The Art at the Hotel Fauchère

The Hotel Fauchère features work by prominent artists throughout the hotel. Please enjoy touring the various areas to view the art.

• Bar Louis

• Gallerie Fauchère (first-floor hallway of the main hotel building)

• First Floor

• Fauchère Meeting Center (second floor)

• Delmonico Room, Guest Reception Parlor
  and Second and Third Floor Hallways of the main hotel

• Conservatory

• Guest Rooms (as available)

Bar Louis

Photographer Christopher Makos was once called “the most modern photographer in America” by his close friend, Andy Warhol.  Makos’ photography, including several images of Warhol, is featured in Bar Louis on the hotel’s ground level.

The iconic Makos photograph of Andy Warhol kissing John Lennon has been behind the bar since Bar Louis opened in 2006.  Photographs of flowers and horses by the Hilton Brothers, a collaboration between Makos and photographer Paul Solberg, was featured in Bar Louis from 2006-2019 when those images were moved to the hotel’s guest rooms.  Today, “icons of the 80s” photographs are featured in Bar Louis, including Andy Warhol with Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Debbie Harry, Jean Michel-Basquiat, Liza Minelli with John Lennon (shown above), Andy Warhol with Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol with Philip Johnson and Andy Warhol with Salvador Dali.

Makos has been a seminal figure in the American contemporary art scene, including having introduced artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to Andy Warhol.  Makos’ work has been featured in hundreds of exhibitions, galleries, and museums around the world. Though most notably recognized for his photographs, Makos’ attention has also gravitated to painting, silkscreens, and serigraphs.  Makos has a seasonal residence in Milford.

The glass entry door to Bar Louis from Catharine Street was designed and etched by Milford-based glass artist Elisa Ferracane, who was inspired by the wood grain of the Bar Louis bar.

Galerie Fauchère

The first-floor hallway of the hotel is an exhibition space that features a variety of artists.  The current show is work by Paul Solberg, titled Service.  Service is a limited edition of 20 digital pigment prints using flatbed scans of SX 70 Polaroids, produced in New York to the highest archival standards.
The Technical influence on the Conceptual Process
Solberg began experimenting with the Polaroid SX-70 camera and film process in 2009, testing
temperature extremes and the response of various films. Freezing film, heating film, searching for a
particular characteristic he didn’t know until he saw it. A year later, during “Fleet Week”, when the
military annually sails into the Hudson River to visit Manhattan over the extended Memorial Day
weekend, he discovered a particular film stock the same day the military and sailors arrived in May
2010. The fragility of this particular damaged film, while manipulating the tone by manipulating the
film’s climate, was the narrative solution Solberg was seeking. He got on his bike and threaded through
the streets of Manhattan- mainly Time Square- to seek out any service person walking past a clean white
building façade, a challenge in the dense walls of electricity. As the first portraits and conversations
were experienced, the project was obvious and immediate. It was four 20 hour days until the film ran
out.
Solberg’s intention of putting together a large body of such works was interrupted when in just days
most of the faces abruptly vanished from the developed film. The chemical instability of the film,
abruptly, left a blank space where the faces had existed. Many of the images were immediately scanned
after photographing, and many vanished with no record. Of the men and women he photographed,
these images are what remain. Left with the surviving pictures, Solberg decided to follow the story
instead of control it, understanding the missing faces, like in war, is the inevitable true story.
The process began with Solberg’s curiosity to capture faces of the young heroes. He saw in his subject’s
eyes, and learned through their conversations, something of the magic and trepidation of youth. He
gained a deeper understanding of their world, and respect for their dedication. Solberg harnessed
chance events in his technical process to ultimately produce images of depth and resonance. The faces
in Service look almost haunted by early experience, innocence lost too soon. In their world, courage and
fear, invincibility and vulnerability, are close companions. The fading, ephemeral quality of Solberg’s
images speaks to the often unseen trials and sacrifices made, and burdens borne, in the name of service.

Fauchère Meeting Center

The Fauchere Meeting Center (open to the public only by special appointment) features work by a number of local artists, including Alastair Gordon, Kulvinder Kaur Dhew, Jennifer Doherty, Jimmy Sheehan, and Kate Horan.

In addition to his work as a painter, Alastair Gordon is an award-winning author, critic, curator and filmmaker who has written about environmental design issues for many other publications including The New York Times, T Magazine, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Interior Design, ID Magazine, Town & Country, Le Monde, The New York Observer, The Architect’s Newspaper, Newsday Magazine, and The East Hampton Star. He has authored numerous critically-acclaimed books on architecture, art, and urbanism including Weekend Utopia; Naked Airport; Spaced Out; Beach Houses, Romantic Modernist; Convergence; and Long Island Modern. He has been awarded research fellowships from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, as well as being cited for Excellence in Architectural Criticism by the American Institute of Architects.

In 2009, he launched and wrote the Wall-to-Wall blog for the Wall Street Journal’s web site and since August 2001 has published it independently as: “Alastair Gordon: Wall to Wall,” surfing a line between the analytical and personal,  between love and architecture. Gordon was formerly a Contributing Editor at House & Garden (2001-2004); New York Editor of Dwell (2002-2005); Contributing Editor at Atelier Magazine, Tokyo (1993-1995;) and General Editor of the Princeton Papers on Architecture (1992-1995.)

Gordon is married to environmental activist and fashion designer Barbara de Vries. They have four children and split their time between Miami, FL, New York, NY and Milford, PA.

Kulvinder Kaur Dhew was born and raised in England and received her MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in London. She has taught at universities in New Zealand, Borneo, and the United States and her work is included in collections as diverse as Kazuo Ishiguro and MTV Europe.

Currently using various media to explore notions of ‘witness’ and ‘melancholia,’ Kulvinder is drawn to examining near-to-almost-epic events from an emotive point of view, rather than a simple descriptive one.  Interested in the distance[s] between landscape, personal context, drawing, painting, image and response, Kaur Dhew attempts to engage the viewer through memories of their own paths into or out of the natural environment. ‘Nature’ in this case, is utilized metaphorically for any number of contemporary concerns.

Jennifer Doherty is an artist with a camera. And as an artist, she is compelled by how this small “piece of machinery can capture a moment in time and display it to us.” Doherty says that her vision of photography is simple. “I’m not too much of a Photoshopper, even though I’ve experimented with it. I have a very less-is-more aesthetic. Whatever nature gives me, it’s a real pleasure to display that through the lens.”

When asked about what she loves to photograph, Doherty responded without hesitation, “I love nature. Nature, she will never disappoint you. She always gives you something beautiful to work with.” Interestingly, Doherty says that she enjoys the nature that she finds right in her back yard, even talking about a wasp’s nest that she found and photographed on her property. “The construction of this thing was incredible and I had to capture that. Because a few days later, the rain fell and it melted away. Hence, the moment was captured.”

Kate Horan’s passion is the figure. Through invention and observation, she creates images that reflect caring, contentious, vulnerable, elusive, complicated human beings. Sometimes she veers toward social commentary. Sometimes it’s an intimate view into the interior of a single figure. For her, it’s always a discovery and a challenge. A narrative can be detected in her art: the whole of a work that suggests a story, or many, even if it’s only in the grasp of a hand or the degree of a smile.

Horan’s artwork is semi-abstract. Painting and drawing merge with her use of sensitive thick/thin line, splotches of color instinctively but strategically placed. Although much of the content in her work is recognizable, she abandons detail in favor of keeping only that which her form and composition require. Realism is not her goal, more the interrupted image. As a child, one of her delights was watching Victor Borge, the wonderful pianist, whose beautiful passages of music would then be interrupted by his meandering, hilarious digressions. She credits him with forming her aesthetic sense very early on.

After acquiring a degree in liberal arts, Horan worked as an editor while studying Fine Art. She attended graduate school focusing on painting and drawing and art history at SUNY/Buffalo. She also studied at the Art Student’s League (NYC) and the School of Visual Art (NYC). Horan’s career as a professional artist began in Hoboken NJ, where she exhibited in solo and group shows. Her art has sold in the tri-state area and nationwide. She has taught painting and is a certified art therapist. Milford, PA has been her home since 2015, and she continues to exhibit in the tri-state area.

Delmonico Room, Guest Reception Parlor and Second and Third Floor Hallways

The collection of 19th century Hudson River School paintings in the hotel reflect Milford and Pike County’s role in the birth of the American Conservation Movement. As the young American nation began looking westward to expansion, the New World paradise along the East Coast had already begun to develop and change.  From these historic conditions, the Hudson River School painters emerged, initially inspired by the uncultivated regions of the Hudson and Delaware River Valleys and the Catskill Mountains in New York state. They documented the unspoiled perfection of the wilderness, as well as the encroachment of “progress”, which was often depicted by deforestation or other evidence of the incursion of European settlers. Many of the best-known Hudson River School painters, including Worthington Whittredge, Jervis McEntee, John Weir, Thomas Hill and Sanford Gifford (who was Gifford Pinchot’s godfather), among others, spent time in and around Milford. Sanford Gifford’s most famous work, “Hunter Mountain Twilight” (1866), was once owned by the Pinchot family. It depicts the famous mountain at sunset, partially denuded of its trees, a barren expanse of stumps, a double entendre of its title.

The Hudson River School of painting is as historic, and as captivating, as the Hotel Fauchère itself. And in fact, the hotel’s history intertwines with this fascinating artistic movement, which features aesthetic landscapes heavily influenced by romanticism – a fitting metaphor for the Hotel Fauchère.

Guest Rooms

Guest rooms at the hotel feature work by either the Hilton Brothers or Jed Miner, as well as vintage menus and other historical ephemera.

The Hilton Brothers is a collaboration between photographers Christopher Makos and Paul Solberg, two artists who explore architecture, nature and contemporary culture through photography. A collection of their horse and flower collaboration initially dressed the walls of Bar Louis since our opening in 2006.  In early 2019, the images were relocated to our guest rooms, each unique to the room.

Paul Solberg was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, studied anthropology in Cape Town, South Africa and moved to NYC in 1996. His books include Bloom (2005), Puppies Behind Bars (2006), Tyrants + Lederhosen (2010), and Tattoos, Hornets & Fire (2012); the last three publications were a collaboration with Christopher Makos. Additionally, Solberg’s photographs have been published in Publisher’s Weekly, Le Figaro, La Lettre, Ocean Drive, WSJ International Edition, and Conde Nast Traveler.

Solberg’s work has been shown at numerous exhibits in the U.S. and internationally, including major museums and galleries, among them La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Galeria Moriarty (Madrid), Christopher Henry Gallery (New York), Karl Hutter Fine Art (LA), and Galerie Catherine Houard (Paris).

Born 1975, in Manhattan, NY, Jed Miner received his BFA in Fine Art from the California Institute of the Arts where he specialized in Synaesthesia and its relationship to Electronic Music. While at CalArts, Jed studied psychoacoustics with James Tenney and performed in the 20th anniversary of David Tudor’s Rainforest lV. Since graduating CalArts, he has worked with many Internationally known Artists and Composers as an Assistant.  He has studied Classical Indian Vocal music with LaMonte Young performed in the 20th anniversary of David Tudor’s Rainforest lV. Since graduating CalArts, he has worked with many Internationally known Artists and Composers as an Assistant. He has studied Classical Indian Vocal music with LaMonte Young and Western Classical Music Composition Theory with Henry Threadgill and Microtonal Tuning Systems with Ben Johnston.

Currently, Jed is developing Graphic Notation and Mixed Media Painting Techniques, combining Encaustics with Tempera and Spirit Varnish.

The Conservatory

The large folk art painting of the hotel is by Juan H. Espino, who was born in Mexico, where he received a law degree and worked as an attorney for more than 20 years before moving to Hawley, Pennsylvania.  Internationally known as a leader in the “naïf art” movement, his work has an innate charm, conveying the best values of small-town life and culture.  His painting of the Hotel Fauchère and Pâtisserie Fauchère hangs in the hotel’s Conservatory.

He and his wife, Millie, own and operate the Looking Glass Art Gallery at the Hawley Silk Mill, where they feature paintings and prints by Juan as well as a number of other local fine artists.