Gissa Bu: LaMotte Cohu Estate

On exhibit: Hope Sandrow's photographs, focusing on Gissa Bu (mystery house), a unique Nordic Lodge designed for aviation executive Lamotte Turck Cohu by the Norwegian architect Thorbjorn Bassoe in the 1930s and recently threatened with demolition. Also on view will be black-and-white photographs taken shortly after the building's completion by the renowned landscape photographer Mattie Edwards Hewitt, as well as found objects and artifacts, many referring to a time when the Shinnecock Indians roamed freely in a landscape of natural beauty. 

June 14 commencing 5:18 AM 2006 Gissa Bu, 2006, Pigment Print on Cotton Rag, 107” x 44” 

The title of Ms. Sandrow's series of photographs, "Shinnecock" reflects both the location of Gissa Bu and the name she has given the white rooster that led her to the site and inspired her to explore it, to document it photographically, and ultimately to plead for its preservation. 

The artist says: "My adventures with the cockerel led me to follow him across the road to the 13-acre estate Gissa Bu that the Shinnecock Nation believes is the site of sacred Indian burials." 

Recollecting an American Dream

East Hampton Star, February 1, 2007

Opinion by Jess Frost

“Recollecting an American," currently on view at the Southampton Histori­cal Museum ·on Meeting House Lane, is a great example of the ways in ·which artists can articulate social and political issues, creating an environment for both edification and. beauty.

Throughout her impressive career, a recurring theme in Ms. Sandrow's work seems to be the investigation of endangered landscapes, both social and natural. The artist has been working in this vein for nearly 20 years, often using a museum as a place to display her "col­lections," be they images or objects. In this exhibit -composed of photo­graphs, found objects, and artifacts - Ms. Sandrow has chosen to focus her keen sense of happenstance, time, and transience on an estate in the Shin­necock Hills called Gissa Bu ("mystery house," approximately, in Norwegian). The initial event that set Ms. Sandrow on this path was a predawn chance en­counter with a cockerel back in March of last year. This curious white rooster led Ms. Sandrow across Montauk Highway to her subsequent obsession, Gissa Bu, a 1930s Nordic-style lodge under threat of demolition. The house seemed to speak to Ms. Sandrow almost literally, with its unique Norwegian wood-carved archi­tectural details, some, strangely enough, in the fowl form that led her there.

The discovery of this strange and beautiful structure incited the artist to re­search its history. The term "research" itself has a particularly academic tone, but in the hands of a visual artist, this process becomes a much more expres­sive exploration. (continue reading download pdf)