The Art Scene: 09.07.17

The Beales’ Books

“Reading Grey Gardens,” an exhibition of photographs by Mary Ellen Bartley, will open tomorrow at the Drawing Room in East Hampton and continue through Oct. 15.

Ms. Bartley is known for her photographs inspired by the physical and formal properties of books. When she learned earlier this year that Sally Quinn was selling Grey Gardens, the longtime residence of Edith Beale and Little Edie Beale, she asked permission to document the Beale library.

The books, which date from the 1890s to the 1960s, were photographed against a neutral gray background. The images testify to the damage caused to the volumes by the passage of time and the salty, humid air, adding another layer of poignancy to the Beales’ story.

Reflecting on Migration

“Walking the Walk,” an installation by Rosemarie Schiller, will be on view at Art Space 98 in East Hampton from tomorrow through Oct. 9, with a reception set for Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Ms. Schiller has described the piece as “a visual commentary in three parts on migration and today’s immigrants.” A large group of smoke-fired clay feet deployed in a long “tribal” walk is dedicated to immigrants who have experienced real hardship and rejection in recent years.

 A second component, a collection of smoke-fired clay masks assembled on two metal panels, acknowledges ancestors who have migrated elsewhere. A text spread over three panels, reflecting the voice of a small child forced to leave the only home she ever knew, completes the work.

Dan Rizzie Leads Off

“Art/History/Amagansett,” a series of talks organized by Ellen T. White about art, artists, and cultural institutions on the East End, will open with a conversation between the artist Dan Rizzie and Randy Lerner, a collector, on Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Amagansett Library. 

The second program, “The Art of Collecting on the East End,” which will take place Sunday evening at 6, will feature Sara De Luca and Kathryn Markel, gallerists, and Norman Brosterman, a collector and dealer, in a discussion moderated by Janet Goleas, an artist, curator, and critic.

Subsequent programs will feature Roger Sherman and his award-winning documentary “Alexander Calder” (Sept. 16); Carol Steinberg, a specialist in art and entertainment law (Sept. 17); Andrea Grover, Guild Hall’s executive director, and Ned Rifkin, a former museum director (Sept. 23), and Neil Leifer and Walter Bernard with “Portraits of a Lady,” their documentary about Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired associate justice of the Supreme Court (Sept. 24).

All programs are free, but space is limited and reservations are required.

New Artist Collective

Seven East End artists have formed the North Fork Art Collective and opened an exhibition and workspace at 19 Front Street in Greenport. Emma Ballou, a painter, and Scott Bluedorn, a mixed-media artist, both from the South Fork, have joined with the North Fork artists Kara Hoblin, Madison Fender, Kelly Franke, Jeremy Garretson, and Peter Treiber Jr., in part to strengthen the ties between the two communities.

Studio Tour

A self-guided tour of the studios of 10 abstract artists from the South Fork will take place Saturday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Participating artists are Perry Burns, Don Christensen, Denise Gale, Barbara Groot, Elaine Grove, John Haubrich, Janet Jennings, Dennis Leri, Jane Martin, and Athos Zacharias.  

Tickets and maps for the tour, which has been organized by Ms. Groot and Mr. Haubrich, are available at Ille Arts in Amagansett, the tour’s sponsor.

Audrey Flack Gallery Talk

Audrey Flack, one of the pioneers of photorealism, will present a gallery talk devoted to her work and to “From Lens to Eye: Photorealism 1969 to Today,” the current exhibition of which it is a part, tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

A longtime resident of East Hampton, Ms. Flack’s six-decade career has encompassed painting, sculpture, and photography. The critic and curator Robert C. Morgan, writing in The Brooklyn Rail, praised her work for an “exactitude, bravura, immanence, and eccentricity unlike anything painted in the history of Modernism.”

Tickets are $12, free for members and students, and reservations are essential.

Carolyn Conrad in Cutchogue

Alex Ferrone Gallery in Cutchogue will present “Perceptive Dimension,” a two-artist exhibition of photographic series by Carolyn Conrad and Scott Farrell, from Saturday through Oct. 8. A reception will happen Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ms. Conrad, who lives in Sag Harbor, combines painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography in her recent work. She begins by creating iconic architectural structures from clay and wood, then assembles them into rural scenes. Studio lighting and painted or drawn backdrops imbue the austere forms and compositions of the final photographs with an aura of mystery and timelessness.

Mr. Farrell, who lives in Huntington Station, photographs the weathered surfaces of boats in dry dock, which yield abstracted images of landscapes and coastlines.  

At Harper’s Apartment

Harper’s Books will present “Rose Garden,” a solo exhibition of seven weavings by Margo Wolowiec, from next Thursday through Oct. 26 at its Manhattan location, Harper’s Apartment, 51 East 74th Street, Apartment 2X. A reception will be held next Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ms. Wolowiec obtains photographs from the internet, then prints out and arranges her selections into checkered formations that she transfers onto polymer yarn. The threads are then woven by hand and patched together on a wooden floor loom into compositions that accentuate and distort her sampled material.

Group Show at Kramoris

An exhibition of work by Peter Lipman-Wulf, Franklin Engel, Bob Rothstein, and Isabel Pavao, will open today at Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor and continue through Sept. 28. A reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Mr. Lipman-Wulf’s watercolors, painted in Switzerland while he was a refugee from World War II, have a “hopeful, luminescent quality,” according to the gallery. Mr. Engel’s expressive handling of paint agitates his East End scenes. 

Mr. Rothstein captures Montauk’s fishing boats in vibrant collages, while Ms. Pavao’s mixed-media works take nature into the realm of abstraction.

Photographs in Gansett

“Now and Then,” an exhibition of photographs by Hugh Patrick Brown, will open tomorrow at the Amagansett Library with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and remain on view through Sept. 30.

Mr. Brown worked for many years as a photojournalist, starting out as a stringer for Time magazine in Vietnam. His work not only includes war zones, the corporate world, celebrities, overseas assignments, but also his own passions, among them sailing, birds, landscapes, and portraiture.

New Lecture Series

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center and the Stony Brook Southampton Library have organized “Art in Focus,” a series of three free lectures to be held at the library, starting Tuesday at 7 p.m. with “Conserving Jackson Pollock’s Alchemy,” a talk by Carol Stringari, a conservator at the Guggenheim Museum, and Susan Davidson, a senior curator there.

On Sept. 26, Charles A. Riley II, a writer, curator, and professor at Baruch College/City University of New York, will discuss “Art and the Jazz Age,” and Katy Siegel will talk about the 2017 Venice Biennale, where she co-organized the United States pavilion, on Oct. 10.

Call for Artists

The South Street Gallery in Greenport has issued a call for artists to participate in its annual “10X10=100” art show and sale for the benefit of the North Fork Environmental Council. More information is available by phone at 631-477-0021.