Arts

    Billy Rayner hasn’t been to China. Or Japan. But he’s been practically everywhere else during the past 50 years and kept diaries filled with watercolors, photographs, observations, historical information, and memorabilia. “Notes and Sketches: Travel Journals of William P. Rayner,” a two-volume set, has just been published by Glitterati Incorporated, allowing readers a view into a life fully lived.

Ruffins at John Jermain

    Reynold Ruffins, an award-winning painter, illustrator, and designer, will exhibit a selection his illustrations at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor from Wednesday through Jan. 18. Mr. Reynolds, who lives in Sag Harbor, graduated from Cooper Union and received its most prestigious honor, the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award for outstanding professional achievement in arts.

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons will present “In Terra Pax” on Dec. 8. The program is named for Gerald Finzi’s piece of the same title, which mixes the verse of Robert Bridges, a British poet who died in 1930, with the Gospel of Luke. In passages the voices mimic the sound of church bells. Other works include Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on Christmas Carols” and compositions by Cecilia McDowall and Peter Warlock.

    Linda Russell, a balladeer and musician who performs early American music at historic and cultural sites around the country, will bring a musical celebration of an 18th-century Christmas to the Montauk Library on Dec. 1 at 3:30 p.m. The program, “Sing We All Merrily: An Early American Holiday,” will feature Ms. Russell on hammered dulcimer and other historic instruments; the soprano Margery Cohen, and Christa Patton on flute and harp. The group will perform carols, hymns, dance tunes, rounds, and drinking songs, interspersed with Yuletide poems, folklore, and recipes.

    The Upright Citizens Brigade Tour Company will bring 90 minutes of long-form improvisation to the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on Nov. 30 at 8 p.m.

    In long-form improvisation, which was pioneered by Del Close in Chicago and brought to New York City by the Upright Citizens Brigade, performers create an entire show consisting of interconnected scenes, characters, and ideas without any pre-planning or pre-writing.

Nature Times Two

    “East/West,” an exhibition of work by Annie Sessler and John Todaro, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs Saturday and Sunday. The title of the show reflects Ms. Sessler’s use of the Japanese craft tradition of Gyotaku, fish printing, and Mr. Todaro’s travels to the American West. Nature is subject and inspiration for both artists.

    Donna Freitas, author of “The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy,” will speak at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton on Dec. 2 at 5:30 p.m. Her talk will address the social challenges faced by young people today as they begin to lead independent lives.

    Clinton Academy in East Hampton is celebrating the holiday season with “It’s a Child’s World: Exhibition of Antique Dolls and Toys,” which will open Saturday and remain on view through Dec. 31. Among the highlights is a Christmas village that sits beneath a tall Douglas fir, the childhood display of an East Hampton resident who has decided to share it with the community.

    The exhibition will be open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

       An artistic love child of Jackson Pollock and his mistress Ruth Kligman has garnered new legitimacy through the kind of police crime-lab science popularized in “CSI”-type television shows.

       Kligman was living with the artist in 1956 at his house in Springs while his wife, Lee Krasner, was in Europe, a separation prompted by the affair. It would be Pollock’s last summer, his life taken that August in a fatal car accident not far from the house. Kligman, who was in the car, survived, and lived on until 2010.

    It seems perfectly appropriate that a meeting at the crossroads — in this case, Crossroads Music on Amagansett Square — should spark a local musical phenomenon.

    The East Hampton Historical Society’s 2013 House and Garden Tour, scheduled for Nov. 30 from 1 to 4:30 p.m., will feature five residences, ranging from a historic East Hampton cottage to a compound whose main house’s low, modern profile recalls the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

    The tour begins near East Hampton Village, then visits Georgica Pond and Amagansett’s Bluff Road Historic District before concluding in the Napeague dunes will the hexagonal house of David Netto, an interior designer.

    The Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons is sponsoring two events this weekend, both at the Bridgehampton Community House. An informal discussion on cleaning up the garden and other preparations for winter will be moderated by Pamela Harwood, Saturday at 10 a.m. in the horticultural library. Admission is free.

Shinnecock Celebration

    The Shinnecock National Cultural Center and Museum is hosting a celebration of the artisans of Wikun Village, Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m. Wikun Village (“wikun” is the Shinnecock word for “good”), which opened in May on the grounds of the museum, is the first Native American-operated living history village on Long Island. While the village is modeled after life in the Shinnecock community from 1640 to 1750, the staff does not role-play. Rather, they are native people from the reservation talking about their own culture and history.

    “Downton Abbey” fans who can’t wait for the Jan. 5 return of the PBS Masterpiece Classic can visit the Southampton Historical Museum for a taste of the era, starting on Saturday. “Downton Abbey Style In Southampton: 1900 to 1920” explores the village’s Gilded Age with an installation of women’s clothing, period furniture, dinnerware, vintage photographs, and more.

    With a fully reserved first performance of the “Water’s Edge Radio Hour” at Wolffer Estate Winery on Saturday, clearly an audience exists for a home-grown version of “A Prairie Home Companion,” the popular public radio staple.

    According to its Web site, “A Prairie Home Companion” had an initial live audience of 12 people. The show now has 4 million listeners. It remains to be seen whether “Water’s Edge Radio Hour” catches on to the same extent, but the enthusiasm is there, both in the current sold-out show and a well-received test performance in April.

    The Parrish Art Museum’s “Artists Choose Artists” exhibition will open on Sunday, as part of the museum’s weekend-long celebration of its first anniversary in Water Mill.

    Awadagin Pratt, a classical pianist who has been playing internationally for over 20 years, will perform on Saturday at 7 p.m. as part of the 10th-anniversary celebration of Southampton Cultural Center’s Rising Stars Piano Series.

    Marking the one-year anniversary of its Water Mill location, the Parrish Art Museum will have a weekend celebration for the community on Saturday and Sunday. Since last November, the museum has hosted 65,000 visitors and wants to encourage more through its temporary exhibitions, periodic reinstallations of the permanent collection, and regular concerts and special events.

    Dance Heginbotham, a performance group now in residence at the Watermill Center, will open its rehearsal process to show “Fly By Wire,” a work in progress set to the music of the American composer Tyondai Braxton.

    The performance group, which is devoted to the dance and theatrical work of John Heginbotham, a Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer, features highly structured, technically rigorous, and theatrical choreography, often set to the music of contemporary composers.

    This year’s Black Film Festival opens tonight at 6:30 with a screening of “The Central Park Five,” a 119-minute documentary by Ken Burns, David McMahon, and Sarah Burns about the five young black and Latino men convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989 and exonerated 13 years later.

    The East Hampton Library is offering a free four-session workshop called “Meandering in the Mind of Vladimir Nabokov,” beginning next Thursday. The 5:30 to 7 p.m. workshop, conducted by Kara Westerman, a writer and editor, will focus on Nabokov’s “Lolita,” considering language, point of view, and the book’s transition from text to film.

    The third session will feature a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation. Those interested in participating may sign up at the adult reference desk or by calling the library.

    A screening of “Ocean Keeper,” a documentary about the Amagansett Life-Saving Station, will be held at LTV Studios in Wainscott tomorrow at 6 p.m. Produced and directed by Eileen Olivieri Torpey, the film blends archival and contemporary footage to detail the station’s 110-year history, during which it was moved away from and back to its location on Atlantic Avenue.

From East Hampton to Paris

    East Hampton will be represented at Paris Photo 2013, an art fair held at the Grand Palais from next Thursday to Nov. 17 that hosts 136 galleries and 28 publishers specializing in photography books. Harper’s Books will be exhibiting for its ninth year, bringing more than 30 books and photo albums, including several albums from the Vietnam War, as well as a deluxe edition of its own publication, “Yea Yea Yea” by Stuart Sutcliffe and Richard Prince.

    Lois Bender, an artist and educator, will conduct a watercolor workshop from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 16 at Bridge Gardens, 36 Mitchell Lane, Bridgehampton. The class, which will focus on fall foliage and holiday floral bouquet, is open to beginners and experienced artists. Students may bring their own art supplies or purchase them from Ms. Bender. The class is $45 plus materials, and prepaid registration is required.

    Debra McCall will discuss her reconstruction of the 1920s Bauhaus dances of Oskar Schlemmer, explain the philosophy and work of Bauhaus artists, and screen a film of her reconstructions on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., at the Watermill Center.

    The Bauhaus, a school of art, crafts, and technology founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius, had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Its faculty included Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Wassily Kandinsky.

     Neo-Political Cowgirls, a dance theater company dedicated to works that explore the female voice, is presenting a dance and choreography workshop titled Be a Cowgirl for a Day, on Nov. 9, from 12 to 4 p.m., at Guild Hall.

    Participants will create, design, and direct a personalized dance theater piece, telling their stories through gesture, movement, and text put to music. Dance experience is not a requirement for the workshop, which costs $40.

    Bay Street Theatre’s Literature Live! series will present “The Diary of Anne Frank” from Friday, Nov. 8, through Nov. 26. The play, written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, is an adaptation from the book about eight people hiding from the Nazis during World War II. It won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play in 1956. The Bay Street production will be directed by Joe Minutillo and is suggested for ages 13 and up. Tickets are $12 for students and $25 for adults, with special pricing for schools and other groups.

    The American premiere of “Lost Childhood,” a concert opera based on the award-winning memoir of Dr. Yehuda Nir, will be performed by the National Philharmonic on Nov. 9 at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Md.

    Dr. Nir, who has a house in Springs, is a Holocaust survivor whose father was killed by German soldiers in 1941. His memoir details his survival, along with his mother and sister, and their return to Poland in 1945.

    The Friends of the Montauk Library movie series begins next Thursday at 7 p.m. with “The Way, Way Back,” a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old boy’s summer vacation with his mother and her overbearing boyfriend. Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, and Liam James star in the film, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called “sly, richly modulated, emotionally engaging, and brutally honest.”

    A search, via its Web site, of the John Jermain Memorial Library’s catalog will yield a wealth of media, from literature to periodicals to DVDs.

    A search of the Sag Harbor library’s Web site will also reveal a collection, now numbering approximately 100, of CDs produced by local artists. Recently added titles include “Go West” by Inda Eaton, “Time Bomb Love” by the Glazzies, “Smoke and Mirrors” by Joe Delia and Thieves, and a CD compilation of live recordings of the Thursday Night Live Band from the weekly jam sessions at Bay Burger, also in Sag Harbor.