Poetry Vs. Paint
Two East End artists, Candace Hill and Aurelio Torres, will take part in a competition of sorts at the Leiber Collection in Springs on Saturday afternoon at 4. "What Remains Vestigial: A Dialog Between Portraiture and Poetry" will be more of a race than a dialog, as Ms. Hill will read her poetry while Mr. Torres paints her portrait.
Work by Ms. Hill, a visual artist as well as a poet, is included in the venue's Garden of Friends exhibition. Mr. Torres's paintings typically feature portraits or scenes from nature, while his sculptures interpret the simple lines of wooden ships.
Tickets are by donation at eventbrite.com.
Come to Springs
The 56th annual Springs Improvement Society Invitational Show will open Friday at Ashawagh Hall in that hamlet with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m.
This year's guest curator, Karyn Mannix, has chosen 65 established and emerging East End artists. The first-ever S.I.S. exhibition catalog, and signed copies of the exhibition poster by Stephanie Brody-Lederman, will be available for purchase.
The show will run through Aug. 6; gallery hours are Sunday through Friday, noon to 5, Saturday 9 to 5.
An Arboreal Landmark
Michele Oka Doner's work in sculpture, furniture, jewelry design, and books is fueled by her study of the natural world. She will be at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on Sunday at 3 p.m. to read from and sign copies of "A Seed Takes Root: A True Story," her new children's book about her childhood connection to a particular banyan tree.
The program will begin with a screening of a short film about the author, created by Alastair Gordon, a critic, curator, and cultural historian. A conversation between Ms. Doner and Mr. Gordon will follow.
Tickets are $30, $20 for members.
Plein-Air Peconic
"Peconic Bay Impressionism" is at the Gardiner Mill Cottage Gallery in East Hampton through Aug. 14. That movement began with a small group of women, plein-air painters, in the late 19th century, and continued for more than 100 years.
Among its more prominent members were Caroline M. Bell, Julia Miller Wickham, Clara Moore Howard, Helen M. Kroeger, Agnes Mothersele, Marguerite Moore Hawkins, and Annie Grabie Young.
A 48-page catalog is available, as are two books by Terry Wallace, the show's curator. Viewing hours are Friday through Monday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and by appointment.
Strong-Cuevas Awes, Awed
Two films by Lana Jokel about the sculptor Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, who died in March at the age of 94, will be shown at the Southampton Arts Center on Sunday at 5 p.m. Ms. Jokel will be present, and a reception will follow the screening.
"Strong-Cuevas Sculpture" (2002-2021) establishes that the artist's sculptural language originates from the basic form of the human head. "Strong-Cuevas Sculpture II: I Like to Be Awed" (2021) continues the exploration of the artist's work as well as her extraordinary life.
The program is free.
Long Covid Into Art
"Get Lost in the Magic of Montauk," a show of mixed-media works by Patrick J. Peters III, will open at the Lucore Art Gallery in Montauk with a reception on Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m. and continue through Aug. 8.
Self-taught, Mr. Peters, who lives in East Hampton, took up painting in 2020, during a struggle against long Covid. "I didn't know what was happening to me," he told The Star in a recent interview. "So I used art as an escape to all that, and that was the precursor to my becoming a full-time artist."
Sunlight and Faces
"Serenity," a two-artist exhibition of work by Christophe von Hohenberg and Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, will be at MM Fine Art in Southampton from Saturday through Aug. 13.
The show will include new work from Mr. von Hohenberg's "White Album" series, black-and-white photographs of East End beaches, in which animals, people, and other details are bleached out by the glaring sun.
The human head finds expression in Strong-Cuevas's sculpture in countless ways, scales, and materials.
A reception will be held on Aug. 5 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Engel's Transformations
"Transformations: Recent Work of Christopher Engel" is opening Thursday at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor. The works on view offer glimpses into transformative experiences, among them a child's first encounter with art in "Mo Ma," a figurative work, or the interplay of natural shapes evolving into intricate patterns in the abstract works "Air," "Fire," and "Water."
A reception will take place on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will remain on view through Aug. 17.
Animal Masks
"Natural Causes," a show of recent paintings by Chloe Wise, can be seen in the side galleries of the West Barn at the Ranch in Montauk through Aug. 10.
The exhibition consists primarily of paintings of figures donning animal masks. To address the phenomenon, Ms. Wise created an assortment of portraits of her adult friends, nude except for the masks.
For the children's portraits, she borrows impish faces from stock photos found on a Halloween website.
Fungi and Glass
Keyes Art in Sag Harbor will open "Sporis Spectaculi," a show of recent work by Randy Polumbo, with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
Inspired by the pandemic, Mr. Polumbo's recent work explores fungi as sculptural material. For example, "Small Beehive" is a hand-beaded mycelium beehive chandelier with handblown glass pistils, stamens, and micro-planets. In "Cyclops," hand-cast glass encloses video of naturally occurring phenomena.
The show will run through Aug. 11.
Hand-Sewn Bagels
"Feltz Bagels," in which Lucy Sparrow presents 13 varieties of bagel, each hand-sewn and available stuffed with a sewn selection of staples, will be at TW Fine Art in Montauk from Wednesday through Sept. 4.
The work is an artistic homage to the bagel shops of the Lower East Side. Previous installations by the British artist have included "8 'Till Late," which recreated a New York bodega with 9,000 felt sculptures, and "Lucy's on 6th," a felt delicatessen that opened in Rockefeller Center in 2019.
"Fireworks" at First Street
"Fireworks," a photograph by Joan Easton taken in Amagansett, has been selected among 1,000 entries submitted for the First Street Gallery's 2023 National Exhibition.
The show, "Nocturne," will open next Thursday at the Chelsea gallery with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. and will remain on view through Aug. 26.
Pop-Up in Bridgehampton
Chase Contemporary, a SoHo gallery, has opened a pop-up exhibition that is on view at Chase Edwards Gallery in Bridgehampton through Sept. 4.
The show includes work by Richard Hambleton, a street artist who emerged from the 1980s New York art scene; Andres Valencia, whose large paintings are influenced by Picasso and Cubism; Raphael Mazzucco, a fashion and music photographer, and Imani Bilal, an abstract painter and poet whose work is rooted in her Islamic practices.
East End Visions
"Visions," an exhibition of work by members of the East End Photographers Group, is opening Thursday at the Water Mill Museum.
Organized by Marilyn Stevenson, the show includes work by Gerry Giliberti, Richard Law, Mark Testa, Ron Buchter, Jim Slezak, Joanna McCarthy, Danielle Leef, David Johns, Anthony Lombardo, Keith Manning, and Ms. Stevenson.
An opening reception will be held on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. The show will continue through Aug. 13.
