By Elise D’Haene
(05/26/2009)
168 Canvases
At Silas Marder Gallery
Silas Marder will present the fourth annual “Big Show” — 56 artists, 168 canvases — at his gallery in Bridgehampton, opening Saturday with a reception from 4 to 8 p.m.
A popular pre-height-of-season exhibit, it will include national, international, and local artists, both emerging and established, who have been invited to take three 8-by-11-inch canvases and “reflect on where they are in their careers.”
“From painting to painting there’s a dialogue of texture, form, composition, and content,” Mr. Marder said. “Once the installation is completed, the pieces seem to talk to each other.”
This year’s exhibit will feature works by Mary Boochever, Adam Scott, Michelle Stewart, Kevin Teare, Dianne Blell, Terry Elkins, and Joe Barnes, as well as Silas Marder Gallery regulars such as Marc Burkhardt, Mica I. Marder, Charles Yoder, and Oliver Peterson.
The show can be seen through June 21.
Duo Exhibit At
The Gallery Sag Harbor
The Gallery Sag Harbor will launch the season with a doubleheader exhibit called “Hampton Beaches” with works by Mark Milroy and John Kneapler. It opens on Saturday with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m.
Mr. Milroy teaches figure drawing at the National Art Club in Manhattan and has shown his works in solo and group exhibits. He studied under Duncan de Kergommeaux at the University of Western Ontario as an undergraduate.
Mr. Kneapler, who is president of John Kneapler Design in New York City, has been painting at the Art Students League of New York for 14 years with Ronnie Landfield, Charles Hinman, and Frank O’Cain. His paintings “are defined by his powerful brush strokes and wonderful sense of fluidity,” according to a press release.
The show can be seen through July 5.
African Diaspora
At Amagansett Library
Artmakers, a Brooklyn-based public art organization, will bring “Images of the African Diaspora in New York City Community Murals,” a traveling exhibit curated by Jane Weissman, to the Amagansett Library. The show will be up from Monday to June 30.
Ms. Weissman, a part-time Amagansett resident, co-wrote, with Janet Braun-Reinitz, “On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City,” which was published in February.
The exhibit explores how African and Caribbean art, history, religion, and myth influence mural themes and content. The authors found that several murals in Harlem, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Queens from the early and late 1970s, contained themes and images of the African Diaspora.
The exhibit examines their imagery in relation to the Black Arts Movement, to Kofi Antubam, a Ghanian artist, and to black Christ figures and Ethiopian illuminated manuscripts.
The authors will discuss their work on June 19 at 6 p.m., and they will offer a family art workshop in June 20 at 2 p.m.
East End Photography
Group at Ashawagh Hall
Celebrating its 21st year as a nonprofit organization, the East End Photographers Group will have a nine-day exhibit, “Collective Imagery,” at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, opening Saturday and on view through June 7. The show will feature traditional, digital, and alternative photographic work.
There will be two receptions. At one on Saturday, the music will start at 5:30 p.m. with a ’60s band, the Surf Dogs, followed by a Beatles tribute and more music by Paul Hamilton and Friends. The closing reception will be a film bonanza on June 7 from 2 to 5 p.m. “Man Ray: The Prophet of the Avant-Garde,” “Photographer’s Secret,” and “Man With a Camera” will be screened.
The exhibit can be seen on weekdays from 1 to 5 p.m. and noon to 5 p.m. on the weekend.
Three Up At
Crazy Monkey
The Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett is in full-court-press mode with a new show opening today and on view through June 22. The featured artists from the collective will be James Hayden, Jana Hayden, and Ruth Rogers-Altmann.
Other group members whose works will be on view are Sally Breen, Daveen Herley, Joyce Silver, Rolande Cicurel, Mark E. Zimmerman, Bob Tucker, Len Bernard, and Luc Leboleis.
Ms. Hayden, who lives in East Hampton and is a native of Prague, studied photography there and worked as a photographer for the Czech National Film Studio. She earned a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Fine Arts, where she met her husband, James Hayden. She produces a variety of wall sculptures, mixed media, paintings, drawings, watercolors, and photographs.
Mr. Hayden grew up in Rockaway Beach and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine before attending the University of Pennsylvania. For many years he concentrated on mixed-media exhibits, printmaking, and graphic design. He now puts that experience to creating images on glass, using oil-based printing inks.
A native of Vienna, Ms. Altmann received her fine arts training there and found her influence in the works of Schiele and Klimt. In New York City, she studied with Lee Gatch and was a consultant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. She has exhibited extensively, and her works are in the permanent collection in Florence Moore Hall at Stanford University. A retrospective of her work is scheduled in Vienna.
A reception will be held on June 6 from 5 to 7 p.m.
Larry Rivers At
Tibor de Nagy
Works by Larry Rivers, the late Pop artist and jazz musician who lived in Southampton and was the subject of an exhibit at Guild Hall last year, will be featured at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan in an exhibit that begins today and can be seen through July 31. Early paintings and works on paper from the early decades of his career will be shown.
Most of the works are on loan from private collections. Among them are important, large-scale paintings from his most memorable themes, including “French Money,” “Vocabulary Lessons,” “Civil War Veterans,” and Camel cigarette packs, as well as portraits of his mother-in-law, Berdie, his then-wife Augusta, and the poet Frank O’Hara.
Call for Artists
The Water Mill Museum has issued an invitation to artists to participate in a nonjuried exhibit in June and July. The cost is $20 and interested artists can find an application form with requirements at the museum’s Web site, watermillmuseum.org.
The Riverhead hub for all things art, the East End Arts Council is accepting submissions for a juried painting and drawing show called “The Body at Rest” that will run from June 5 to July 10. The council is looking for work that shows “figures sleeping, reading, sunbathing — anything but moving.” The guest jurors will be Gail Altomare and Margery Gosnell-Qua. An opening reception will take place on Friday, June 5, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Works can be dropped off today through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Submission requirements are posted at the council’s Web site, eastendarts.org.
Roccanova’s Central
American Abstractions
Salon Xavier in Sag Harbor will push aside the styling chairs for a reception on Saturday from 6:30 to 9 p.m. for an exhibit of photographs by Frank Roccanova of Amagansett. The images, which were photographed in Costa Rican and Nicaraguan villages, are abstract prints in bold colors — ochre, fuchsia, purple, and vibrant greens, muddy reds, and bursts of yellow — colors typical of the painted brick and wood buildings in the area.
The artist established an art school for children in a small village in southern Nicaragua called Limon Dos. The school, Una Escuelita, is one mile from the Pacific Coast, near the Costa Rican border, and was built by locals.
Mr. Roccanova studied art at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, became the head creative art director for Saks Fifth Avenue, and went on to establish his own advertising company. His photography, paintings, and sculptures date back to the early 1960s.
The exhibit can be seen through June 27.