The Art Scene: 09.11.14

“On the Horizon” was this week’s show at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, and the first fall opening brought out many locals who may have been doing their own version of hibernating this summer. A large crowd, top, came to check out the contemporary landscape paintings of many familiar South Fork artists, such as Alyssa Peek, left, who sold two works at the event. A Nick Groudas sculpture of welded steel, right, was another work on display.

Morgan McGivern Photos

Local art news

Sep. 9, 2014

Mark Segal

Emily Cheng at Ille

Ille Arts in Amagansett will present an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Emily Cheng from Saturday through Sept. 30, with an opening reception Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. Ms. Cheng draws upon the world’s cultural history for images and emblems, sometimes only fragments, which are transformed and recombined, in the artist’s words, “to service an entirely different purpose and context.”

She has exhibited regularly in galleries in New York City and has had solo shows in Taipei, Hong Kong, Manila, Beijing, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Santa Fe, N.M. Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a fellowship from Yaddo are among her honors.

Krasner at Jewish Museum

“From the Margins: Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis, 1945-1952” will open tomorrow at the Jewish Museum in New York City and remain on view through Feb. 1.

Lewis, who was born in 1908, is generally regarded as the first African-American Abstract Expressionist painter. Krasner was born a year later and became one of the few women in the mostly male-dominated movement. Both artists worked in the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Krasner and Lewis reached their mature styles during the 1940s and ’50s. Both developed many of the elements central to Abstract Expressionism — a rejection of realism, gestural brushwork, all-over compositions, and use of non-natural color.

According to Norman Kleeblatt, the museum’s chief curator, “Both artists drew upon sources with personal meanings: ancient and nonwestern art, contemporary music, forms of writing, references to urban life.”

Four at Ashawagh

“4@Ashawagh,” a group exhibition, will take place at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A reception will be held Saturday from 5 until closing.

Fred Fickera is a sculptor who lived in East Hampton for 35 years and ran a carpentry business. His forms use wood elements to explore the juxtaposition of nature and technology. Marcie Honerkamp, a Springs artist who has been working with mosaics for 15 years, will show new work based on her study of houndstooth patterns.

Ellen McDermott is a widely published New York City commercial photographer whose personal work includes still-life studies, nature, and images from Iceland. Bridget Sciales worked in advertising, publishing, and the restaurant business before returning to her original passion, works on paper.

Scrimshaw in Montauk

“Scrimshaw Alley,” an exhibition of work by Peter Spacek, an artist, illustrator, cartoonist for The Star, and surfer who lives in Springs, is on view at Outeast Gallery in Montauk through Sept. 30.

Scrimshaw is an art form traditionally practiced on whalebone or tusk ivory. Mr. Spacek had already established an illustration studio in Montauk when he was tasked, in 2005, with drawing one of his illustrations on a surfboard for a charity event. After some trial and error, he found that by using a nail and ink on fiberglass he could achieve the effect of scrimshaw.

The exhibition will include images on surfboards, resin, paper, and cotton.