SHIPWRECK LIGHT PAINTING

Saturday, October 4, 2025 @ 6pm

On the beach at the end of Hallock Landing Rd in Rocky Point, NY

Be a part of living history and making history by recreating in light the submerged 1901 Shipwreck of the E Brush Schooner. Participants welcome! All ages!

Project participants will map out the estimated 25 x 60’ footprint and hull construction of the E. Brush wreckage on the beach.

Coinciding with the setting sun, Wilczynski will lead a group “light drawing” of the boat, thereby lifting it up from its sandy depths to make the location, size and shape of its hull visible in its entirety.

Images and a real-time making-of video will be rendered and soon after displayed at the Rocky Point Historical Society’s Hallock Homestead Museum. Prints will be made available as a fundraiser for the organization, with an artist’s talk to follow. An additional display and talk will also take place at North Shore Library in Shoreham, where Wilczynski will show the final results and explain how the images were made.

ABOUT THE 1901 SHIPWRECK
According to articles in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Tribune dated November 14, 1901, a schooner owned by Captain Elbert Overton, built in 1873, home ported in Port Jefferson and named the E. Brush was anchored just off shore on the Long Island Sound with a partial load of cord wood, when a Nor-easter came in overnight and “blew hard” through the following day, pushing the boat high up on the beach.

The 60-foot, 2-ton wooden vessel was unable to be moved back to the water, so it was left on the beach to be reclaimed by the tides. Pieces of the vessel are still submerged under the sand today and on very rare occasions, petrified timber from the wooden hull can be seen poking out of the sand after a big storm timed with particularly low Spring Tides.

Rocky Point residents have long been captivated by the sunken Shipwreck, including Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life” and granduncle to Drew Barrymore), who spent several summers in Rocky Point in the 1910s. An avid fine artist, Lionel created several renderings of the wreckage, as an etching. Other artists added paint and printed it on foil.

Photographs of the wreckage taken by Hal B. Fullerton (1857-1935) in 1911, are the best visual record of the ship. He was commissioned by the Long Island Railroad to take photographs of towns along the rail line to be used on tourism-promoting postcards.

Local Rocky Point resident Annette Falcetta wrote “Vessel Ashore at Rocky Point” in 2018 after researching the wreckage, starting from legend and folklore to engaging NOAH, and Cathy Ball, a librarian from Smithtown.

Still to today, residents and maritime enthusiasts alike will send urgent text alerts to each other when parts of the boat become visible. And a few pieces salvaged from the wreckage are on permanent view at the Hallock Homestead Museum, along with copies of the newspaper clippings and Maritime Registry records for the E. Brush and its owners.

3RD ANNUAL ROCKY POINT HISTORICAL SOCIETY HARVEST FESTIVAL
This event follows the Annual Rocky Point Historical Society Harvest Festival taking place from 10am to 4pm.

The Hallock Homestead Museum is just a short walk from the site of the wreckage, and surely would have been witness to many cordwood deliveries coming down Hallock Landing to the E. Brush by horse drawn wagon.

10am to 4pm — Activities & House Tours
10am — Horseradish Harvest Presentation (Bring a jar! Take some home!)
11am — Garlic Planting
11am — Hallock Burying Ground Tour
12:30–3pm — Live Music by Homegrown String Band in the house parlor
1:30-2pm — Harvest Ornament Making & Crafts
3pm — Hallock Burying Ground Tour

Indoor Exhibits at the Hallock Homestead & Museum

“Jonah Miller (1740-1837) Exhibit, Free Black Man in Rocky Point”. Jonah Miller would be the first of many 1790’s-era Rocky Point North Shore cordwood farmers. Jonah was an anchor of the Black and Indigenous communities, owned 270 acres in 1804 and was a member of the Mt Sinai Community Church. This is the first installment of a multi-year project, shining a light on previously hidden facts about free black farmers in this area, as told through exemplary visual source documentation including 1790 journals.

“1901 E. Brush Shipwreck” Exhibit in the back hall features pieces of the actual schooner that was wrecked on the beach at Hallock Landing Road. “Needlecrafts of the Hallocks and Tuthills” Exhibit on the second floor includes works by Frances Hallock Tuthill and her mother Ina Miller Hallock.

FREE PARKING, ARRIVE EARLY
Parking is available at the Hallock Homestead & Museum, 172 Hallock Landing Rd, which is a few blocks from the beach.

PLEASE NOTE: Only a few handicap spots are available at the beach entrance, arrive early to reserve. Limited viewing space at the top of the town stairs to the beach. There is a concrete ramp to the beach but it is not wheelchair-friendly.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE
A Survey of Works by New York Art Educators

June 23 — August 15, 2025

Memorial Gallery at Farmingdale State University SUNY, Farmingdale, NY

PATCHWORKS GROUP EXHIBIT

July 26 — September 7, 2025

Museum of Contemporary Arts, Patchogue, NY

RECENT PAST EVENTS

BEYOND WORDS
LANGUAGE & RESILIENCE

February 18, 2025

Languages are a cultural expression of a community. People share their languages through music, photography, bodies, painting, poetry, and a million other ways that transcend the spoken word. The question is who is listening? What strategies do the “small voices” of minorities, social activists, and marginalized groups employ to overcome the deafening rumble of the ruling majority?

I am one of several student and faculty presentations this year in a wonderful annual event that celebrates diversity and language expression.

I will talk about how photography is a powerful form of visual “language”, and as examples of this, I will show student work from my class from the assignment I give after teaching them how to create their own Light Paintings. The them for the assignments is “Light of Love / Language of Love”. The event will culminate with an audience-participation Light Painting!

KEVIN WOOD PODCAST

Discussion about Light Painting at the Tesla Science Center Annual Gala

November 21, 2024

LEARNING TO LOOK PODCAST
WITH HOST JOHN CINO

Discussion about the history of artists using LIGHT as a medium

October 16, 2024

Museum of Contemporary Arts (MoCA)

Patchogue Arts Council Gallery

MoCA L.I.GHTS FESTIVAL 2024

LIVE INTERACTIVE PROJECTION LIGHT PAINTING

October 10 through 13, 2024

Every night at 7:30, 8:30 & 9:30pm

Museum of Contemporary Arts (MoCA)

Patchogue Arts Council Gallery

Community opportunity to ‘paint with light’ onto the Patchogue-Medford Library. Everyone is invited to create light art in the air that will be magically projected in real time onto a virtual blank canvas, the entire façade of the Main Street Patchogue-Medford Library!

This public event is part of an interactive installation created by Light Painting Artist Alina Wilczynski utilizing traditional camera long exposures in combination with video light painting and projection mapping software.

All ages, all abilities are welcome to participate in this rare opportunity to be an actual large-scale projection artist among all the incredible projections on buildings and other structures throughout downtown Patchogue during MoCA Lights Festival 2024! Light tools will be provided.

In between the interactive demonstrations will be a projection display of Light Painting art created by Alina Wilczynski, including still photographs, video pieces and behind-the-scenes clips from last year’s MoCA Lights Festival, as well as samples of the artist’s work currently on view in the exhibit titled, “Motion in Light” in the Claire Davidson Siegel Gallery inside the Patchogue-Medford Library through October 26, 2024.

2024 PAC PEACE Project Film Festival

KINETIC CANVAS

Video Project Collaboration with Classical Pianist Paolo Bartolani & Director of Fine & Performing Arts at Islip School District Michael Herschowitz and 87 Art & Music Students in creating an inside-the-music hands-on experience

MoCA L.I.GHTS FESTIVAL 2023

LIVE INTERACTIVE PROJECTION LIGHT PAINTING

October 6 & 7, 2023

Museum of Contemporary Arts (MoCA)

Patchogue Arts Council Gallery

PORT TALKS VIDEO PODCAST
with Alina Wilczynski
LIGHT PAINTING PHOTOGRAPHER

APRIL 27, 2023

Port Jefferson, NY

STUDIO PRACTICUM
SPRING 2023 FACULTY SURVEY EXHIBIT
OPENING RECEPTION LIGHT PAINTING DEMONSTRATION

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

Memorial Gallery
SUNY Farmingdale State College
Farmingdale, NY

SUNY POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
ART-TECH EXHIBITION

APRIL 12 – JUNE 3, 2022

Gannett Gallery
SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Utica, NY

Video Installation

THE BREATHING PROJECT
2021 EXHBIT NYC

The Breathing Project was a global forward-looking, multidisciplinary artistic engagement that paired artists, musicians, and poets with healthcare and frontline workers, students, and the elderly who were impacted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Artworks honored stories, tragic or inspiring, to foster a global culture of understanding and shared experiences.

Video Installation / International Call for Artists

WORLD RIDE WOMEN’S MOUNTAIN BIKING VIRTUAL FILM FESTIVAL

SCREENED ENTRY: 2020

Honorable Mention / Finalist

PAST EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS

Group Show Highlights:

UUFSB Stony Brook (NY)
Westbeth Gallery (NYC)
Leslie Lohman Gallery (NYC)
GMHC AIDS Dance-A-Thon Art Exhibition Space at the Passenger Ship Terminal (NYC)

Subculture Gallery (NYC)

Exhibiting Artist/Member (1996-1999)

Monsoon Images (NYC)

Limited Representation (2001-2010)

Getty Images

Limited Licensing of images (2007-2010)

PAST TALKS, PRESENTATIONS & PANEL DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS

Producer of “Women on a Mission: Lesbian Pioneers, Mavericks & Mavens in a Mastermind Session about Leadership”

Presented at New World Stages, NYC (300+ attendees) while part of the inaugural LGBT Committee of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce (2009)

Participant on a Soloprenier Panel Discussion Event hosted by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce (2009)

Panelist at the Q-Me Con NYC Queer Women’s Media Makers Summit (2008)

Montclair State University Alumni Speaker Series

BURNING PRIDE NYC

The New York Public Library
in partnership with The LGBT Community Center (NYC)

Featured Photographer/Artist exhibit titled “Burning Pride” in gallery spaces on two floors and several common spaces throughout the upper floors of The LGBT Center (2006)

Suspended from the apex of the third-story, semi-circle skylight that brings flooding light from the top floors to the ground floor atrium of the NYC of the LGBT Center’s, the colors of pride in the form of a Tibetan prayer flag graced sumi-e black ink paintings on rice paper as part of the Center’s Pride Month art installation sponsored by New York Public Library.

The three-part installation spanned past to present work, with glimpses of portrait studies of lesbian gender identity, society’s uneasiness with androgenous women, erotic role-play based on gender stereotypes and fetishism. Hung from rusty window guards hack-sawed from her fourth-floor Brooklyn loft studio, images are transferred onto metal, fabric, hand-made papers and found materials.

A second set of images were transferred onto gold-leaf Chinese paper offerings set on fire and extinguished in varying degrees of disappearance. “Traditionally burned at the anniversary of a loved ones passing to ensure prosperity for the deceased in the spirit realm, the ritualistic burning of these papers and the images on them represent the death of my ‘coming out’ years by looking back at the vestiges of that experience — stream-of-consciousness writings and photography from that time. I can recognize that each completed piece is a closed and sealed time capsule of painful questioning, hurts and losses, as well as a burning sense of pride and transcendence. In burning these pieces, I am honoring the life-affirming process of discovering, finding comfort with and expressing my personal truths of sexuality and gender identity. In the tradition of the papers, I am sending prosperity of experience to those who are at the beginning of their bumpy journey of discovery and pride.”

These sumi-e ink paintings were part of a study of wabi-sabi, a philosophy of art-making based on the universal principle that “everything is either devolving towards or evolving from nothingness.” The string of prayer flags that introduce the sumi-e paintings served to carry my thoughts of compassion, fearlessness, fulfillment and prosperity to the wind.

VOLUNTEER BOARD POSITIONS

Co-founding Board Member of OP/LYNX, the Women’s Network of Out Professionals (The Nation’s Leading Gay & Lesbian Business Network)

Our initiatives were aimed at ‘lynk-ing’ community partners and lesbian-owned small businesses throughout the NYC area. Events included business panels and presentations, networking socials and cultural events and were hosted at museums & galleries, theaters, restaurants and corporate spaces including Asia Society & Museum, American Folk Art Museum and MoMA.

LGBT Executive Committee Member & Marketing Chair of The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce

Because of my work with OP/LYNX, I was invited to lead similar initiatives for the MCC.