If you’ve ever felt like the label on a can of Greenport Harbor Brewing Company beer is transporting you to another world, artist Scott Bluedorn is succeeding.
The Sag Harbor-based surrealist has been making the labels for the brewery’s beers for about a decade. “I guess you could say I’ve always been an artist, but I’ve been a professional working artist for 10, 11 years now,” he says. “And actually, a lot of that is due to working with Greenport Harbor Brewing Company because it was one of my first big breaks.”
Through the end of July, Bluedorn’s work, including limited-edition prints, will be hung in the Greenport tasting room’s rotating gallery of local artists.
Not long after opening in 2009, John Liegey, co-founder of the East End brewery, saw Bluedorn’s House of the Whaleillustration on the cover of Dan’s Papers and contacted him to take part in the team’s search for the right art for GHBC’s labels.
Bluedorn, a School of Visual Arts graduate and beer lover himself, was thrilled.
Now, he’s made a dozen labels for the company, each one developed as new releases are brewed. They play into seasonal themes and individual beer notes communicated to him by the brewers.
Based in Sag Harbor, Bluedorn’s works have also been featured at Guild Hall, the Parrish Art Museum, Sylvester Manor and the Watermill Center. (Photos courtesy of Greenport Harbor Brewing Company)
Many of the labels have maritime features, historical Long Island references and sea creatures.
“His work taps into myth and visual storytelling, building a world that feels both timeless and deeply rooted in the sea,” says Ann Vandenburgh, a gallerist at Greenport Harbor Brewing Company, whose husband, Rich Vandenburgh, is co-founder along with Leigey.
This month’s gallery show doesn’t just showcase Bluedorn’s creations. It also tells the story behind each one, with a quote from him about what inspired each design, speaking to his imaginative process.
One of his favorites is the limited-edition Facing East New England IPA label. It features a sailboat headed toward Coffee Pot Lighthouse off Orient Point, atop what Bluedorn describes as a “kraken sea monster squid.”
“The idea was like, ‘We don’t know what’s on the other side or what’s below,’” he explains.
Depicting his thought process behind the label for Light Work Lager, which shows a large ship pulled out of the water by a flock of birds, he says, “I love the image of flying ships, a theme I use a lot in my work. There’s something fantastical about this idea of being lighter than air — and here the ship, being lifted by thousands of birds, is a whimsical take based on the proverb ‘Many hands make light work.’”
Art has always been it for Bluedorn, who works with various mediums.
“It’s just one of those things that you are born with as an interest,” he says. “I guess it starts with inspiration and then secondly, do you act on that inspiration? So, for me, I’ve always been drawing. I’ve always been creating things like sandcastles or building tree forts.”
As a gamer, Bluedorn also loved building worlds on screen in video game software, pulling fantasy components into his art. That, combined with his affinity for the natural world, is readily apparent in his creations, much of which have a nautical, if slightly ominous, feel.
“I was born and raised on eastern Long Island, so I kind of internalized the landscapes to a large degree,” he says.
Bluedorn’s interest in deep-rooted maritime culture, particularly around the working waterfronts in Greenport and Sag Harbor, also show up on the labels that adorn the beer cans.
“I like to celebrate the historic aspects of where we live,” he says.
Practically always nautical in nature, Bluedorn’s works tend to blend the history of his East End home with deeply rooted environmental concerns found across the area. (Photos courtesy of Greenport Harbor Brewing Company)
While he creates works perfected for the small-scale labels, Bluedorn also expresses himself with paint, assemblage, installation, furniture making, illustration and sculpture. For larger pieces of the latter, he gravitates toward using reclaimed objects that speak to the history of fishing, farming and hunting in East Hampton.
His paintings (for which he uses everything from watercolor, oil and acrylic to mushroom ink) and other pieces have been shown around the North and South forks. Most recently, Bluedorn’s work was part of the exhibit Regeneration: Long Island’s History of Ecological Art and Care at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, which wrapped in June. It was right up his alley, as the works addressed the threats of environmental shifts and pressures.
“I wouldn’t call myself strictly an activist,” Bluedorn says. “But what I do with my art is all about communicating environmental and ecological concerns and topics.”
Find more of Bluedorn’s work on his website scottbluedorn.com and on his Instagram account @theo_blue. Visit the Greenport Harbor Brewing Company Tasting Room Gallery (234 Carpenter St., Greenport, 631-477-1100) from 12 to 8 p.m. Friday through Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 7 p.m.
