Bucket List Item Checked #1 - Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner Immersion in Springs Long Island NY October 2024

Thanks to my parents’ generosity, I’ve been able to feed my travel urges, and when I knew that money was going to work out, I immediately decided my first trip was going to be a pilgrimage to where the first artist who made me think I could be an artist lived, created many of his master works, struggled, and died. I decided to go to Springs Long Island…Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner country.

Joyce Raimondo, the Education Coordinator of the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center, was my unofficial host. I stayed at her home just a few miles away. It’s in a beautiful wooded area where my neighbors included wild turkey and deer! This sunset greeted me my first night, so I had a feeling my trip would be unforgettable.

Before what ended up being my two tours of the house, I went to Green River Cemetery to pay my respects to Jackson, Lee, and in a poignant but lovely surprise, Elaine deKooning. The cemetery is fairly small, but I still told myself to look for the giant rock…look for the giant rock… I soon found it. Lee’s remains are next to his under a smaller rock that was originally going to be Jackson’s, but she wanted something bigger for him. The weather that day and all days I was there was beautiful and sunny with the gorgeous fall colors still going pretty strong. It was a powerful experience, and I sat and talked to them both that day and one more time the day before I left.

As mentioned above, I ended up taking two tours of the Pollock-Krasner house. The first one was self-guided, and I ended up in the studio for HOURS. I’d dreamed for a long time of seeing and standing on that studio floor, and it did not disappoint. Yes, I cried. You have to wear fashionable booties when in the studio to preserve the paint. I spent so much time in the studio that I had a whopping 20 minutes in the house before closing time. My other tour was a guided tour by wonderful PK House employee, Theresa Davis, and I DID get a good look at the house this time. The house has probably the smallest Jackson Pollock painting I’ve ever seen -  at least up to this point. Their books, their records, their furnishings (for the most part) are still there, and it was amazing to see it all. The other poignant part of the tours for me in addition to the studio was this group of boulders. This is where the last picture of Jackson Pollock was taken with his lover, Ruth Klingman, hours before he died. Lee was in Paris. I also sat on those boulders, and the experience inspired this painting.

As if my Pollock-Krasner experience wasn’t enough, I had great food at one of Jackson’s favorite bars and other cool restaurants and visited Longhouse Reserve and the Montauk Point Lighthouse.

I will absolutely go back and hope to travel around the immediate area in a little more depth to see and get to know better a part of the country and the kind of people who eventually came to see Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner as neighbors and friends. That next visit will hopefully be this fall; it can’t come soon enough!