Paul Davis Reception

THE PAUL DAVIS POSTERS

 Reception August 11 in the Lobby @ 5pm

In 1991, after a checkered history as a disco,  roller disco, and home to the Grumman Aircraft division that built part of the Lunar Module—the site was willed into being as the Bay Street Theater by a group of passionate and determined Sag Harborites with strong theatrical roots.

Actors Sybil Christopher, Emma Walton, and Stephen Hamilton, and set designer and artist Tony Walton led the effort, joined by locally based internationally known actors, playwrights, producers, and other theater luminaries. Among them was Oklahoma-born artist Paul Davis, who had come to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts and moved to Sag Harbor in the 1960’s, where he produced hundreds of memorable images for the pages and covers of books and major magazines in the U.S. and abroad, and posters for art and commerce, politics, and entertainment.

Davis’s paintings and posters were celebrated in gallery exhibitions and museum shows in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including a traveling retrospective at the Museums of Modern Art in Kamakura and Gamma, Japan, and at the inaugural opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1977.  In the 1980’s Davis opened a graphic design studio in Manhattan with his wife, Myrna, serving as art director for Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and working on a variety of design projects including two new magazines, Wigwag and Normal, and the American Museum of the Moving Image. But Sag Harbor remained his home.

Davis created work for local groups and causes:  the familiar logo, signature painting and first poster for the famed Hampton Classic Horse Show, posters for the Parrish Art Museum, Guild Hall, and the Sag Harbor Tree Fund, and many others. He was the fifth visual artist to receive Guild Hall’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and is the recipient of honorary doctorates, an  inductee in three Halls of Fame, and other coveted awards.

For Bay Street’s inaugural season, Davis created the image of a muse pulling back the curtain on a moonlit sea; he secured donations of paper and printing, presenting printed posters to BST and continuing to do so for the next five years.

The resulting series is the centerpiece of this exhibit, organized in cooperation with the Keyes Art Gallery.

“We salute Paul Davis, our esteemed neighbor and friend. Thank you, Paul.”

THE BAY STREET THEATER