The leaves are popping, the flowers are blooming, and a warmer sun can be sensed beyond the haze and fog. It must be spring on the South Fork, and with its arrival comes the budding and popping of high-season schedules. The latest to hit the inboxes of area journalists is from the Art Center at Duck Creek, where late spring, summer, and fall are about to become more artful and euphonic.
Starting on Saturday, installations of the work of Don Christensen will be in the John Little Barn and grounds. Brianna L. Hernandez's exhibition will be in the Little Gallery.
Mr. Christensen's theme is a reflection on the history of the barn and its renovation to become an exhibition space. His work will use found wood and furniture from the area as a support for his painted geometric abstraction highlighting color relationships. The works are individually painted and then assembled into rectilinear patterns and named after places and events. His "Sign Paintings" series will be placed outside. Although loosely resembling signs that relay information, the pieces are actually nonobjective.
"Wood Paintings in a Wood Barn" will have a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Saturday. Mr. Christensen, who lives in Springs, will speak about his work as both a painter and a musician at the site on May 21.
In the Little Gallery, Ms. Hernandez, a Chicana artist who is also a curator, educator, and death doula, will examine grief and mourning rituals, aiming to provide a place to experience thoughts of loss and how to memorialize it. This portion of her series "Aqui Descansamos" is specific to the site, an outgrowth of the artist's interest in the dying process. Her floral sculptures mimic cemetery beds, tombstones, and tributes, indicating both life and death in their living and decomposing elements.
In the Duck Creek iteration, she will add caskets, urns, and shrouds made from moss, soap, sand, seaweed, and beeswax. The groupings will be reminiscent of a funeral home showroom and designed to evoke similar feelings, but intended to encourage empowerment. As in still-life paintings, the artist wants viewers to consider the fleeting time they have on earth and contemplate their own mortality and how they might wish to be memorialized.
Ms. Hernandez's reception is from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, and she will speak there on May 13. She is also director of curation and board secretary at Ma's House and BIPOC Art Studio on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, and assistant curator at the Parrish Art Museum.
Both exhibitions will remain on view through June 4.
Duck Creek's schedule allows for three more changeovers of the interior spaces, with Misla, Tara Geer, and Sue McNally consecutively in the barn and Sara Mejia Kriendler, William Eric Brown, and Ted Tyler in the Little Gallery through Oct. 8. Louis Brawley will have his timber sculptures installed on the grounds beginning July 9.
Let's not forget the site's popular music series, which uses contemporary jazz as a jumping-off point to express the "cultural heritage, influences, and musical traditions" of the musicians who play there. Adam O'Farrill is the organizer for this year's series, which begins on June 6 with La Manga, a group with roots in the Colombian Caribbean coast.
Also coming, in order, are Albert Marques & Keith LaMar: Freedom First, Adam O'Farrill's Stranger Days, Kassa Overall, Rajna Swaminathan, Kaoru Watanabe, the Anna Webber Quintet, and the Mali Obomsawin Sextet. The performances will be spread across several weekend evenings, about twice a month, through Sept. 23.
Added to this year's mix are several special events such as the Shinnecock Perspectives series, which will take place on June 24 and July 29, Poets Reading Poets, and the Artists Talk series, with dates to be announced next month.
Regular exhibition hours will be Thursday through Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m., and the grounds are open from dawn to dusk.
