The Art Scene: 05.31.12
Thomas Moran Celebrated
A Victorian garden party hosted by the East Hampton Historical Society will kick off the society’s exhibition “Moran: A Family Celebration of Home and Place,” on Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m.
Chilled tea, lavender lemonade, pound cake with rose petals, sugared violets, and even Victorian children’s games will be part of the festivities, which will be in the garden behind Clinton Academy. All are welcome and there is no charge for the exhibition or the garden party.
The exhibition was co-sponsored and co-curated by Charles Keller and Glenn Purcell of East Hampton and will be open on weekends from Sunday to July 8. It is presented in partnership with the Thomas Moran Trust.
Visual Vernacular
In Southampton
The Southampton Cultural Center will present “Visual Vernacular,” an exhibition of painting and sculpture organized by Arlene Bujese, beginning Monday. It will feature the art of Stephanie Brody-Lederman, John Haubrich, Gerson Leiber, and Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas. An opening reception will take place next Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m.
The show examines what is unique in each of the individual artists and how it has developed into a visual language that repeats throughout their careers. According to the curator, this language may make “various intentional and sometimes unintentional statements.”
Ms. Brody-Lederman and Mr. Leiber are painters. Ms. Strong-Cuevas is a sculptor in bronze, and Mr. Haubrich contributes collages to the show, which remains on view through July 1.
Markel Opens Season
In Bridgehampton
Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Bridgehampton will open its summer season with “Water Color” by Kim Uchiyama, beginning tomorrow with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
This will be the New York artist’s first show in the Hamptons and will consist of watercolor paintings completed between 2007 and 2012. Her watercolors consist of “horizontal waves of pure color that create a wonderful tension between a free, sensual movement of the brush on paper and her practiced control of the medium,” according to the gallery. Many were painted in the city of Otranto, on the tip of Italy’s boot.
The show will be on view through June 24.
New at Crazy Monkey
A new show opens today at the Crazy Monkey Artist Cooperative Gallery in Amagansett. It will feature Bob Tucker’s color drawings on paper and his wife, Ellyn Tucker’s, mixed-media collages.
The gallery will also show collaborative objects in clay and mixed media by Andrea McCafferty and Clare Schoenheimer, and photographs by Daniel Schoenheimer, along with pieces by Cynthia Sobel, Sheila Rotner, Mark E. Zimmerman, Catherine Silver, Barbara Bilotta, and Anna Franklin.
A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. and the show will be up through June 25.
Lelle at Pierre’s
Pierre’s Restaurant in Bridgehampton is showing collages by Bob Lelle through June 26. A reception will be held on Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m.
The show is called “L’Alphabet de la Mode II,” and consists of “witty and clever collages” from the artist, who lived in Southampton for many years and died in Paris over the winter after a brief illness.
In addition to the show at Pierre’s, a celebratory Mass will be said at Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Bridgehampton on Saturday at 10:30 a.m.
New Gallery in Sag Harbor
Main Street welcomed another gallery this season with the opening of the Monika Olka Gallery on May 26.
The inaugural exhibition is “Lilith,” photographs by Rose Kouzoujian. The current show of works by Shen Wei opened yesterday and will have a reception on June 9 from 6 to 9 p.m.
New Space at Boltax
Boltax Gallery’s Summer Project exhibition space in Shelter Island opened last weekend with Jason Willaford’s show “Signs of Life.”
The show incorporates his “Reclamation” series made from quilting discarded billboards — “a response to things that disappear so quickly, that we don’t see them vanish,” according to the gallery.
The artist approaches both billboards and quilting as things that are quickly on their way to being outmoded. His response is to make large, vinyl, billowing quilts and pillows that turn a two-dimensional medium into a form of three dimensions.
The new gallery is in a smaller space in the same complex as the previous gallery. The exhibition runs through June 24.
New Sculpture Garden
Dodds and Eder’s garden design store has opened a sculpture garden in its retail space on Bridge Street in Sag Harbor.
The garden is currently featuring work by Dennis Leri, Steven Zaluski, and Jerelyn Hanrahan and was organized by Dominic Antignano from the East End Arts Council and Peconic Landing. Mr. Leri lives in Springs and the other artists are from eastern Long Island. A reception with the artists will be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
Watermill Center Installation
The Watermill Center will host an evening viewing tomorrow from 6 to 8 of the work of two Icelandic artists, David Brynjar Franzson and Halldór Úlfarsson, in collaboration with Davyde Wachell of New York. A reception will follow from 8 to 9.
The installation consists of elements of cinema and robotics with scenes shot in Iceland, Germany, and Water Mill. The visuals are part of a modular opera the artists are developing about a Danish rogue who seized the governorship of Iceland from the sitting governor, who was his countryman. His failed revolution lasted 40 days.
Reservations are required and can be made at davidbrynjarfranzson.event brite.com.
East End Photography
The East End Photographers Group will present its spring exhibition at Ashawagh Hall beginning Saturday and running through June 10.
The work will include traditional, digital, and alternative photographic processes by photographers such as Virgina Aschmoneit, Ann Brandeis, Dennis Bontempo, Paul Dempsey, Rich Faron, Ray Germann, Janet Glazer, Gerry Giliberti, Pamela Greinke, Kathryn Odell-Hamilton, Greg Hollmann, Joel Lefkowitz, Sam Maggio, George Mallis, Andrea McCafferty, Ron Nicoletta, Harriet Rugg, Guy Pierno, Nina Schafer, Daniel Schoenheimer, Rosa Hanna Scott, Marilyn Stevenson, Clarence Simpson, Christina Stow, Jarret Stretch, Nick Tarr, and Alan Weinschel.
An opening reception will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. on Saturday and a closing reception will be held on June 10 from 3 to 5 p.m. The Blue Collar Band will play at the opening at 5:30. The gallery will be open on weekdays and weekends through the exhibition run.
New Shows at Halsey Mckay
Lauren Luloff and Ben Blatt will be the next artists presented at Halsey Mckay Gallery in East Hampton beginning tomorrow. A reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
Ms. Luloff’s exhibition of large-scale paintings, “Dark Interiors & Bright Landscapes,” will take over the ground floor. The artist layers bleach-stained bed sheets, muslin, transparent fabric and varying viscosities of oil paint in these constructed and torn works. Her use of Abstract Expressionist means are both personal and feminine.
In “Temporal Fever” Ben Blatt will exhibit graphite drawings and watercolor paintings. Both examine the contrast between ideologies of Western and Eastern gardening practices: the Western desire to subjugate the natural world against the Eastern ideal of harmonious coexistence with nature, according to the gallery. His themes include mortality, regeneration, and technological artifice.
The shows are on view through June 19.