be viewed in a new exhibit that opens this weekend at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The exhibit, "A Survey of Encaustic Work,” through Nov. 30, will feature paintings that Mardoyan-Smyth did in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “They are very powerful,” says Barbara Jo Howard, the museum’s director of marketing.

Encaustic is an ancient technique that started in Egypt in which molten beeswax is mixed with resin and pigments to provide color, vibrancy and texture. However, Mardoyan-Smyth says she doesn’t use resin. She makes her own beeswax and pigments and won’t disclose anything more. “It’s a secret recipe,” she muses. The painting is labor intensive, says Mardoyan-Smyth, noting not many people can paint as large as she can.

Mardoyan-Smyth, who works in the Bridgehampton office of Brown Harris Stevens, has been painting for about 32 years. She has been using beeswax in her work for the past two decades.

The opening reception will be from 5 to 6 p.m. Saturday. At 3 p.m. Sunday, art critic Klaus Kertess will discuss Mardoyan-Smyth's work. “I’m honored to have Klaus there,” says Mardoyan-Smyth. “It’s a big thrill.”

Rima Mardoyan's 2008 work "Traveling Fish, which is beeswax encaustic on wood

An effort is under way in East Hampton to save the home of landscape painter Thomas Moran — who, in 1884, became the first artist “to build a house with a working studio in the Hamptons,” according to Hamptons magazine.

“Up until that time, artists stayed mostly in boarding houses along Main Street and worked outdoors or in found spaces,” the magazine reports. “The Morans’ pioneering efforts — in architecture and lifestyle — galvanized into a romantic tradition that is still with us.”

The current owner, Guild Hall, is in the process of deeding the shingled Queen Anne-style house to the Thomas Moran Trust, which, according to the article, is “a group formed to reclaim and rejuvenate the house and grounds and to develop programs for its future use.”

Thomas Moran Trust photo

Sag Harbor artist Dan Rizzie tells Plum Hamptons that when he moved to the East End 20 years ago the hard edges in his paintings got softer. "I really wasn't looking at architecture or things I was looking at in the city," he says in a video interview. "I was amazed at how gorgeous it was out here. How can you not look at nature? How could you not be affected by the absolute beauty of the foliage and the birds and the fish? "I started spending a lot more time outside ... and i think it worked its way into my work." Rizzie goes on: "I love living here. As a working environment, I've never found anything better."

Public records show that Rizzie bought his three-bedroom, two-bath home in 1996 for $204,000.

Dallas papers recently reported that Rizzie, once a staple on the city's art scene, will be buying a home in the luxury residential Museum Tower, located between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Plum Hamptons photo

How to make housing developments on Long Island and elsewhere more individual is the focus of Dan Graham's piece "Homes for America 1966-67," currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art's show "Color Chart: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today." The suggested layout for an article he wrote for Arts Magazine opens with several Long Island place names: Garden City, Garden City Park, Greenlawn, Island Park, Levittown, New Hyde Park, Plainview and Plandome Manor. "Color is a primary vehicle offered to consumers as a potential for individualism in tract housing," says a card next to the work in the show, is up through May 12. Read more of the article -- and see the artwork itself -- by clicking here.

Lana DeGeorge Santorelli has sold her oceanfront home on Flying Point Beach in Water Mill for $8.9 million. The two-parcel property overlooks Mecox Bay, with a boardwalk to the beach. The home has three levels of decking, eight bedrooms and 5 ½ baths.

Santorelli is an author, poet and owner of The Lana Santorelli Gallery, an art exhibition space in Manhattan. She is married to Lenny Santorelli, founder of Complete Management Solutions, a global equity and fixed-income research distribution firm.

The buyer of the 1.1-acre spread is listed on property records as Flyingpointstar LLC. Sources indicate that the name behind that corporation is real estate developer David Edelstein, president of Tristar Capital, LLC. Among the projects that Edelstein’s company has been involved in are the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, and the W South Beach Hotel and Residencesin Florida.

Jay Flagg of Prudential Douglas Elliman had the exclusive listing. Flagg, who brought both the buyer and the seller to the deal, says that the proerty had multiple bidders.

Other homeowners on Flying Point Road include comedian Mel Brooks and supermodel Christie Brinkley.

The Sagaponack studio, house and gallery of artist Sydney Butchkes is for sale. The asking price is $5.5 million. The 5,000-square-foot space is a former barn built in the 1840s. Located on 3.4 acres, the house features an open floor plan with original exposed beamed ceilings, wide plank flooring, a fireplace, radiant heat and walls of glass.

Butchkes, 85, is a sculptor and painter whose work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. He has done several commissions, including a hanging sculpture for a bar at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Over the years, he designed album jackets and book covers.

He has been in the Hamptons since the 1960s, when he bought the property -- for $15,000 -- from the father of Paul Brennan of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Brennan is now the listing agent, with Ronald White and Cynthia Barrett.

Photographer Elliott Erwitt's East Hampton house is one of dozens featured in the new book "America At Home: A Close-Up Look at How We Live," out in April from Running Press. The book came out of a week-long project last September in which "100 of the top photojournalists and millions of Americans documented the concept of home." The photo of Erwitt's house features his two young grandchildren -- Phoebe, 7, and Jesse, 5 -- standing inside whimsically painted school lockers. Since the two were toddlers, they have always climbed inside the lockers as soon as they arrived at their grandfather's home "to see how much they've grown since their last visit." Among its 250 photos is another of a nearby home that's on the market. "On a quiet East Hampton lane, minutes away from the train that brings commuters into Manhattan, a brand-new house glows brightly, waiting for prospective buyers to tour its four bedrooms. While most of America is reeling from the subprime mortgage crisis, a few communities like this one ... maintain their value." One reason? "President Clinton spent his summer vacations there, two First Ladys spent their youths playing on the town's beaches, and famed artist Jackson Pollock created his most famous paintings in East Hampton."

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that author Tom Dolby finished the newly published second novel "The Sixth Form" (Kensington Books, $24) at a house he bought last year in Wainscott. It's a 1931 farmhouse. Read the interview here.

Public records show that Dolby bought the house in February for $3,725 million.

Photo by Randall Slavin. Los Angeles, CA./www.tomdolby.com

As Pulitzer Prize-winning playright Edward Albee spoke to Chicago Tribune at his Montauk pool house, a friend dug a small grave for a cat that just died. Then the 80-year-old Albee told this strange story to the reporter:

"She is now residing in the freezer in the downstairs icebox ... I put her in plastic and forgot to tell the cleaning ladies. One of them went in there, saw a dead cat and, well ..."

Artist Eric Fischl "finally paints in peace," reports Art+Auction in its January issue on the ARTINFO Web site. "No longer distracted by blaring sirens, rumbling trucks and taxi drivers beeping their car horns outside his SoHo loft, Fischl now works in a spacious, airy studio deep in the woods near Sag Harbor, on Long Island." There, writes the magazine, he and wife, artist April Gornik, living and work as "birds chirp in trees and light creates dappled patterns across a well-tended garden." Fischl, who grew up on Long Island, bought the 4.8-acre property in 1997 for $300,000. According to property records, it is now worth an estimated $4.6 million.

Art+Auction / ARTINFO photo