Channing Daughters Winery: Walter Channing Jr.

Walter Channing Jr. is partner in Channing Daughters Winery, Long Island, NY. Channing planted his first Chardonnay vines at his Bridgehampton, Long Island farm in 1982. From the winery website:

Atlantic breezes cool our vineyards creating a climate hospitable to a wide array of fascinating grape varieties. At Channing Daughters we grow and create wines from the white varieties Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Tocai Friulano, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat Ottonel, Malvasia, Gewurztraminer, and Pinot Bianco, and the red varieties Merlot, Blaufrankisch, Pinot Noir, Dornfelder, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Soon the reds Teroldego, Refosco and Lagrein will join them. We are the only winery on the East End growing and producing wines from many of these grapes. Our home is a beautiful plot of land in Bridgehampton that contains twenty-five acres of vines, our small winery and tasting room. We source about fifty percent of our grapes from special sites and people on the North Fork.

Mr. Channing's business life includes the following: He is a founder and partner in C.W. Group, a venture capital business focusing on investments and business development in the healthcare, biotechnology, and managed-care provider service sectors. C.W. Group, its first fund started in 1983, has invested in over 40 companies and has acted as lead investor or originator of 25. Mr. Channing is a member of the Venture Advisory Committee of the Brigham and Womens's Hospital in Boston and the Center For The Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at The Harvard School of Public Health.

After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Business School (class of 1967) , Channing moved to New York City and became involved in healthcare consulting and later venture capital investing in start-up medical businesses.

ON THE ARTISTIC SIDE:
On the side, Walter Channing followed in his father's footsteps, working with wood. He found a preoccupation in recovering and reworking discarded materials. The demolition of Hudson River piers led to a new focus: rescuing the wood from destruction. Hundreds of feet of strong seasoned wood were scheduled to be hauled out to sea for burning, but Channing stashed away as much of it as he could. Over the next few years, the wood was reborn as furniture, interior walls and art objects, all illustrating the form and quality of the original wood. Later he retrieved discarded trees from the Easthampton dump. This led to a new medium: roots and trunk forms. More recently he created his own personal dump in Bridgehamtpon to have on hand a ready inventory. The nobility of stumps about to be plowed into oblivion became a cause for Channing. He reworked them and gave them a new identity, often with a touch of humor.

Channing's work has been shown since 1975 at such places as the O.K. Harris Gallery, the Webb and Parsons Gallery, Handschin Gallery, Basel, Switzerland; the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Arts and the Root Art Center, Hamilton College. Other shows: the Squibb Gallery in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Elaine Benson and Louise Himmelfarb Galleries in the Hamptons. He also routinely shows his work at the annual Century Association's Sculpture Show in New York City.

More recent work includes inverted, whole trees mounted on scaffolding, chain saw carvings, wood "Berms", and curvilinear stacking of wood. Some of these portray tree roots in an anthropomorphized form, acting like and even imitating humans. The mischief goes on as carved human figures return the gesture, imitate and mime the nethers of the tree.

Channing's studio is in Bridgehampton, Long Island.

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