Freedom Photographs At John Jermain
In honor of Black History Month, the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor will have an exhibit of the photographs of Herbert Randall beginning Sunday and on view through Feb. 28.
Mr. Randall, who is of African-American, Shinnecock Indian, and West Indian descent and lives on the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton, worked as a freelance photographer from 1958 to 1965 for several news outlets. He is best known from his work chronicling civil rights struggles in 1964 in Hattiesburg, Miss., where he documented the African-American community and projects such as the Freedom Schools, voter registration, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party campaign.
All but five of thousands of photos from that year were unseen until 1997, when Bobs Tusa, an archivist at the University of Southern Mississippi, was gathering material and was told about the photographer’s vast cache of images. More than 100 of those photographs appeared in “Faces of Freedom Summer,” published by the University of Alabama Press in 2001 and co-written by Mr. Randall and Ms. Tusa.
Mr. Randall studied under Harold Feinstein and in 1963 was a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a forum for African-American photographers in New York City. His work has appeared in exhibits at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.
A reception will be held on Feb. 8 from 2 to 4 p.m.
Mark Perry’s a Natural In New York City
Mark Perry, who had his first solo show, “Interlude,” at the Surface Library in Springs in April and who paints contemporary visions of nature from photographs, will show new works at the New Century Artists Gallery in New York City. “Natural Surroundings” opens next Thursday with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m.
The exhibit is the New York City debut for Mr. Perry, who divides his time between Manhattan and East Hampton. The artist attended the Rhode Island School of Design while working for 10 years as an electrical draftsman.
In describing his work, Elizabeth Fasolino wrote in The Star: “Delicate, clear colors and confident brushwork meld traditional scenes of dunes, grasses, trees, and blossoms with a fantastical quality evocative of nature by way of theatrical sets and fairy tales.”
More information about the exhibit is available at newcenturyartists.org. The show can be seen through Feb. 28.
Calling All East End Artists
Submissions will be accepted through March 25 for the first annual Retreat Juried Art Contest to benefit the organization’s domestic violence services. The contest is open to all artists who work in photography, painting, or sculpture. The size of a work can be no larger than 24 by 36 inches.
Judges on the panel will include Ann Chwatsky, a photographer and member of the faculty at New York University, Helen Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, and Gavin Spanierman, the director of the Spanierman Gallery in New York City.
The cost for each entry is $50, with a limit of three entries per artist. The top 30 entries selected will be in a group show at the Hampton Road Gallery in Southampton on May 9. The artist who is named best in show will have a solo exhibit at the gallery on a date to be determined.
Entry guidelines can be found online at theretreatinc.org/artcontest.
Simon Gaon At Nabi Gallery
An exhibit of new paintings by Simon Gaon of Shelter Island and Manhattan will open at the Nabi Gallery in New York City next Thursday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.
The paintings include a suite of large canvases from the artist’s “Sunset on a Lake” series — variations on a theme he has pursued over the past two years. Mr. Gaon has shown in more than 100 solo shows and group exhibits and has been featured in galleries in Germany, Holland, and Sweden.
The gallery will co-sponsor two chamber music concerts by the Nouveau Classical Project in conjunction with the exhibit on Feb. 25 and Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. The show can be seen through March 14.
Figuratively Speaking At Ashawagh Hall
“Body of Work,” a group show of work by nine artists who have focused on the human form in a variety of mediums, will open at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday at 11 a.m. A reception will take place that evening from 5 to 8 p.m.
The featured artists are Mary Antczak, Scott Artman, Linda Capello, Michael Cardacino, Ruth Nasca, David Slater, Frank Sofo, Molly Weiss, and Margaret Weissbach.
The show can be seen on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. On both days, artists will be on hand for live demonstrations of drawing and watercolor techniques from 1 to 4 p.m. A buyer’s choice raffle also will be held. The winner will get to choose one piece in the exhibit.
Wolf Kahn At Vered Gallery
The Vered Gallery in East Hampton will show works by Wolf Kahn, the landscape painter, starting tomorrow and on view through Feb. 23.
The artist’s work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others. Mr. Kahn’s paintings represent a synthesis of his abstract training with Hans Hofmann and a blend of Realism and Color Field painting.
He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, and one from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Richard Mayhew At Stony Brook Southampton
On Saturday, Stony Brook Southampton will kick off Black History Month with an evening of events centered on the art of Richard Mayhew, whose work is in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.
Mr. Mayhew, who refers to himself as an “improvisationalist,” was born in Amityville in 1924. His parents were descendants of both African-Americans and Native Americans. Early on he was influenced by these cultures, which drew him to nature and landscape painting.
“His muted colors, delicate pastels, lush greens, and deep purplish-blues create moods that are real and imagined, earthly and ethereal,” according to a press release.
He moved to New York City in 1945 and attended the school at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where he studied with Reuben Tam, Edwin Dickinson, Hans Hofmann, and Max Beckmann. His first solo exhibit was at the museum in 1955.
A founding member of Spiral, a group of African-American artists that included Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, and Norman Lewis, Mr. Mayhew has had more than 30 solo exhibits over the last 50 years, most recently at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Ga. This year, a retrospective exhibit of his paintings will be up concurrently in California at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz.
Saturday’s event will begin at 5 p.m. with a buffet in the lobby of the Avram Gallery followed by a talk by Mr. Mayhew at 7. The Galilee Ensemble Choir will perform at 7:45. The evening will culminate with a screening of the Denzel Washington film “The Great Debaters” at 8:30 p.m. in the Avram Theater.
The show can be seen through March 21.