Stephanie Reit’s memories of growing up in post–WWII Rockville Centre, Long Island, are idyllic: Days spent playing in the woods and visiting nearby farmsteads, and trips to the shore during the summer. In 1995, she purchased the 1960s East Hampton ranch in which she still resides today. “Close to the ocean again,” she says, Reit also found herself with direct “access to an amazing creative community.”
Over the years, Reit studied ceramics and art education at Alfred and Adelphi universities and “took a drawing class here or a painting class there, but I wasn’t consistent.” While painting in studio sessions at Art Barge in Amagansett and participating in shows at Guild and Ashawagh halls, she started dabbling in constructions. A bird lover, she started making birdhouses for the annual auction to benefit the South Fork Breast Health Coalition. The artist scans flea markets and tag sales for curious ephemera that become part of her constructions. Broken chair spindles, doll’s heads, doorknobs, and rusty gears are all fair game, says Reit, who typically builds on a preexisting birdhouse, many of which she has collected over time. “I lay out hundreds of items and play with them. I never know what a house will ultimately look like.”
Reit also avidly collects birdhouses, which populate every room in her house and corner of her garden. And she is so attached to some of her own creations that she has even been the high bidder in a handful of auctions (“I bought them back because I fell in love with them,” she says). As for what’s next? A birdhouse with brass double-combination locks lifted from an old university mailbox. But she’s still puzzling over the rest: “The process is always leading me to new places.”