April Gornik: Champion of the Arts

April Gornik didn’t necessarily start out to become an activist. Yet over the past decade-plus, through her involvement in a number of Sag Harbor community efforts and outreach, the North Haven-based artist has become one of the leading voices for advocacy here on the East End. 

An accomplished painter, her work hangs in such venerable institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Museum of American Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Best known for her dreamlike large-scale landscape paintings, Gornik’s work is in a number of other major public and private collections and has been shown at the Whitney Biennial in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill and Guild Hall in East Hampton, where she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award back in 2003. 

Alongside her notable accomplishments on canvas — linen, technically — the artist has carved out a serious “second career” as a community crusader. It started out locally back in 2007, when she became involved with Save Sag Harbor. Since, she’s lent her considerable efforts to the Sag Harbor Partnership, working tirelessly to rebuild the Sag Harbor Cinema and raising a community arts center and artists’ residency from the bones of the former Sag Harbor United Methodist Church. 

“For me, helping with causes I believe in is tremendously rewarding and important,” she says. “Although I must say I’m in a little more over my head than I’d planned at the moment!”

Gornik and her husband, artist Eric Fischl, are so committed to improving their community that they have gladly given millions of their own money to these various projects. Several years ago, they sold their lofts in SoHo to buy the Church and jumped in to lead the efforts to rebuild and reimagine the Cinema after it burned down four years ago. 

“The Cinema kind of fell in my lap from working with the Sag Harbor Partnership after Save Sag Harbor, and then the Church came back on the market a couple of years ago, after everyone had written it off as a private residence,” reports Gornik. “I was thrilled that Eric was inspired to throw our hats in the ring for it, so now there’s that as well to work on and it’s a joy.”

The two monumental projects are now almost ready to roll, she reports. The Cinema quietly opened recently for small private tours and a locally sourced grab-and-go café, though because of the pandemic the theaters will remain closed for screenings until it’s safe gather again. And under the guidance of architect Lee Skolnick, the Church has been restored and renovated, and has programming in place that will commence once a Certificate of Occupancy has been issued. 

She couldn’t be prouder of the outcomes.  

“Both look amazing. It’s a blast to show people through the Cinema, and watch them be blown away. Wait till you hear the sound in the theaters… and wait till you see how we’ve renovated the Church. We cannot wait to open our doors fully to both venues.”

Though she’s committed to improving the community, Gornik is getting something deeply personal out of her efforts as well. 

“Culture is a critical part of keeping our souls and spirits fed and lifted — nothing needed more apparently than now during Covid,” she says, adding that, of course, the basics of having enough food and shelter are paramount. “There have been so many studies done saying that people who are active in and contribute to causes they believe in are happier, and that that seems to be deep in our DNA.”

As the Cinema and the Church are nearly complete, the artist is now back in the studio a bit more regularly, she says. She’s recently completed a new print that she is donating to the Southampton Arts Center for fundraising. 

And, of course, she’s already on the lookout for new projects that need championing. The big question is, with so much on her plate, when does this woman sleep? 

“Argh, that’s an ongoing problem,” she says. “I am trying. But I sometimes wake myself up because I’m too damn excited about everything, so how lucky am I?”