The Art Scene 09.29.11
Plein Democracy
Alyce Peifer, of the Wednesday Group of plein-air painters, has organized a show of its members’ work that will be at Ashawagh Hall in Springs tomorrow through Sunday. The Wednesday Group is about a dozen artists who live and work on the East End, often meeting together in the outdoors with their easels in locations that are apparently selected by a vote among those planning to attend.
This weekend’s exhibit has work by Carol Boye, Bobbie Braun, Toshiko Kitano Groner, Phyllis Hammond, Annette Heller, Andrea Hufstader, Cyndi Loewen, Deb Palmer, Ms. Peifer, Gene Samuelson, Georgette Sinclair, Cynthia Sobel, Frank Sofo, and Pam Vossen. An artists’ reception takes place Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. Ten percent of sales will go to the Springs Improvement Society. Ashawagh Hall is on Springs-Fireplace Road at its intersection with Old Stone Highway.
Three at Crazy
Amagansett’s Crazy Monkey Gallery on Main Street will show paintings and sculpture by Barbara Bilotta, June Kaplan, and Sheila Rotner during October. Each woman paints in what could be termed abstract forms. In an example of Ms. Rotner’s work provided by the gallery, nearly monochromatic reds and browns form a grid of thick texture.
Ms. Kaplan’s “dreamscapes” are, as she has described them, a “passage into her turbulent emotional nature.” A painting by Ms. Bilotta evokes a crashing wave or perhaps an explosion, but in a palette of blacks and grays that leaves it open to interpretation. An artists’ reception is on Oct. 15 from 5 to 7 p.m.
Music, Seascapes
Saturday’s opening at the Grenning Gallery on Main Street in Sag Harbor will coincide with the Sag Harbor American Music Festival, with Bryan Downey and Mariann Megna performing. On the walls will be landscape paintings by Ben Fenske, Melissa Franklin Sanchez, Marc Dalessio, and Nelson H. White. Many of the paintings are of East End scenes, with seascapes predominant. A reception on Saturday runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Black and White in Sag
“Seeing in Black and White” is the title of a group show now on view at the Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery on Sag Harbor’s Main Street. Selected works by Donato Giancola, Mikel Glass, and Rachel Bess have been hung on the main floor along with paintings by the gallery’s roster of artists. A reception is Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
Pomianowski Out East
John Pomianowski’s Montauk landscapes are on display at the Outeast Gallery at 65 Tuthill Road in Montauk. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4 p.m., or by appointment.
Mr. Pomianowski has filled the two-room gallery with his moody images of familiar and not-so-familiar sites — many, as might be imagined, on the bitter end of the Island’s intersection of land and sea. A few watercolors done in Indonesia are included as well. The gallery is adjacent to Duryea’s Lobster Deck and can be found by making a right at the Montauk train station.
Fall Photos
Tulla Booth, a photography gallery on Main Street in Sag Harbor, opens a “Fall Collection” show tomorrow of local and international images. A reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 7, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Geist’s “Tall Paintings”
Selected works from the estate of the late Sidney Geist are on view at the Eric Firestone Gallery on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village. Mr. Geist was a sculptor and writer who was born in Paterson, N.J., in 1914. He died in 2005. A career that spanned six decades included time with the Art Students League and the New Jersey Federal Arts Project. Later, he fell in with New York City’s postwar avant-garde crowd.
His work moves between the abstract and “figurative totems,” the gallery said in a release. The Firestone show includes his self-described “tall paintings.” A reception is on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.