The Art Scene: 05.10.12
The Harnicks Outside
“The Outdoor Museum” is a group of photographs taken by Margery Harnick and included in a book of the same title with poems by Sheldon Harnick, and a selection of both will be on view at Guild Hall’s Boots Lamb Education Center through July 29.
The couple, who have had a second home in East Hampton for decades, are typically known for work in other mediums. Ms. Harnick is a painter and actress who has taken up photography relatively recently. Mr. Harnick is a famous Broadway lyricist who won a Pulitzer Prize for the musical “Fiorello!” and Tony Awards for such musicals as “Fiddler on the Roof.”
The show will feature, as the book’s subtitle states, “not your usual images of New York,” and will include some 15 works with accompanying verse. It is a fresh view of the city that is by turns gritty, graceful, melancholy, and romantic.
The education center will also offer an adult art workshop for beginners starting Saturday and running through June 9, from 2 to 4 p.m. Roisin Bateman will lead five sessions devoted to charcoal drawing, painting, collage, and hand-printed monotypes. The cost is $150, $125 for members, with a $5 materials fee per class. Registration is available by e-mail with [email protected].
Claus Hoie Talk
Judith Sneddon of the Helen and Claus Hoie Charitable Foundation will discuss the work of Claus Hoie at the East Hampton Historical Society annual meeting on Saturday at 10 a.m. The talk will take place at the East Hampton Town Marine Museum in Amagansett, and the public has been invited to the free event.
Ms. Sneddon will examine the life and work of the artist, who died in 2007. Hoie played a significant role in the artistic community of the East End in his prolific career and was best known for watercolors that often incorporated handwriting.
The talk will highlight the new installation of Hoie’s paintings illustrating an actual 19th-century whaler’s log on the first floor of the Marine Museum.
Halsey Mckay Returns
The Halsey Mckay Gallery will return to East Hampton tomorrow in a new space at 79 Newtown Lane formerly occupied by Giraffics. The gallery will show the work of Timothy Bergstrom and Denise Kupferschmidt.
Mr. Bergstrom’s “Glound” series incorporates wire, acrylic, glue, and other materials on canvas. The results are topographically multidimensional works that are either monochromatic or very limited in palette. Each has a rather assertive presence even though the composition may suggest very little.
Ms. Kupferschmidt’s “Motifs” are more graphically oriented with very little use of color. They tend toward seriality, with repetitions of shapes or objects across different pieces and materials.
A reception will be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will be on view through May 29.
Mizrahi at Ashawagh
Haim Mizrahi is taking over Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend with a show titled “The World Is Hanging by a String,” which will include paintings and sculpture. The opening reception on Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m. will feature a glow-in-the-dark presentation.
On Sunday, a poetry reading by South Fork writers will take place at 3:30 p.m. The show will be on view until Sunday at 7 p.m.
Sullivan at Salon
Bob Sullivan’s “Chasing the Light” show is on view now at Salon Xavier in Sag Harbor. Mr. Sullivan earned a fine arts degree at Ithaca College and had a varied career at the Children’s Television Workshop and as an art director in New York City until moving to East Hampton full time in 1999. The show will feature representational paintings from the past few years.
Murray in Southampton
“Chris Murray’s Paintings of New York” is the title of a new exhibition at the Southampton Historical Museum opening on Tuesday.
For the past two decades, Mr. Murray has used New York City as subject matter for his brightly colored and slightly primitive paintings consisting of fragments of paper, acrylic, and pencil.
His architecturally based works rely on a ruler for their sharp edges and graphic style. The Murray family has summered in Southampton for three generations, beginning in the 1920s. This has recently inspired him to incorporate Southampton landmarks in his subject matter. There is an obsessive quality to the work, which may be attributed to his autism, as he draws each building, window by window. The precision of the graphic elements is balanced by the more flowing brushwork used in his depictions of clouds, trees, and people.
The show will be on view through Aug. 11. A preview on Saturday is offered as part of the museum’s house tour, which costs $75 and includes tours of six Southampton area residences.
Funding for Artists
There will be two programs offered in the next two weeks for artists on the South Fork who would like to discover what funding opportunities are available. The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton will host a session this weekend, and Guild Hall will have one on May 19.
The Parrish’s program will be held on Saturday at 2 p.m., sponsored by Artspire and the New York Foundation for the Arts. It will discuss free and low-cost services and resources available nationwide for artists at every stage of their careers. The presentation is geared to individual artists across disciplines and small or emerging arts organizations. Visual and performing artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers have all been encouraged to attend. Admission is free.
On May 19 at 10 a.m., Guild Hall will present “Grants and Funding for Artists,” with remarks by Rebecca Cooper and a panel discussion that is to include Michelle Stark, the director of film and cultural affairs for Suffolk County, Michael Royce, director of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Charlie Bergman, chairman and C.E.O. of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. This event is also free and will take place in the John Drew Theater.
Larry Rivers’s Late Work
The Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City is showing the later works of Larry Rivers through June 15.
The selection of paintings and works on paper done in the last two decades of the artist’s life, primarily between the 1980s and 1990s, demonstrates the artist’s continuing interest in subjects such as the Holocaust, his family, and artists he admired such as Balthus, Picasso, and Mondrian. During this time he also depicted his favorite Hollywood stars, among them Fred Astaire, Groucho Marx, and Charlie Chaplin.
Confronting his own mortality made him sensitive to the effects of time and memory, and they are prevalent themes in these works. In the catalog essay, John Yau writes that Rivers “explored the pleasure and sorrow of memory, even as he acknowledged time would eventually erase them.”
A jazz musician as well as an artist, Rivers began coming to Southampton in the 1940s and eventually bought a house on Little Plains Road, where he also kept a studio. His paintings are in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Gruen’s Photos in New York
John Jonas Gruen’s photographs will be showcased in “Flying Point Beach: Photographs by John Jonas Gruen and the Artwork of the New York School” at (Art) Amalgamated at 317 10th Avenue in New York City beginning next Thursday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.
His artist subjects included Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Jane Wilson, his wife. The couple has been summering on the South Fork since 1959 and bought a house in Water Mill in 1960. It was at Flying Point Beach that Mr. Gruen took many of his best-known pictures of Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and Mary Abbott. The show will be on view through June 9.
Stein’s Sculpture
“The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein,” which is on a five-year tour through 20 museums and colleges through 2015, will visit New York City at the Flomenhaft Gallery beginning with a reception next Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. and a dance performance and conversation at 6:45.
The show is a further realization of Ms. Stein’s attempts through art and activism to eradicate gender stereotypes and prejudices, emphasizing the fluidity of gender. “My goal,” she has said, “is to use my art to transform social consciousness and promote activism for gender justice. With my androgynous forms I invite the viewer to seek out diversity in unpredictable ways.” Her wearable sculptures allow viewers to try out different identities and step inside someone else’s skin.
The show will be up through June 23.
Call for Artists
The Islip Art Museum is looking for submissions for its “Garbage Barge Revisited: Art From Dross” show organized by Karen Shaw, the senior curator at the museum.
Islip was the town that launched the infamous garbage barge in 1987. It could not find a landfill to accept its waste, and the case led to a call for nationwide recycling. Artists have been invited to make use of cast-offs that might otherwise be considered waste.
Submissions can be made by e-mail or in person. Only one work will be considered. Further information is available at Islipartmuseum.org.