Landscape has long defined the artistic identity of Long Island’s East End. But rather than depicting nature literally, “UNTIL THE MOON COMES OVER THE MOUNTAIN,” on view at the Parrish Art Museum from August 1 through November 8, asks what happens when the landscape itself becomes the medium.
The exhibition marks the second chapter of a two-part series examining artists’ relationships with the environment. While Part I remains on view at The FLAG Art Foundation through July 31, the Parrish presentation turns toward abstraction, materiality, and personal narratives shaped by place.
The project also expands a growing partnership between the Parrish Art Museum and The FLAG Art Foundation, which will present three collaborative exhibitions annually through 2030 following the success of their “FRESH PAINT” collaboration.
When Materials Become the Landscape
Jonathan Sánchez Noa, Untitled (Matomba), 2026, Virginia Flue Cured tobacco cast on handmade paper mounted on linen on panel, oil, 42 1/2 x 37 x 1 in. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Ian Kline.
Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq and Athabascan), “Nanuq, Mark III,” 2026, polar bear hide on wood panel. 38 x 34 x 2 1/2 inches (96.5 x 86.4 x 6.3 cm). Image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Photo by C. Creagan.
Rather than simply representing nature, the artists allow the earth itself to shape their work.
Wood, copper, salt, tobacco leaves, handmade paper, beeswax, limestone, adobe mud, jute, marble, silk, wool, chalk, flower petals, animal hides, and soil become the language through which landscape is experienced. Across painting, sculpture, installation, and mixed media, the exhibition considers how material carries memory, geography, and cultural history.
Among the artists included is American sculptor Martin Puryear, whose abstract works in wood and stone have long been informed by the natural world. “The power of nature,” he says, “is my background, and it is the base of my expression.”
His Final Maquette for Lookout, constructed from high-density urethane foam, appears alongside Jonathan Sánchez Noa‘s tobacco casts mounted on handmade paper, Meg Webster‘s Copper Containing Salt II, Andy Goldsworthy‘s Long Island Road Line Diary, and Michelle Stuart‘s Passage Bream Bay, where beeswax and pigment become records of place.
Rather than illustrating landscapes directly, the works transform natural materials into meditations on attachment, movement, history, and belonging.
The Poetry of Materiality
Martin Puryear, Final Maquette for “Lookout,” 2023, incised and painted high density urethane foam, 29 1/4 x 29 x 29 1/2 inches. Installation view of “Martin Puryear: Process and Scale” (Storm King Art Center, Orange County, NY, 2023) ©Martin Puryear, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins.
The exhibition borrows its title from Lawrence Weiner‘s 1994 text work, reproduced as a new vinyl installation spanning the Parrish’s façade.
Hovering somewhere between language and object, the phrase reflects the exhibition itself: poetic yet grounded, abstract yet deeply physical. Like many of the artworks inside, meaning emerges not only from imagery but from the material presence of the artwork itself.
As Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Executive Director of the Parrish Art Museum, explains: “This exhibition foregrounds artists who engage with this very materiality, inviting us all to reflect on the expansive ways we each experience our surrounding landscapes. Representing a diverse range of geographies and perspectives, each of these works allows us to reimagine our own conceptions of land and space.”
Landscape Beyond Representation
Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq and Athabascan), “Natchiq, Mark II,” 2026, Seal hide on wood panel, 20 1/2 x 19 1/2 x 2 inches (52.1 x 49.5 x 5.1 cm). Image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Photo by C. Creagan.
Delcy Morelos, “Organized Salt Water (Agua salada organizada),” 2014, soil and acrylic on jute, 95 x 2 x 16 in. (241.3 x 5.1 x 40.6 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo by Sebastiano Pellion.
Spanning works from the 1990s to the present, visitors see how artists approach landscape through material and process rather than direct pictorial representation.
Dan Colen‘s Zero for Conduct transforms crushed flower petals into gestural abstractions that recall Abstract Expressionism while embracing the fragility of plant matter. Delcy Morelos stains suspended jute with pigment and salt in Organized Salt Water (Agua salada organizada), creating richly earthen forms that evoke both landscape and the body.
Christine Howard Sandoval works with adobe mud and geometric forms to reference California’s colonial missions and Indigenous building traditions, while Sonya Kelliher-Combs incorporates animal hides from her Alaskan homeland, allowing cultural memory to emerge through the material itself. Jonathan Sánchez Noa similarly weaves Cuban tobacco leaves into handmade paper, merging personal history with traditional craft.
Across the exhibition, abstraction becomes less about removing the landscape than absorbing it.
An Expanding Conversation
Meg Webster, “Copper Containing Salt II,” 2017, copper, acrylic, silicone, salt, Height: 42 in. (106.7 cm), Diameter: 28 in. (71.1 cm), Copper plate: 1/4 in. (.6 cm) © Meg Webster. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photo by Steven Probert Studio.
Andy Goldsworthy, “Long Island Road Line Diary,” 2024, Suite of 17 archival inkjet prints. Collection Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman NY, Courtesy The FLAG Art Foundation © Andy Goldsworthy. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong.
Presented across both institutions, the exhibition extends a broader dialogue between the Parrish Art Museum and The FLAG Art Foundation while reflecting the East End’s longstanding artistic legacy.
As Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Parrish Art Museum, notes: “Presented in two parts across both organizations, this exhibition allows the Parrish and FLAG to explore myriad experimental approaches to engaging with land. “UNTIL THE MOON COMES OVER THE MOUNTAIN” presents a group of intergenerational artists responding to the natural world through the visual languages of abstraction, finding meaning and form in the natural materials they use in their practices. Weaving together two significant threads of the East End’s artistic history—traditional depictions of landscape and innovative approaches to abstraction—this exhibition examines how physical and emotional relationships to place can be conveyed by way of material, line, color, and form.”
Instead of asking viewers to observe nature from afar, “UNTIL THE MOON COMES OVER THE MOUNTAIN” invites them to experience landscape through the very materials from which it is made. Earth, salt, tobacco, beeswax, stone, and fiber become not only artistic mediums, but vessels for memory, geography, and the evolving relationship between people and place.
