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The Art Scene 04.19.18

The Art Scene 04.19.18

Local Art News
By
Mark Segal

Art for Earth Day

The third annual “EarthHamptons,” an exhibition of work by artists and designers organized by Anahi DeCanio in celebration of Earth Day, will take place on Saturday and Sunday at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. A reception will be held Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m.

The show will include glass art by Mary Milne, photographs by Donna Renna, sculpture by Phyllis Hammond and Aurelio Torres, custom furniture by Angel Naula, and paintings by Ms. DeCanio.

 

Four at Grenning

“Fresh Virtuosity,” a show of work by Victor Butko, Kelly Carmody, Rachel Personett, and John Morfis, will open at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor tomorrow and remain on view through May 14. A reception will be held on Saturday from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Mr. Butko, a Russian impressionist painter, will show scenes painted during the past month around Sag Harbor. Ms. Carmody’s recent work recalls that of Mary Cassatt in its look at domestic American life. Ms. Personett will show four floral paintings, while Mr. Morfis will be represented by trompe l’oeil paintings with a nautical theme.

 

Call for Submissions

The Lucille Khornak Gallery in Bridgehampton is accepting submissions for “True Independence,” a juried exhibition that will be on view from June 23 through July 6. Submissions will be accepted until May 17. Detailed information is at lucillekhornakgallery.com.

 

At Bridge Gardens

Bridge Gardens, a five-acre garden in Bridgehampton operated by the Peconic Land Trust, will offer Expressive Abstract Painting, a three-session workshop led by Suzzanne Fokine, on May 5, 12, and 26. A reception with light refreshments on Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. will provide an opportunity to meet Ms. Fokine, see her art, and sign up for classes.

A Jazz Girl Turns Author

A Jazz Girl Turns Author

“Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures From Hollywood to Harlem” features stories from the stride pianist Judy Carmichael’s life and career.
“Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures From Hollywood to Harlem” features stories from the stride pianist Judy Carmichael’s life and career.
The story of “a California surfer girl who dreamed of being a spy” but instead became a jazz musician
By
Christopher Walsh

The renowned stride pianist and vocalist Judy Carmichael will host the launch of “Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures From Hollywood to Harlem” on Sunday in Sag Harbor. 

“Swinger!” is a collection of autobiographical essays that tell the story of “a California surfer girl who dreamed of being a spy” but instead became a jazz musician, with no small number of detours, or adventures, along the way. Beauty queen, actress, pool shark, quarterback — Ms. Carmichael, who lives in Sag Harbor, has been all of these. 

“I had been asked by an editor about 20 years ago to write a book,” the musician said last week. “She’d seen me in concert. I tell funny stories, and she said if I can be as funny in print as onstage she’d publish me.”

The idea was planted then, she said, but “Over the years, I started thinking I wanted to write a book that isn’t just funny, but has more meaning to me.” Funny or not — and it often can be — the life of a working musician is a unique experience. “I wanted to give insight into those of us who just keep doing it,” she said, “who aren’t rich and famous but aren’t just a bar band. Jazz is very sophisticated music that’s difficult to play. It takes experience and hard work. There’s a lot of us who are playing at a high level, and we just keep doing it.” The book, she said, “is very funny, but also has serious bits.”

Ms. Carmichael recalls performing for the likes of Richard Gere, Rod Stewart, and Robert Redford; a long lunch with another Long Island pianist — Billy Joel — and hors d’oeuvres with Yoko Ono. “Swinger!” also includes tales of trudging through a Hawaiian rainforest with the late jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, auditions as a rodeo rider, and getting a kiss from Paul Newman. She discusses “Jazz Inspired,” her National Public Radio program and podcast, too. 

She admires the work of the travel writer Bill Bryson, who “really writes about culture around the different places he visits. I wanted to give a sense of the culture of jazz that existed when I was coming up,” in the late 1970s and ’80s, “my early years in jazz. What existed and how different it is now. I wanted to give a sense of the culture of California that I grew up in, and how different it was from the New York of that time, when I went there. How that journey informed me and contemporaries of mine.”

The launch party for “Swinger!” will be a first for the artist. “I’ve never done a book reading or party,” she said. “I’ll read a little bit, talk about the book, why I wrote it, what I was hoping to accomplish, and play a tune or two. And we’ll all drink champagne and have hors d’oeuvres.”

Ms. Carmichael said that creating “Swinger!” was great fun, and led to the discovery of a new passion. “A lot of people say it’s a huge catharsis, and they discover all these things about themselves,” she said of new authors. “For me, it was how much I love writing, how I want to continue writing. My place as a woman in the world, and specifically the jazz world, is something I hadn’t thought about as much, because I was looking back on a long career, so far. I was always the only woman. Now, there are many more women playing jazz. That journey, I hope, is interesting for people to read about as well.”

Reservations are required to attend the launch party for “Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures from Hollywood to Harlem,” Sunday at 4 p.m. at the American Hotel, and can be made by calling 631-725-3535.

Spring Sneaks Into the Drawing Room

Spring Sneaks Into the Drawing Room

Hector Leonardo’s “Mercier” has applied strips of acrylic paint on canvas stretched over a wood panel. Below, a Gustavo Bonevardi “Composition.”
Hector Leonardo’s “Mercier” has applied strips of acrylic paint on canvas stretched over a wood panel. Below, a Gustavo Bonevardi “Composition.”
The calendar says April. The wind says otherwise.
By
Jennifer Landes

It has been awfully hard to be excited about spring in these parts. Although the calendar says April, the wind says otherwise. Nevertheless, the Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton is celebrating the vernal equinox with a show of works loosely or directly related to the season. 

The gallery’s window sets the scene, with a bouquet of outdoor scenes by Kathryn Lynch, John Alexander’s trio of mackerel, John Torreano’s column of colorful gems, a pretty alabaster sculpture by Aya Miyatake, and a single watercolor bloom by Gustavo Bonevardi.

Mr. Bonevardi’s blooms, looking like abstracted lilies and called “Compositions” with the date of their creation, seem hopeful, as their minimal color brightens up the broad expanse of the paper. There is something Asian in their modest yet perfect simplicity.

A much larger column (more than six feet high) by Mr. Torreano, with large gaudy gems, matches some of the colors in the watercolors nearby. It’s hard to tell what Hector Leonardi might be painting in his nonrepresentational canvases that still offer a hint of nature in the strips of color he collages into his work. In “Gennaio” it looks like trees in dappled sunlight with that stronger blue sky of spring.

Rounding out the front room are paintings by Robert Harms in his best spring colors in oil on linen and canvas. There are gentle blue washes and then pops of reds, yellows, and greens. But they’re a bit muddy too, very much like spring. In the largest piece, a three-foot-square canvas called “In Spring,” the dots of color with tails look like tadpoles in the water.

Laurie Lambrecht shows a set of her photo prints on linen that she hand embroiders. The subjects are tree bark, and she titles them with the location where she found them, such as “Sagg Swamp” or “Bari, Italy.” They are hung with magnets in a way that allows them to float just off the wall, giving them a satisfying presence as objects.

Another alabaster piece by Ms. Miyatake is the finishing touch. “Danmen” means cross section, and the piece has one side bluntly cut and yet perfectly polished. She finds her rough blocks in stone yards or salvages them and then grinds and polishes them to achieve their stunning surfaces. Through this she gives them a kind of rebirth, the theme heightened by their ovate shapes.

In the hallway are pieces by Ms. Lynch, Jean Pagliuso, and Fiona Waterstreet. Ms. Pagliuso’s chicken photograph, titled “White #11,” and her “Owl XV” feature her treatment of bird subjects as fashion models. Also unusual is her printing technique, which involves handmade paper brushed with silver gelatin emulsion that is both shimmering and painterly, particularly at the edges.

Ms. Waterstreet shows a suite of her porcelain bird subjects, recognizable as such but unique as well to her vision and hand. With beaks and small heads they begin to morph into abstractions in their bodies and perches. No more than six inches in height, they are pleasingly bird-sized and fascinating to behold in their various shapes and glazes.

The back room finishes off with a suite of Ms. Lynch’s window paintings, simple views out to an urban landscape with strong blue day and night skies. The loose geometry of the buildings and other structures are matched and balanced by the rectangles of window. There is something crudely satisfying about the simple blockiness of these oil-on-board paintings, like drinking something warm and comforting out of a rough stoneware mug.

By the stairs is Mr. Alexander’s “Big Rooster (Hobe Sound)” caught in midstride and looking like he might be trying to escape his frame. The pastel and watercolor-on-paper work is frank and unadorned, and the subject is set in the same kind of neutral background as Ms. Pagliuso’s birds. It’s a fitting end to a show offering all the hints of spring’s fecundity. 

The exhibition will stay on view through May 7.

Earth Day Docs at Bay Street Theater

Earth Day Docs at Bay Street Theater

In Sag Harbor
By
Star Staff

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will celebrate Earth Day with a double feature of two nature films on Sunday afternoon at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“Mission Blue,” the Emmy Award-winning documentary directed by Fisher Stevens and Robert Nixon, follows the marine biologist and activist Sylvia Earle over a three-year period while she traveled the world’s oceans to draw attention to and challenge their degradation by overfishing, dumping, and drilling.

The free screening of “Mission Blue” will take place at and 2 and be followed by a question-and-answer session with Carl Safina, the founding president of Stony Brook University’s Blue Ocean Institute.

“Bird of Prey,” a documentary from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, focuses on the Philippine eagle, the world’s largest and rarest, and the expedition to the Philippines by a group of environmentalists and the wildlife cinematographer Neil Rettig to focus on the habitat loss and hunting and trapping that threaten it with extinction.

Tickets to “Bird of Prey,” which will be shown at 4, are $20 and available at the Bay Street box office and ht2ff.com.

All Star Comedy and Tusk's Fleetwood Mac Stylings Rock the Harbor

All Star Comedy and Tusk's Fleetwood Mac Stylings Rock the Harbor

At Bay Street Theater
By
Star Staff

Comedy and rock ’n’ roll are on tap at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor this weekend, starting tomorrow night at 8 with a new All Star Comedy show hosted by Joseph Vecsey of Optimum’s “The Un-Movers” and Netflix’s “Sandy Wexler.” 

Mr. Vecsey’s guests will be Dante Nero (“Beige Phillip” podcast and Colin Quinn’s “Cop Show”), Erica Spera (TBS’s “Comics to Watch” and “Gotham Comedy Live”), and Max May, who was named best comedian at the Winter Laughs competition. Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 tomorrow.

Tusk, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, will bring its note-for-note renditions of the legendary and sometimes embattled band’s hits to Bay Street on Saturday at 8 p.m. The musicians, who have been working together for more than 25 years, will cover such hits as “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” “Go Your Own Way,” and many more. Tickets are $35 in advance, $45 the day of the show.

Architecture Talk

Architecture Talk

At the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill
By
Star Staff

“Flattened Space,” a discussion centered on movement, memory, and the peripheral vision in architectural photography, will take place at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill Friday at 6 p.m.

Presented in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibition, “Image Building: How Photography Transforms Architecture,” the program will include Ralph Gibson, whose photographs are in more than 100 prominent public collections, Lee H. Skolnick, an award-winning architect known for his designs of museums, schools, residences, and exhibits, and Therese Lichtenstein, an art historian and curator of “Image Building.” Tickets are $12, free for members and students.

Booga Sugar Will Rock the Talkhouse for the Retreat

Booga Sugar Will Rock the Talkhouse for the Retreat

In Amagansett
By
Star Staff

The Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett will host Rock the Retreat, a benefit for the nonprofit agency that provides domestic violence and sexual assault services on Eastern Long Island, tonight at 7. Booga Sugar, a New York City party band, will provide high-energy dance music with its repertoire of rock, pop, R&B, funk, and disco. Tickets are $40 at the door.

Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow' Will Be Screened in Water Mill

Ai Weiwei's 'Human Flow' Will Be Screened in Water Mill

The Idomeni refugee camp in Greece from a scene in "Human Flow"
The Idomeni refugee camp in Greece from a scene in "Human Flow"
At The Parrish Art Museum
By
Star Staff

During 2016, the renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei filmed at 40 refugee camps in 23 countries, among them Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. The resulting documentary, “Human Flow,” a powerful visual expression of the forced migration of more than 65 million people, will be shown at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow at 6 p.m.

A co-presentation with the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival, the screening will be followed by a conversation between Firas Kayal, senior policy adviser at the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Corinne Erni, the museum’s senior curator of special projects.

Tickets are $20, $5 for members and students, and include museum admission.

The Parrish’s series “Inter-Sections: The Architect in Conversation” will continue on Saturday with a discussion between Iwan Baan, a Dutch photographer whose work is represented in “Image Building,” the museum’s current exhibition, and William Menking, the editor in chief of The Architect’s Newspaper. 

Mr. Baan and Mr. Menking will consider how a photographer’s aesthetic choices and use of technology can imbue seemingly static buildings with feeling and meaning. Tickets are $12, free for members and students.

South Fork Bell Choirs' Battle of the Hands

South Fork Bell Choirs' Battle of the Hands

At the Southampton Presbyterian Church
By
Star Staff

The handbell choirs from the Bridgehampton and Southampton Presbyterian Churches and the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will combine for the annual Spring Ring, a food pantry benefit concert on Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Southampton church. The melodies of more than 150 bells and 50 chimes will be followed by dinner in the church’s dining room. The donation of nonperishable food items has been suggested.

For Flute and Piano and the Organ Restoration Fund

For Flute and Piano and the Organ Restoration Fund

At Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor
By
Star Staff

A classical recital featuring Allison Bourquin O’Reilly on flute and Daniel Koontz on piano will take place on Sunday afternoon at 2 at Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor. In addition to two classics of the flute repertoire, Aaron Copland’s “Duo for Flute and Piano” and Paul Hindemith’s Sonate, the program will feature the world premiere of Sonatina No. 2 by Mr. Koontz, who is the church’s organist as well as a composer.

Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and proceeds will benefit the church’s pipe organ restoration fund. Tickets are available at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor.