Arts

    “I bought my car based on what I could fit into it,” Cynthia Knott said recently at her Springs studio, gesturing at her all-terrain vehicle. “That way I can go on the beach and get out of the way of hurricanes.”

    There’s such a dizzying number of things going on at Guild Hall over the next eight days that it’s hard to know where to begin.

    On Friday, Aug. 26, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will appear along with Mario Cantone, Joy Behar, Scott Adsit, Tovah Feldshuh, Eugene Pack, and Dayle Reyfel in “Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words” at 7 and 9 p.m.

    A concert reading of “Giovanni the Fearless,” a new musical by the composer Mira J. Spektor and the lyricist Carolyn Balducci based on a classic Italian folk tale, will take place at the Montauk Library on Saturday evening at 7:30.

Pollock’s Politics

    Michael Leja will discuss Jackson Pollock’s political views on Sunday at the Fireplace Project, a gallery space across Springs-Fireplace  Road from the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs.

    The illustrated lecture, “The Pollock Brothers and the Politics of Art in the 1930s,” is based on Mr. Leja’s recent book about letters written by and to family members from 1927 to 1947. Three of five Pollock brothers became artists during the Depression years.

    An unlikely hero, Josh Grisetti has a face like a question mark. His raised eyebrows and nose are the curve and his often agape mouth forms the dot at its base. As the protagonist of “Enter Laughing,” he can mold that face like putty, looking doltish or debonair in the span of a second.

    Music by three composers was linked together by a common theme at a Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival concert on Sunday.

    Called “Historic Firsts,” the program, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, consisted of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, considered the first major piece written for the combination of piano and three strings; Kenji Bunch’s “Changes of Phase” for woodwind quintet, which was commissioned by the festival and premiered in 1999, and Louis Spohr’s Nonet in F, the first-ever work to call itself a nonet.

    And you be wise, alert for inconsistencies and tolerant of them and of all other caprices of growth, you will find that the garden at its core is inexhaustible and sparks off by day and by night curious independent tangents, little trills and flourishes that are boundless in their possibilities and endless in their ability to woo, cajole, and astonish. The sunflower on the southeast corner of the Inner (formerly Secret) Garden, for example. I didn’t plant it.

Springs Invitational at 44

    The Springs Improvement Society Art Committee’s invitational exhibit will open this week with two events. The first, this evening from 4 to 7, is a preview benefit to honor the contributions to the society by Ernestine Lassaw, Jean Hoffmann, and Abby Abrams, with a $25 donation collected at the door. Also, art sales during the three-week show will benefit the society, Ashawagh Hall, and the society’s scholarships. The regular opening reception will be held tomorrow from 4 to 7 p.m.

    It’s one thing to play the music of the Allman Brothers, but quite another to have a member of the legendary Southern rock ensemble sit in with you when you do. That’s what will happen at Guild Hall when the drummer Butch Trucks, a founding member of the group, joins Great Caesar’s Ghost onstage for shows on Monday and Tuesday starting at 7:30 p.m.

By the end of 2009, it seemed all print media companies were on the verge of collapse. Bankruptcies and layoffs were the common headlines generated by activities happening in the very newsrooms reporting them

    Tonight is the first of what Kathy Zeiger hopes will be many Thursday night “art walks.”                          

    Ms. Zeiger, an East Hampton resident, has convinced 11 of the some 16 galleries in East Hampton to stay open until 8 tonight, and every Thursday thereafter this summer, so that diners, moviegoers, and others who stroll in the village business district can stop in and see fine art.     

Balloons will indicate the participating galleries, as will fliers that can be obtained at each.

Richard Phillips and Local 87

    Richard Phillips will show his work in East Hampton beginning this week at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in the space also occupied by Harper’s Books.

    Mr. Phillips channels the hard and soft sell of commercialization through manipulating products and displays using objects such as album covers, posters, designer handbags, and beach towels in a show titled “P.O.P.” for Point of Purchase. This is the first full-scale presentation of these works.

    Before house-share reality shows like “Big Brother” or — dare we mention it? — “Private Stars,” there was “Betty’s Summer Vacation” by Christopher Durang, the well-known author of “Beyond Therapy,” “Romance,” and other theater favorites.

    Nostalgia is not a sweet or minor matter, being, fundamentally, a form of boredom  and it is boredom,  not confinement, that will kill the lion. Forget the smiling, amiable, charming elder speaking winningly and dulcetly of the good old days for he (or she) has only contempt for the present and those good old days so deliciously described were as rotten as those of today and as similarly lamented.

A New Gallery,

A Russian Artist

    The Arthur T. Kalaher Fine Art Gallery has opened at 28 Job’s Lane in Southampton and is showing the works of Henry Bing, Richard Ericson, James Knox, Charles Levier, and Abraham Rattner and featuring the paintings of Nahum Tschacbasov. The gallery has another space on Madison Street in Sag Harbor, which is showing large-format works by Tschacbasov.

Born in Paris and feeling uprooted once her family immigrated to New York, Ms. Bigar, in her own words, “experienced a second birth, a new independence, self-belief, and the opening up of my world through my studies of art.”

The recent rave is the tropical look for our gardens, get out and get under the continent, go south, enthuse the pundits, quite forgetting that the gardener up north has always enjoyed the tender and the cosseted.

Packing a whip and a six-shooter, the musical comedy “Destry Rides Again” arrives at LTV Studios for a three-night stand beginning next Thursday.

The MTK: Music to Know Festival has announced the daily lineup of performers for the shows on Aug. 13 and 14, and a limited number of one-day tickets are on sale.

On Aug. 13, the performers will be Vampire Weekend, Matt and Kim, Tame Impala, M. Ward, Tom Tom Club, We Are Scientists, Francis and the Lights, Suddyn, and Nicos Gun.

On Aug. 14, Bright Eyes, Cold War Kids, Chromeo, Ra Ra Riot, Dawes, Fitz and the Tantrums, the Naked and Famous, the Limousines, and the Young Empires will perform.

    The Hamptons International Film Festival will launch a Summer Sunday Classics series this week at Solé East in Montauk.

    Beginning at 7 p.m., the resort will serve a casual barbecue and cocktails for purchase, with a free outdoor screening after sunset. This week’s movie is “To Catch a Thief” with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. The 1955 thriller is set on the French Riviera with breathtaking scenery and car chases, all in Technicolor.

The Westhampton Beach Performing Art Center has announced its lineup for the 2011 summer season, including an appearance by...

If I had to do it all over again (and I just might — why should Hindus have all the fun?) I would come back as a...

On Sunday afternoon the Chamber Players of the Southampton Cultural Center presented the fifth annual Composers of the East End concert, featuring...

Heinz Emil Salloch has the kind of unlikely story one does not encounter every day. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany because he refused to...

New Gallery on Newtown

    Tomorrow the Halsey McKay Gallery will open its new space at 105 Newtown Lane with a show of paintings by Patrick Brennan titled “There Is an Ocean.”

    Hilary Schaffner and Ryan Wallace, both of whom have had curatorial experience in New York City, are running the gallery. Mr. Wallace is also a painter. The two met in art class 20 years ago and have remained friends and now will be business partners in this new venture.

I thought she would not stay nor last, part of last month and this one, in hospital watching foul weather settle over a Southampton neighborhood painted over and over by...

Steve Haweeli at Outeast

    Steve Haweeli’s paintings are on view in a solo show, “Excavations,” at the Outeast Gallery in Montauk.

Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor has announced both its Mainstage and All-Star Comedy Club events for this summer, its 20th season.

Who plants a tree is generous, they say, but it can be a selfish act, a smug one, one that is a plea for praise, an act of no little tyranny to put in place a monster, an enormous caster of shade, a green monument not unlike a great temple or a hall devoted to...

Grooving at Ashawagh

    “Art Groove,” an exhibit at Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend, will feature the work of 12 contemporary artists organized by Geralyne Lewandowski. The show will include her work, along with art by Michael McDowell, Siv Cedering, Brian Flynn, Claudia Dunn, Debbi Fritz, Laurette Kovary, Joyce Riamondo, Robert Rosenbaum, Joe Strand, Ursula Thomas, and Kris Warrenburg.