Sandra Bernhard, always provocative and topical, is bringing her latest mix of comedy, rock ’n’ roll, cabaret, and a little burlesque to Guild Hall on Friday, July 8. 

“Feel the Bernhard” is a show in the spirit of protest, not just of the current state of affairs in general, but specifically of the lead poisoning of the water supply of her hometown, Flint, Mich. The Flawless Zircons will provide backup music.

Ms. Bernhard is one of those multi-hyphenate performers who has made a name for herself in film, television, stand-up comedy, cabaret, and theater. Her latest venture into media is a radio show on Sirius’s Andy Cohen channel.

In a phone conversation last week, Ms. Bernhard, who moved to Arizona when she was 10, said she still felt a strong connection to Flint, which once had a profitable manufacturing economy through the car industry, but famously imploded once it left. “It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “People can’t just migrate all over the place when an industry leaves.”

The mismanagement of the water supply, which she continues to bring attention to and helps raise money to address, “just adds insult to injury,” she said. “It’s terrible and the governor should be recalled and thrown out on his ass.”

More locally, Ms. Bernhard is a regular visitor to the South Fork and has “stayed all over the place, going on and off for years, renting a place, nothing extravagant.” She hates “the McMansions, those gross places taking over the open space.”

She agrees with most that out here, “August is hell. The biggest crime that people commit in the Hamptons is being so entitled and rude to the people who live there year round. It’s hideous and awful.” Preferring the weeks here before the high season and in September, she said, “If you go at the right time with the right people, it’s gorgeous.”

Each of her shows is modified slightly for the audience, and the Guild Hall show will be no exception. “Whether I’m in New York, the Hamptons, or L.A., I want it to be fun and insider-y.” She likes to laugh at the obvious things without insulting people.

Her last performance at Guild Hall was two years ago, and this one will be completely different. “The Sandy Land squad will take people on a trip, a fun provocative journey that will take you out of your rut whether you are a billionaire or someone suffering in Flint.”

“Feel the Bernhard” will be presented at 8 p.m. and is recommended for audiences 16 and older. Tickets are $45, $43 for members, and are available at the Guild Hall box office and online.

The Southampton Arts Center will kick off its summer music programs with three free outdoor concerts on Saturday and Sunday. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz for Young People on Tour program will return to the center on Saturday afternoon at 4 with a free performance on the outdoor stage by Thunderswamp, a party jazz collective whose music celebrates the culture and legacy of New Orleans. Compositions by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Professor Longhair, and others will be on the program.

Jake Lear, a blues guitarist and songwriter who recently moved back to East Hampton from Memphis, where he performed for thousands on that city’s Beale Street, will hold forth Saturday evening at 7, also on the center’s outdoor stage. Born in Vermont, Mr. Lear was raised on the music of John Lee Hooker, Jimi Hendrix, and Howlin’ Wolf. Claes Brondal on drums and Jeff Marshall on bass will accompany the hard-hitting bluesman.

Jazz will move to the center’s front steps on Sunday at noon, when Yacouba Sissoko, who was born and raised in Mali, will perform on the kora, a 21-string instrument used extensively in West Africa. In demand as one of the best kora players in the world, Mr. Sissoko is equally at home with jazz, Latin, R&B, and African music. He has toured with a variety of well-known artists and recorded with Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, Abdoulaye Diabate, and Ami Koita.

The center’s film program will launch next Thursday at 8:30 p.m. with a free outdoor screening of “Racing Extinction,” presented with Telluride Mountain Film Festival and React to Film. The documentary by Louie Psihoyos, an Academy Award-winning director, is about the mass extinction of species and the efforts of scientists, activists, and journalists to bring attention to the issue.

The Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Festival, which will be shown under the stars on Friday, July 8, at 8:30, will present a lighter look at the animal world. William Braden, who assembled the program of more than 100 videos, will attend the screening.

Although there are some outliers, it is striking how many pieces in “TERRITORY: Abstraction on the East End Today” have such a strong linear and geometric approach. Whether by accident or design, the show makes a strong case for a local aesthetic that favors such a style of abstraction.

One might not put Don Christensen’s “Stack No. 3,” Henry Brown’s “Displacement,” or Bill Komoski’s “3/1414” in such a category, but in the context of a multitude of works such as Rory MacArthur’s “Invisible Supreme” and Peter Dayton’s untitled piece from his surfboards series, their more organic, liquid, or freestyle forms begin to seem as though they spring from the same impulse.

That is not to say that everything is the same here. Instead, the curators, including Mr. Brown, Karen Flatow, and Li Trincere, have collected works from artists with unique viewpoints that still form a cohesive and relational whole. That is the surprise and the joy of the show. The East End’s summer art scene is full of far too many less worthwhile entries, particularly of a pop-up duration. This one is worth a look and more. It is taking place over the next two weekends in an Amagansett potato barn at 68A Schellinger Road. A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The show incorporates recent work by 24 artists, some of them full-time residents of the East End and others less so but all with work informed by visiting or living in the region. The precise linear compositions of Janet Goleas, Gabriele Evertz, and others, become the context for Charlotte Hallberg’s “So Close So Full,” a round panel painting with a target composition overlaid with solid wavy lines, or Ms. Flatow”s rippled birch woodgrain highlighted with gesso, ink, and acrylic.

Gregory Johnston’s aluminum sculpture “Kumbl (for Piet Hein)” has interior solids of rectangular shapes with rounded edges, but what stands out in this context is the strong angularity of the sheets that frame them.

This is what good curators do, find and bring together objects that help you see what is assembled and the greater art world with a new perspective. Too literal an approach looks facile and pedantic; too obscure and no one gets it.

The show is taking place in Ms. Flatow’s studio, a potato barn so nestled into the ground that on a hot Sunday it could have been called “Cold Storage.” Ms. Flatow and Ms. Trincere said it was a case of friends and friends of friends getting together. The shared aesthetics grew organically.

Pieces in the exhibition seem to coalesce around just a few sensibilities. There are the hard-edged geometric works, the more amorphous pieces, and those in between.

Eric Brown’s “I Wonder You” could be interpreted as floral or, more literally, as an egg in a frying pan, but really eludes exact definition. Amanda Church’s blobs, outlined in red, could be alien fingers or dancing amoebae, but in any case are joyful and fun. Mr. Komoski flirts with Op Art, but his central figure might be construed as a more abstract Chuck Close “Head.” The Op Art association is strengthened by Taro Suzuki’s spiral abstraction. 

The pieces from Lauren Luloff, Lola Montes, and Christine Scuilli coalesce around a looser and more painterly approach, even though Ms. Sciulli uses light to create her compositions and Ms. Luboff uses fabric.

Drew Shiflett skirts these camps, using a linear design that is subtle and suggestive in ink, graphite, and watercolor on handmade paper. Its all-over format seems almost gestural in its sketchiness. Chuck Manion’s painting has a softer free-form feeling, even though it is still strongly graphic.

The three sculptural pieces all attract attention for different reasons. The blockiness of Ryan Wallace’s “Crostics” is underscored by Ms. Trincere’s untitled acrylic painting, which plays with perception in a different way. Almond Zigmund’s “Block Print I” has an Inuit or Pueblo totemistic quality. It pairs nicely with Tad Wiley’s “The Waternix” and Chris Haub’s acrylic and vinyl on linen piece.

Off on its own in the entry foyer, Mr. Gonzalez’s “Unauthorized Donald Judd Chair in a Wind Tunnel” plays well with itself. The alluded-to chair, painted in a way that mimics the pooling of light around it, is accompanied by a virtual-reality wall projection recording of air waves surrounding the chair in a wind tunnel. The piece includes a fan, as if to suggest that we are witnessing a live feed of the air flowing over it, but it is merely artifice, a delightful wink at the pseudo-science themes of Minimalism. 

The show will be on view this weekend and next weekend only, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m., or by appointment.

Two at Drawing Room

The Drawing Room in East Hampton will present concurrent solo exhibitions of work by Mel Kendrick and Thomas Nozkowski from tomorrow through July 25.

Mr. Kendrick’s recent cast-paper drawings share the structural integrity and abstract vocabulary that have informed his sculpture in wood, bronze, and concrete over four decades. Mr. Nozkowski’s fascination with the juxtaposition of visual properties is evident in his innovative paintings and works on paper.

East Enders Down Under

“Cloud 9: Perspectives From Another Hemisphere,” an exhibition of photographs and illustrations by Martin and Mankiewicz, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday and Sunday, with a reception Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Martin, who lives in East Hampton, will show photographs on metallic pearl paper, taken in Australia. Mankiewicz, who is based Down Under, will exhibit illustrations influenced by years as a printmaker in Japan.

Camille Perrottet at Art Space 98

Art Space 98 in East Hampton will present “Ocean en Péril,” an exhibition of photography, video, and installation by Camille Perrottet, from tomorrow through July 18, with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ms. Perrottet, who lives and works in East Hampton, is comfortable in a variety of mediums, including painting and collage. The Art Space 98 show draws attention to ocean pollution, which she is dedicated to eliminating.

Mixed Media at Markel

An exhibition of recent mixed media works by Marilla Palmer opens today at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Bridgehampton and continues through July 10.

Ms. Palmer’s works, which at first glance resemble botanical drawings, incorporate dried flowers, foliage, prints of spores, sequins, and other elements, both organic and synthetic, that embellish her delicate renderings of found branches and plants. 

Claudia Aronow at Marcelle

The Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton will present paintings by Claudia Aronow from Saturday through July 3. A reception will take place Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Ms. Aronow’s large-scale works feature a recurring theme of circles and curves, whose swirling, colorful dynamism is constrained by the rectangular confines of the canvas. Classically trained, she shifted from representation to gestural abstraction in 2000.

Resika’s Maritime Paintings

“Boats and Sails,” an exhibition of paintings by Paul Resika, will open today at Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton and remain on view through July 14. A student of Abstract Expressionism under Hans Hofmann, Mr. Resika eventually developed a representational abstraction that moves back and forth between loose brushwork and rigid geometry. 

Panel on East End Art Colony

Art Hamptons, which opens today and continues through Sunday, will present “The Allure of the East End,” a panel discussion about the region’s importance as a gathering place for artists, on Sunday at 2 p.m. on the fair’s grounds, 900 Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton.

Panelists are Helen A. Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center; Christina Strassfield, museum director of Guild Hall, and Dawn Watson, a journalist and photographer. Pat Rogers, publisher of hamptonsarthub.com, will moderate.

Vincent Pepi Retrospective

The Quogue Gallery is presenting “Vincent Pepi: Over 50 Years of Painting,” a retrospective look at the career of the Hampton Bays artist, through July 14. A reception will take place on Saturday, the artist’s 90th birthday, from 4 to 7 p.m.

After travels to Mexico and Africa and two years in Rome, Mr. Pepi returned to New York and became an integral member of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. He followed his own path, however, bringing bold gesture to the more intimate medium of watercolor. 

Two Realists at Grenning

Paintings by Sarah Lamb and Thomas Cardone will be on view at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor from Saturday through July 10, with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

While both painters are realists, their work differs in style and subject. Ms. Lamb’s meticulous still-life paintings reflect a mastery of craft that testifies to her classical training, while Mr. Cardone’s scenes of East End boatyards have a more impressionistic quality.

Speed Painting

For the second year in a row, East End artists responded to an unusual self-imposed challenge — to paint 30 paintings in 30 days. The result is “Best of 30 Squared,” an exhibition of more than 100 works, on view at the Water Mill Museum from today through July 17. A reception will be held Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m. The paintings and photographs on view range from postcard to poster size, and from realism to abstraction.

Todd Merrill Reopens

The Todd Merrill Studio in South­ampton has opened for the summer season with exhibitions of work by two artists new to the gallery, Ezra Cohen and Chris Rucker.

Mr. Cohen applies the golden ratio of 60-by-72 inches to his canvases, then pushes the boundaries of that infrastructure with expressive abstraction. Mr. Rucker uses unusual materials, among them plywood and packing blankets, to create furniture whose sleek minimalism belies their materials.

Photography in Cutchogue

The Alex Ferrone Gallery in Cutchogue will open the “Abstraction Exhibit” with a reception tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will continue through Aug. 7. The three participating artists, Alex Vignoli, Christine Matthai, and Scott Farrell start with everyday scenes and from them create new images that discard the original setting, leaving behind little or no representational reference. 

Art With a Water View

Harbor Bistro, a waterfront restaurant on Three Mile Harbor in Springs, is showing paintings by Scott Hewett, a Sag Harbor artist, through next Thursday. Mr. Hewett’s vividly colored paintings of scenes and subject matter from the East End combine realism with a Pop sensibility.

Ed Ruscha Drawings

Casterline/Goodman Art Advisors has announced the appointment of Douglas Clarke, the former owner of Bridgehampton Fine Art, as the senior art advisor in its East Hampton gallery at 46 Newtown Lane. The venue, which exhibits original works by important 20th-century artists, has a show of early drawings by Ed Ruscha on view through July 15.

AbEx Women

“Women of Abstract Expressionism,” on view through Sept. 25 at the Denver Art Museum, includes more than 50 important paintings by artists working on the East and West Coasts during the 1940s and 1950s. Among the East End painters included are Mary Abbott, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell.

The Southampton Arts Center, in partnership with the New York Academy of Art, will present “Water/Bodies,” an exhibition organized by Eric Fischl and David Kratz, the academy’s president, from tomorrow through July 31. A reception will be held on July 2 from 5 to 7 p.m.

The show will feature 67 paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures that engage the themes of bodies of water, such as pools, beaches, and the ocean, and bodies in water, including sunbathers, fisherman, and surfers. The exhibition includes both academy graduates and artists with longtime East End connections, among them Ross Bleckner, Ralph Gibson, April Gornik, Michael Halsband, Jill Musnicki, and David Salle.

Mr. Kratz, a longtime Southampton resident and friend of Simone Levinson, one of the center’s founders, said, “From the beginning, we had been talking about ways the academy and the center could collaborate. We decided to do an exhibition around the subject of water, which has always been an integral part of the arts on the East End. Because the academy focuses on figurative art, students spend a lot of time learning how to draw the body from observation and imagination. So linking the themes of water and bodies emerged naturally.”

Mr. Fischl is a senior critic and board member at the academy. “Eric is a real inspiration to everyone at the school. I asked him to work with me on the show because he has such deep ties to the art community on the East End and is so respected. Everybody he asked agreed to be in the exhibition, and we got a lot of amazing pieces.”

The academy will also mount a special exhibition at Art Southampton, which will take place from July 7 through July 11 at Nova’s Ark Project in Bridgehampton. The exhibition, “Call of the Wild,” will include works by academy alumni on the theme of the animal kingdom, selected by Mr. Kratz and Brooke Shields.

“Brooke lives around the corner from me in Southampton,” Mr. Kratz said, “and has been coming to our events and supporting the artists for a long time. She is now a board member and an amazing ambassador for the school. I asked her to organize the show with me because she has a great eye. I had noticed over the past few years that she and I often gravitated to the same works at academy shows, even to the point of competing to buy them.”

Founded in 1982 by artists, scholars, and patrons, among them Andy Warhol, the academy is a graduate school located in TriBeCa that combines intensive technical training in the fine arts with active critical discourse. Its students are encouraged to use traditional methods and techniques to make contemporary art. Mr. Kratz, a painter and academy graduate, was named the institution’s president in 2009.

When Lana Jokel undertakes a film project, she doesn’t so do casually. At present, she is working on a documentary on Michael Chow, best known as a restaurateur but also a serious artist who exhibited his paintings at the Warhol Museum in February and, as Ms. Jokel explained at her Bridgehampton house, a complex and multifaceted figure who has lived an extraordinary life. She has already filmed in Shanghai, Beijing, and Pittsburgh and estimates the project will take several years. “He’s now 77,” she said. “I told him I’d like to finish by the time he’s 80.”

While clearly not one to act on a whim, that is exactly what she did during the summer of 1996. “I have always shot in 16mm film, but when Max Scott, a friend, got a video camera, I said ‘Let’s experiment with it. Let’s do a series of interviews with artists I know.’ ”

The result of that experiment, “A Moment in Time,” an 82-minute documentary, will be shown at Guild Hall on July 5 at 7 p.m. and be followed by a conversation with Christina Strassfield, the director of Guild Hall’s museum, and six of the participating artists. The program is free. 

When Ms. Jokel referred to “artists I know,” she meant John Alexander, April Gornik, Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Audrey Flack, Sven Lukin, Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, Robert Dash, and John Chamberlain. Her connection to the art world goes back more than four decades and includes films she has directed and/or edited about Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Mark di Suvero, Isamu Noguchi, and many others. What emerges from her work is both her knowledge of contemporary art and her rapport with her subjects.

“A Moment in Time” began as a series of informal visits to the artists’ studios, gardens, and houses. “One reason I never made it into a film before is that the quality isn’t good enough for broadcast. I also don’t like to see myself on camera. I ordinarily ask questions from off screen, but in this case you see me. So I just gave the footage to LTV for its archive and went on to other things.”

She revisited the material six months ago and saw it from a different perspective. “I titled it ‘A Moment in Time’ because that’s what it is. It gives you a glimpse of these artists, all of whom have sustained long careers, as they were 20 years ago.”

The participating artists, except for Mr. Chamberlain, who died in 2011, and Mr. Dash, who died two years later, will see the film for the first time at Guild Hall. The conversation will therefore follow directly upon their encounter with their younger selves.

Because of the informality of the conversations, the viewer is brought into closer and more intimate contact with the artists than in a typical documentary. Mr. Alexander leads a relaxed tour of his property and studio, unlit cigar in hand, Mr. Dash shows a series of paintings of penises before venturing onto the grounds of Madoo, while Mr. Sultan reflects on his work during a circuit of his house, part of which dates from 1750.

Both Ms. Gornik and Mr. Fischl stick to their studios, talking with their customary insight and clarity about the sources of their work. Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, doesn’t discuss his art at all, preferring dirty jokes and amusing anecdotes to self-analysis. 

In the galleries of Guild Hall, where her work was on view at the time, Ms. Flack recalls how “treacherous” it was to be a young woman among the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Ms. Strong-Cuevas leads an informative tour of a series of large steel faces, while, with dry humor, Mr. Lukin discusses his love for potatoes and points out the many artworks of his that are devoted to them.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present “Stuffed,” a new comedy about food, fat, and fearlessness written by and starring Lisa Lampanelli, a two-time Grammy nominee, on Saturday evening at 8. The venue will barely have time to catch its breath before launching the three-week run of “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” its second Mainstage production of the season, on Tuesday evening.

“Stuffed,” which will also feature Lisa Howard, tackles issues of weight, body image, and food from the perspective of four different women with four different problems. Delivered in both monologues and interactions between the characters, the play will resonate not only with the food-obsessed but also with those who experience addiction or compulsion of any kind. A theater press release suggests the play will do for weight and food issues what “The Vagina Monologues” did for . . . well, you get the idea.

“Stuffed” is the first in a series of four plays Ms. Lampanelli is writing about issues important to women. A regular on “The Howard Stern Show,” the comedian, writer, and actor has appeared on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” “Late Show With David Letterman,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and “Good Morning America.” Her Grammy nominations were for Best Comedy Album, and her six televised specials include HBO’s “Long Live the Queen.” Tickets are priced from $69.25 to $125.

“The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” the Tony Award-winning play written by Alfred Uhry and directed by Will Pomerantz, will run from Tuesday through July 24. Set in Atlanta in 1939, when “Gone With the Wind” is having its premiere and Hitler is invading Poland, the play centers around the city’s assimilated, well-to-do German Jews, who are preoccupied with who will attend Ballyhoo, the lavish ball at the Jewish country club.

When a handsome Eastern European bachelor from Brooklyn arrives on the scene, the upper-class family’s beliefs, prejudices, and desires are thrown into disarray as they must face where they came from and who they really are. 

Show times are 7 p.m. on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. on most Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Matinees will take place July 10, 17, and 24 at 2. Tickets to the play range from $25 to $125. 

The theater has also issued a call for volunteers to serve as ushers for the Mainstage season, the Comedy Club, Shakespeare in the Park, the summer benefit, and other programs and events. All ushers receive complimentary seating at shows, if available, and can attend dress rehearsals.

Thomas Moran, one of America’s most important landscape painters, spent most of his summers in East Hampton between 1879 and 1922, and in 1884 he built the first artist’s studio here, on Main Street across from Town Pond.

On Saturday morning at 10, Richard Barons, director of the East Hampton Historical Society and the Thomas Moran Trust, will lead a tour of the buildings and landscapes that played such an significant role in Moran’s life in the village. A visit to see the studio’s ongoing restoration will be included. The tour is free, but reservations, which can be made by calling 631-324-6850, are required.

A recital of music for flute and piano, which will include the premiere of a new composition by Daniel Koontz, will take place Sunday at 3 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor, where Dr. Koontz is the organist.

The program, which will feature Allison Bourquin O’Reilly on flute and Dr. Koontz on piano, will also include a baroque sonata by G.F. Handel and Prokoviev’s Sonata in D Major. The concert is being presented in memory of JoAnne Williams Carter, a longtime supporter of the Christ Church Organ Fund. Tickets, which will benefit the fund, are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and can be purchased at eventbrite.com.

“Jazz for Jennings,” a benefit for the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, will bring seven prominent jazz musicians to the Watermill Center on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. for brunch and a concert.

The event is named for Peter Jennings, the journalist and news anchor, who was a longtime supporter of the center until his death in 2005. Directed by Jon Faddis and Shannon Gibbons, the program will feature Cyrus Chestnut, piano, Randy Brecker, trumpet, Carl Allen, drums, Dan Rose, guitar, Ada Rovatti, tenor sax, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, bass, and Mr. Faddis, trumpet. Individual tickets are $500 and can be purchased at bhccrc.org.