This summer, wander into an ethereal moment where artists are asked to daydream. At LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, that question becomes the origin for DayDreams, a refreshing book created and edited by curator James Salomon. Fusing artwork and written contributions from 44 visionaries linked to LongHouse and its founder, Jack Lenor Larsen, the publication evolves the garden’s spirit of curiosity into something quite personal and portable: a collection of reveries, memories, poems, reflections, and images.
The project builds upon LongHouse’s enduring conversation between art and nature. Its contributors include Ai Weiwei, Laurie Anderson, Renée Cox, Eric Fischl, Philip Glass, Julian Schnabel, Sean Scully, Dustin Yellin, and many others, alongside reflections on Larsen, Buckminster Fuller, Toshiko Takaezu, and Lawrence Weiner. Beautifully designed by Seth Sgorbati, the 116-page softcover is being published in an edition of 400, with proceeds supporting educational initiatives at LongHouse.
Entering the Daydream
Atmosphere at DayDreams Book Launch at LongHouse Reserve on August 13, 2026 in East Hampton, NY. Photo by Patrick McMullan, Courtesy of LongHouse Reserve.
The book’s premise feels especially suited to LongHouse, where sculpture, architecture, gardens, and landscape exist in an ongoing dialogue. Founded by Larsen, the 16-acre reserve was conceived as a place where art and nature could meet, and where visitors might move through that meeting at their own pace. DayDreams carries that experience from the physical garden into the interior life of the artist.
In his introduction, LongHouse Curator at Large Glenn Adamson considers the daydream an ideal subject for an art book because it allows artists to explore consciousness without a predetermined destination. His words point toward the freedom at the heart of Salomon’s project: the imagination can wander, even when an artwork ultimately takes shape within deliberate boundaries. “Artists work just as hard, or harder, than anyone else, and almost invariably they do impose parameters on their creative practice, laying down a pathway through the vastness of what’s possible. That infinite expanse does remain on all sides though not seen (for how could it be?), but rather felt.”
Dianne Benson similarly describes DayDreams as “James Salomon’s love letter to LongHouse,” intertwining the publication to Larsen’s expansive way of thinking. For Benson, Larsen’s legacy was rooted in the movement of ideas between disciplines, a quality that continues to animate the garden and the community around it. “Having LongHouse in your heart is akin to a kind of dreamscape for its concept was conjured by a man who lived with one foot in the clouds and the other on a very verdant earth.”
An Evening of Spoken Reveries
Dianne Benson and Michele Oka Doner attend DayDreams Book Launch at LongHouse Reserve on August 13, 2026 in East Hampton, NY. Photo by Patrick McMullan, Courtesy of LongHouse Reserve.
Lucas Flores Piran, Ana Flores Piran, James Salomon and Hala Salomon attend DayDreams Book Launch at LongHouse Reserve on August 13, 2026 in East Hampton, NY. Photo by Patrick McMullan, Courtesy of LongHouse Reserve.
On August 13, LongHouse welcomed artists and friends for the book’s launch, a delightful evening designed to bring the written works back into the communal atmosphere from which the project emerged. Participating artists were invited to share their daydreams aloud, giving the publication yet another dimension: the private imagination becoming something heard, held collectively, and then released into the bountiful garden.
Atmosphere at DayDreams Book Launch at LongHouse Reserve on August 13, 2026 in East Hampton, NY. Photo by Patrick McMullan, Courtesy of LongHouse Reserve.
The passages featured in the launch presentation shifted easily between melancholy, possibility, memory, and flight. Richard Pasquarelli’s meditation on weeds turns unwanted growth into a metaphor for surrender, while Benjamin Keating’s fragmented poem leaps with the associative logic of a dream: “Day is limited / Sky is infinite / Sour or sad in our condition is eminent / Endless.” Ned Smyth’s reverie begins simply, with the clearing of a storm: “Tribeca-on top of Harrison / The rains have finally cleared / I look down into a puddle and see / a pigeon’s face looking back / cocking its head.” From there, the scene lifts from a Manhattan street toward New Jersey, Rome, and memory.
Michele Oka Doner’s contribution finds another route into the dream state, drawing a thread between the formation of mother-of-pearl and the way dreams accumulate in layers. “Both are produced by living organisms. And both have imperfections, blemishes. Yet they are capable of production reflection, or even radiance.” Her closing thought is peacefully lustrous: “A perfect pearl rarely occurs in nature, a dream without bumps, pits, or even color is also rare.”
A Living Archive at LongHouse Reserve
Julian Schnabel, “Diving Bell,” 2007, Still, Courtesy of the artist.
DayDreams evokes a portrait of a community thinking together. Its pages preserve artworks, texts, as well as the imaginative relationships that have blossomed around LongHouse over decades. Importantly, the book embraces Larsen’s vision of the reserve as a living case study in the ever-evolving relationship between nature, people, and art.
The invitation is wonderfully simple: to pause, to wander, and to let the mind make its own garden. As Salomon writes, “In a world that commands your focus, we invite you to come to the Garden with your DayDreams.”
“Having LongHouse in your heart is akin to a kind of dreamscape…”
Dianne Benson
Monica Banks,
“Fourth of July,” 2023,
24 by 36 inches,
Archival pigment print,
Image courtesy of the artist.
Philip Glass,
“Dreaming Awake,” 2022,
Pencil on paper,
©Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc.,
Image courtesy of the artist.
Lori Hawkings,
“What We Keep,” 2026,
Photograph,
20 by 30 inches,
Image courtesy of the artist.
