Skip to main content

Doris Day Tribute

Doris Day Tribute

At the Bridgehampton Museum’s archive building
By
Star Staff

The Bridgehampton Museum’s Art of Song/Parlor Jazz series will present “Secret Love,” a tribute to the music of Doris Day by Karen Oberlin, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the museum’s archive building.

A celebrated interpreter of the Great American Songbook, Ms. Oberlin has headlined at the Algonquin’s Oak Room, Cafe Carlyle, 54 Below, Birdland, Iridium, and the Metropolitan Room, among other venues. An actress as well as a vocalist, she played Maureen in the first staged incarnation of “Rent” and has appeared in more than 100 Off Broadway performances of “Our Sinatra.” 

Ms. Oberlin will be accompanied by Richie Scolio on saxophone, Jane Hastay on piano, and Peter Martin Weiss on bass. Ms. Hastay and Mr. Weiss are co-hosts of the Art of Song programs. Tickets are $25. 

Calling All Deadheads

Calling All Deadheads

At Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor
By
Star Staff

Music of a different sort will happen Friday and Saturday nights at 8 when “What a Long Strange Trip,” a two-night Grateful Dead tribute concert, comes to Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Each performance will highlight different songs from the band’s long history, which began in 1965 and ran until the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995.

Assembled by Joe Lauro, a musician, filmmaker, and music archivist from Shelter Island, the lineup will include David Deitch, Bob Grado, Paul Graviano, Mick Hargreaves, Michael Schiano, Lee Shonik, Howard Silverman, and Mr. Lauro. Tickets to each program are $25 in advance, $30 the day of the show.

Mozart, Ravel, Gershwin, and More in Montauk Piano Recital

Mozart, Ravel, Gershwin, and More in Montauk Piano Recital

At the Montauk Library
By
Star Staff

For classic musicophiles, the Montauk Library will present a free concert by Kathleen Tagg of works composed by virtuoso pianists Sunday afternoon at 3:30. The program will include compositions by Mozart, Ravel, Liszt, Schubert, Medtner, Debussy, and Gershwin.

Dr. Tagg has performed on four continents with some of the world’s leading musicians, at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center as well as at libraries, consulates, and colleges. Holder of a doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music, she accompanies her concerts with insights about the lives of the featured composers.

Bridge Gardens Presents Talks for Foodies

Bridge Gardens Presents Talks for Foodies

Four talks to be presented by the Peconic Land Trust
By
Star Staff

“Long Island Grown III: Food and Beverage Artisans at Work,” a four-lecture series organized by the Peconic Land Trust at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, will open on Sunday at 2 p.m. with “The Cocktail Party,” a discussion featuring Vaughan Cutillo of the Montauk Brewing Company, Michael Kontokosta of Kontokosta Vineyard, and Noah Schwartz, executive chef of Noah’s in Greenport.

Subsequent topics will be “The Appetizer” on March 20, “The Entree” on April 3, and “The Dessert” on April 17. Tickets to individual talks are $25, $20 for members. Those who purchase the full series for $90, $70 for members, will receive a one-year subscription to an Edible magazine (East End, Long Island, Brooklyn, or Manhattan). Seating is limited, and preregistration is required by emailing [email protected].

LongHouse Winter Benefit to Honor Hugh Hardy in Williamsburg

LongHouse Winter Benefit to Honor Hugh Hardy in Williamsburg

At National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
By
Star Staff

East Hampton’s LongHouse Reserve will open its jubilee year with Design for Living, a winter benefit to be held at National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on March 15. 

The evening will begin at 6:30 with a cocktail reception, which will be followed by a discussion between Hugh Hardy, a noted architect whose projects include the Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the restoration of Radio City Music Hall, and Peter Zuspan, founding principal of Bureau V, the firm that redesigned the National Sawdust Building. Mr. Hardy will receive the LongHouse Award from Jack Lenor Larsen, the acclaimed textile designer and founder of LongHouse.

At 7:30, Nona Hendryx, one of the founding members of Patti LeBelle and the Bluebelles, will perform. Dinner will follow the performance at 8:30. Tickets for the reception and performance are $150, $100 for LongHouse contemporaries, or $600 and up for the reception, performance, and dinner.

Guild Hall Welcomes First Residents

Guild Hall Welcomes First Residents

Guild Hall’s first five artists in residence will spend the next two months living in Guild House, which is adjacent to the arts center on Dunemere Lane.
Guild Hall’s first five artists in residence will spend the next two months living in Guild House, which is adjacent to the arts center on Dunemere Lane.
Mark Segal
Artists were nominated and selected by members of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts
By
Mark Segal

After almost a year of planning, Guild Hall has selected the first participants in its Artist in Residence program, who will be ensconced in Guild House, around the corner from the cultural center on Dunemere Lane, through April 30. At a reception on Saturday, Ruth Appelhof, executive director of Guild Hall, together with the organization’s staff and members of the local arts community, will welcome Jennifer Hsu and James Wang, a multidisciplinary collaborative duo; Arcmanoro Niles, a painter, Iris Smyles, a writer, and Tom Yuill, a poet. 

For the program’s first iteration, artists were nominated and selected by members of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts. Marianna Levine, who is the program’s administrator, said academy members would assume the nominating role for two years, after which a decision will be made on whether to switch to an application process.

Artist residents are required to spend four days a week in East Hampton. Most will stay longer, but some have day jobs that might necessitate brief absences. Each artist has his or her own room; Ms. Hsu and Mr. Wang, a couple in life and art, will share a bedroom. Two outside studios will accommodate the visual artists, while the writers will work in the house or, if they prefer, at the East Hampton Library.

“Ruth Appelhof and Eric Fischl have really been the champions of this program,” said Ms. Levine. “It hasn’t been the easiest project to push through because of financial considerations and staff limitations, but Ruth and Eric put a lot of thought into this.” One concern was that rising property values have made it difficult for young artists to live and work here.

“Eric has been very concerned that we keep the artistic community vibrant by bringing in younger artists,” said Ms. Levine. While Guild House has a full kitchen where residents can prepare their own meals, 1770 House has donated one dinner a week in its main dining room for all the artists for the duration of their residence, and breakfast every Saturday. Rowdy Hall will also provide a dinner and drinks one night each week. 

Ms. Hsu and Mr. Wang work in video, photography, film, digital and analog painting, text, and installation. The artists, who live in Brooklyn, “believe in increasing empathy and subsequent social change . . . between artists and viewers, between writers and readers, between teachers and students, between resistance and social groups, between rich and poor, and between humans and non-humans, including flora,” according to their website.

Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Niles, a figurative painter, has expressed his interest in being representational but inviting deeper analysis. “I see figurative painting as complex narratives embedded with many different meanings,” he has said. “I’m interested in contradictions and opposites.” In a recent series titled “Life Was A Party To Be Thrown,” he explores what it means to control and maintain power over the body.

Iris Smyles’s stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Observer, BOMB, and other publications. She has written two books of fiction: “Iris Has Free Time,” and “Dating Tips for the Unemployed.” She lives in New York and Greece. “Iris Has Free Time,” Kurt Andersen wrote, is “the perfect frenzied bildungsroman for an era when coming-of-age can be postponed practically to middle age, as funny and sharp as can be but unafraid of seriousness and consequence.”

Tom Yuill, who teaches literature at Old Dominion University in Virginia, is the author of “Medicine Show,” a book of poetry published by the University of Chicago Press. The book mixes plain, down-home speech with free translations of Catullus, Villon, Orpheus, and other figures of high culture who are, according to the publisher, “placed alongside Jagger and Richards, skinheads, and psalms . . . high culture meets pop, city meets small town, and provincialism confronts urbanity.”

A free public program will take place on April 17, during which the artists will present their work and participate in a question-and-answer session with the audience. 

A Guitar Player’s Second Act, at 86

A Guitar Player’s Second Act, at 86

A collection of 12 songs from the past and present, “Act II” brings together several of the South Fork’s finest musicians
By
Christopher Walsh

One year, ago, when The Star wrote about Glenn Feit’s “Fingerpicking Second Act,” the semiretired attorney was five years into a resumed study of the guitar after a false start four decades earlier. His renewed interest, he said, had coincided with his 80th birthday, and after honing his chops on stages across the South Fork he felt ready to take that second act into the studio. 

The result has arrived in the form of “Act II, Scene I,” Mr. Feit’s first CD. A collection of 12 songs from the past and present, “Act II” brings together several of the South Fork’s finest musicians, many of whom have shared a stage with the relative newcomer, who is 86. 

“It was wonderful,” Mr. Feit, who lives in Bridgehampton, said of the recording sessions at MonkMusic Studios in East Hampton, “and also very educational to see what these people know about music that I still have to learn.” With the album complete, “I am suffering from terrible withdrawal,” he joked. “As much as it was work and you have to practice, I think the adrenaline flow is what keeps me younger. It’s a funny thing to say, but I walked out of there like I’d gotten a shot of something.” 

Sessions typically featured the musicians performing together live, as opposed to overdubbing tracks piecemeal. “I think you get the energy of that,” Mr. Feit said of the group setting. “That’s really how I perform, not by myself.” 

The songs, including U2’s “One,” Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When” from the musical “Babes in Arms,” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” were rehearsed, “but a lot of it was spontaneous,” Mr. Feit said. “I have to tell you, that’s enjoyable.” 

“If You Could Read My Mind,” for example, features Mr. Feit and Cynthia Daniels, the owner of MonkMusic Studios who recorded and produced “Act II, Scene I,” in a kind of accidental duet. “I had trouble as we were starting the song,  because it started with strings,” he said. “I asked Cynthia to pick a spot where I’m supposed to come in. She started to sing it, and I said, ‘I like your voice, let’s do a duet.’ I think it came out beautifully.” 

“We approached this project as comprehensively and correctly as any I have ever done,” said Ms. Daniels, who is also among several backing vocalists — dubbed the Glenntones — on the album. “I was happy that Glenn wanted to know the best way to be as prepared as possible and relied heavily on my experience, which made us both comfortable. It established such trust and made everything easier and quite joyful. It’s a leap of faith for any musician to make a record, and trusting the producer and the musicians around you is paramount.” 

“So many members of our East End musical family were hired to add their own strong voices in percussion, accordion, steel guitar, voice, mandolin, and even the pennywhistle,” Ms. Daniels said. But the centerpiece, she added, “is Glenn himself, the artist and star of this CD. His enthusiasm for music of all kinds has inspired us toward our own creations and performances as well to embracing his.” Mr. Feit, she said, “is simply the most beloved performer out here.”

The musicians who contributed to “Act II, Scene I” overwhelmingly confirm that sentiment. “I was very happy to learn that he was going forward with his plan to make a record of songs that he has pruned from his wide repertoire,” said Michael Weiskopf, who plays harmonica on “Chelsea Hotel #2” and recently released his own album, “Love & Entropy,” also recorded at MonkMusic. “I am honored to have been invited to contribute to it.”

“Within minutes of meeting Glenn, his intellect and passion is obvious, engaging, and contagious,” said Randolph Hudson III, who plays electric guitar on most of the album. “His musical aesthetic is astoundingly vast, and while Glenn certainly has his love of three-chord cowboy and folk tunes, he jumps at sophisticated standards which require both harmonic understanding and fretboard knowledge.” 

“Watching Glenn grow as a guitar player, singer, and performer has been so wonderful and inspiring,” said Klyph Black, who plays bass on most of “Act II, Scene I.” “And his journey into the studio was a real treat. His musical palette grows all the time and he just keeps getting better and better. Looking forward to ‘Act II, Scene II’!”

“Being in the music world is a joy,” said Joe Delia, who plays piano on “Someone Like You,” a song co-written by Adele. “Playing with local artists at MonkMusic Studios is a pleasure. Working with Glenn on his first album was unalloyed happiness.”

“This,” Mr. Feit said of those who play and sing on the album, “was the most wonderful bunch of people you could spend time with.” 

Already, he said, “I’ve gotten feedback from half the people on the East End, and lot of people in New York,” where he and his wife, Barberi, also keep an apartment. “I’m still officially a partner in my firm, so you have a number of these people who are kind of stunned I’m doing this! But I am getting kudos from all over, and family — who, I might add, are the toughest critics.” 

“Act II, Scene I” is available at CDBaby.com, Apple’s iTunes Store, Amazon.com, and other online retailers. A release party is planned for the early spring.

Spring Chamber Series Adds Third Concert

Spring Chamber Series Adds Third Concert

Kenneth Weiss, a harpsichordist with roots in Montauk
Kenneth Weiss, a harpsichordist with roots in Montauk
Arthur Forjonel
“My heartfelt belief that East End audiences would embrace a series of spring concerts was confirmed last season,” said Marya Martin, the founder and artistic director of the series.
By
Thomas Bohlert

Since its founding 32 seasons ago, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival has continually found ways to expand and vary its summertime programs, including different venues, themes, and formats. Last year, Long Island’s longest-running classical music series added BCMF Spring, with two concerts. The new venture had such a strong audience response that a third concert is on tap for 2016.

“My heartfelt belief that East End audiences would embrace a series of spring concerts was confirmed last season,” said Marya Martin, the founder and artistic director of the series. “I am touched by the wonderful reaction from this community.”

Michael Lawrence, executive director of the festival, said, “Our audience recognizes the new spring series as an investment in the Hamptons community, and we have experienced an increase in support as a direct result. We believe it also helped create momentum for the summer, as the 2015 festival drew record numbers in audience and ticket revenue.”

The first concert, on Saturday at 6 p.m., called “Bach’s World,” revolves around the life and times of the great composer, and features Kenneth Weiss, one of today’s foremost harpsichordists, who has roots in Montauk.

Mr. Weiss is a native of New York City whose parents bought land and built a house in Montauk in the mid-1970s when he was 12, so a good part of his growing up was on the East End. Yes, there was the beach, fishing, and stargazing with his father, an amateur astronomer, but perhaps more significantly, he remembers the concerts at the Montauk Library.

When the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival began, Mr. Weiss was in college and then living mostly abroad, so his first engagement with the festival wasn’t until 2014. Combining the world-class music making of the festival with a corner of the world that still feels like home is particularly meaningful to him. Although he is based in Europe, he still spends as much time in the summer as he can at the house in Montauk, and tries to lighten his teaching and performing schedule then so it can truly be a time of relaxation.

He said recently that he especially enjoys performing with the Bridgehampton festival because “most people are away from the 9-to-5 routine, and I think they come to a concert more like they did in the 18th or 19th century.”

“People listen to music differently” when they are not in the city, Mr. Weiss said. The relaxed pace “takes concert-going back to what it used to be.”

One of his recent projects has been performing Bach’s complete “Well-Tempered Clavier.” On his website, a different Prelude and Fugue from the set is posted each week, with a written commentary. With it, he offers a “medical prescription”: “A Prelude and Fugue a day can be said to hold life’s tensions at bay.”

Some of his most recent recitals have been in Nuremburg, Barcelona, Geneva, Antwerp, Madrid, Santander, Lisbon, Innsbruck, and Bruges. He teaches at the Paris Conservatory and has released recordings with Satirino records.

Along with Mr. Weiss, the Feb. 27 concert will have onstage two up-and-coming artists, Bella Hristova on violin and Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu on violin and viola, with the festival veterans Edward Arron on cello and Ms. Martin on flute. Besides J.S. Bach’s Trio Sonata in G, there will be one of Corelli’s groundbreaking trio sonatas, a quartet by Bach’s friendly rival Telemann, and a sampling of the legacy of his sons C.P.E. and J.C. Bach.

On April 9 the Miro Quartet will return for a second season, with a challenging and dramatically intense program of Ginastera’s dynamic first string quartet and two of Beethoven’s quartets, the F minor, known as the Serioso, and the C major, one of the so-called Razumovsky quartets, named after the Russian count and ambassador who gave him the commission.

The members of the Miro Quartet are Daniel Ching, violin, William Fedkenheuer, violin, John Largess, viola, and Joshua Gindele, cello. The Denver Post has said, “No passing sensation, the Miro Quartet is surely among the most promising chamber ensembles around.”

How can the combination of Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert be topped? That is the lineup for May 14, with the “London” Trio No. 1, the Piano Trio in C, and the Piano Trio in E flat, respectively, with Ms. Martin again on flute, the summertime regulars Ani Kavafian and Peter Wiley on violin and cello, and the young and rising pianist Juho Pohjonen.

The three concerts will take place at the festival’s main venue, the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, on Saturdays at 6. Tickets are $50 or $40. The student ticket for $10 that was introduced last spring will also be available, as well as discounted pricing for subscribers to all three concerts.

More information is at bcmf.org or 212-741-9403. More about Mr. Weiss can be found at satirino.fr. The complete summer program for the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival will be announced in May.

An Eye on Gender, Family, Courage

An Eye on Gender, Family, Courage

Lindsay Morris opened a copy of “You Are You” to “I Am,” an image of a camper posing for a portrait before a fashion show. The enlargement at right will be included in a Parrish Art Museum exhibition.
Lindsay Morris opened a copy of “You Are You” to “I Am,” an image of a camper posing for a portrait before a fashion show. The enlargement at right will be included in a Parrish Art Museum exhibition.
Morgan McGivern
“Lindsay Morris: You Are You,” will open at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill on March 13
By
Mark Segal

Lindsay Morris became obsessed with both photography and travel at the age of 10, when her grandfather gave her a subscription to National Geographic magazine. “My parents didn’t have the means to take us on any big trips, so that was how I found my adventure,” she said during a recent conversation in the Sag Harbor house she shares with her husband, Stephen Munshin, and their sons Milo, 15, and Cecil, 11. 

During her senior year in high school, her family, who lived in suburban Detroit, hosted an exchange student from Germany. “I decided I wanted to become one, and the day I graduated I was off to South Africa for a year, with a Nikon camera my grandmother gave me.” 

She took her first photographs there. “It gave me such pleasure. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was the one thing that truly spoke to me.” She also discovered that, as a shy person, being behind the camera allowed her to “be in the crowd but not necessarily its focus.”

That lesson has served her well, as her work has since been published in The New York Times, Internazionale, GEO, Time, Marie Claire, and Elle, among many others, and in “You Are You,” a book of her photographs that documents an annual weekend summer camp for gender-creative children. Some of the images for that book were first published in 2012 as the cover story for the Times magazine. In addition, 35 photographs will appear in “Lindsay Morris: You Are You,” which will open at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill on March 13.

When she returned from South Africa, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Michigan School of Art, from which she received a B.F.A. in 1990. At Michigan, she worked with Joanne Leonard, a noted photographer. “She really helped me find my way through projects and through thinking in a way nobody else had ever reached me.” 

Two years after graduation, her life took a sharp, 13-year detour. She was working as a photographer’s assistant and a waitress at a restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side, where Mr. Munshin was bartending. They had both developed a desire to travel and settled on Asia as their destination. 

They spent a year traveling around India, Nepal, China, and Sri Lanka. “When we were in Nepal, we met some people who were making hand-loomed coats and vests. In retrospect, they were really awful, but at the time they seemed unique. We were looking for a business, some direction, and I had always had an eye on fashion and some flair for it.”

After making some alterations while still in Nepal, they returned to the United States with samples. Macy’s picked up several styles and placed a large order with their new company. “Stephen and I had so much inventory we would drive to college campuses in our Isuzu Trooper, which was filled to the gills with wool coats and vests, and sell them at fairs. We sometimes slept on the coats, but we did well.”

The collection evolved from there. “Wool coats weren’t what I really wanted to be doing. I met a wonderful woman, Nancy Winarick, a designer who lives on Shelter Island. She taught me about specification sheets and how to present them.” Ms. Morris created a broad collection, under the brand name Fork, which wound up in 350 stores around the country. The business lasted 13 years.

After their “life changing” trip to Asia, they wanted to settle someplace quieter than New York. Mr. Munshin’s mother, Bonnie, had a garage behind a cottage in East Hampton where they stayed through one summer. “We decided to stick around, and we were really drawn to Sag Harbor.” They rented the house where they now live and eventually bought it. Ms. Morris’s four siblings have settled in Sag Harbor as well.

She first attended the summer camp for gender-creative children in 2007 with a loved one. Born out of a support group in Washington, D.C., it was organized by parents and meets for one weekend in a different location each summer. In addition to parents and children, professionals in the field are brought in to meet with the parents.

“The vocabulary is continually evolving,” she said. “I sometimes used gender-nonconforming in the book but I think now gender-creative or gender-variant might be better. Nothing’s written in stone yet. The kids and parents are pioneers of the movement of acceptance and support. It’s a civil rights issue. L.G.B.T. and transgender rights are sort of the final frontiers, and transgender rights is probably the issue people have the most trouble with.”

“The kids at the camp are very self-aware, and we’re trying to give them the ability to advocate for themselves and for their siblings to advocate for them. It’s an opportunity, a safe haven, where they don’t have to look over their shoulders for four days out of the year or feel they’re being scrutinized. They express themselves as they feel natural, and they’re relaxed.”

Ms. Morris began photographing the children because nobody else had the time to take pictures, and parents wanted fun, candid shots to document the experience. “In between the candid shots I was finding these poetic frames that just stood out. I could see the magical moments, the calm moments, the shoulders dropping, the relaxed faces.” 

The Parrish exhibition has been organized by Alicia Longwell, the museum’s chief curator. It will not include all the images from the book, but those on view will be enlarged.

Another of Ms. Morris’s projects is “Ricchina’s Wedding,” which documents the surprise wedding-themed birthday of a 25-year-old woman with Down’s syndrome. “I met her mom, Janice, on a broken-down Amtrak train. She told me about her plan to bring to life her daughter’s dream of getting married, and I agreed to photograph the party and the preparation for it. There was no groom.” The photographs explore the relationship between mother and daughter and the family members who support them.

Ms. Morris is working on a new project called “Meet Your Neighbor” for which she goes door-to-door meeting, talking with, and photographing her neighbors. “We used to know our neighbors, but now everybody is behind closed doors.” She is also photographing houses being torn down and replaced by larger ones.

A documentary film based on the camp is also in production. Directed by Nick Sweeney and produced by Ms. Morris, it was commissioned by Channel Four in London and has been sold to TLC, where it will air in June. Excerpts from the film will be shown at the Parrish on April 1, when Mr. Sweeney and Ms. Morris will be present to discuss the project.

Mr. Munshin is the publisher of four Edible magazines: Edible Brooklyn, Edible Long Island, Edible East End, and Edible Manhattan. Ms. Morris is photo editor of the Long Island and East End editions. In whatever spare time that doesn’t involve work or family, she plays guitar and sings with the rock band Spitn’ Kitn’ along with Barbara Dayton and Susan Nieland, both artists. 

Speaking of “You Are You,” she said, “It’s an honor bestowed on me by these families. They suggested the book, named the book, and they edited the book with me. We worked so closely. As a community, we are in the position to change how the public understands these brave children, and change is evident.”

The Art Scene 03.03.16

The Art Scene 03.03.16

Laurie Lambrecht's "Lightning," a cyanotype on rag paper from 2014
Laurie Lambrecht's "Lightning," a cyanotype on rag paper from 2014
Local Art News
By
Mark Segal

Lambrecht at Drawing Room

“Laurie Lambrecht: Cyanotype,” an exhibition of recent work by the Bridgehampton photographer, will open tomorrow at the Drawing Room in East Hampton and remain on view through April 10.

Cyanotype is a photographic process discovered in the mid-19th century that produces a Prussian-blue print. Ms. Lambrecht uses the medium to examine the natural environments that have been her longstanding subjects, addressing assumptions of how we interpret and internalize visual experience.

The gallery will also show editions and monoprints by Jennifer Bartlett, Sue Heatley, Vincent Longo, John Newman, and Dan Rizzie from tomorrow through April 3.

Fay Lansner and Barbara Guest

“Metamorphosis: The Collaboration of Poet Barbara Guest and Artist Fay Lansner” is on view at Poets House in TriBeCa through April 23. Both women, who collaborated over a 30-year period, were longtime East End residents, Lansner in Bridgehampton and Guest in Southampton.

Lansner was a second-generation Abstract Expressionist who studied with Hans Hofmann in the late 1940s and exhibited at the cooperative Hansa Gallery on 12th Street, where Guest first saw her work at an opening in the early 1950s. Guest was a leading poet of the New York School who wrote more than 20 books of poetry as well as criticism for ARTNews and other magazines. 

Some of the works in the Poets House exhibition, which include paintings, drawings, photographs, and postcards, were included in the “Poets and Artists of the Region” show held at Guild Hall in 1982. Among them are Lansner’s “Tessera” paintings, which rearranged Guest’s poetry into collages of text, stamps, clipped paper, and pastels.

Barbara Groot in Quogue

An exhibition of paintings by Barbara Groot, an artist who lives and works in East Hampton, is on view at the art gallery of the Quogue Library through March 30.

The artist’s large-scale abstract paintings have been inspired by the sun and light of Southern California, where she grew up, and the East End. Her bold brushwork and bright colors express the energy and immediacy of the natural world. 

Portraits at Little Estia

“Writers and Storytellers of the East End and Beyond,” an exhibition of paintings by Valerie Suter, is on view at Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor through April 26.

Ms. Suter, who lives and works in Los Angeles, spent much of her childhood on the East End, where she attended the Amagansett School and, during college, worked at Estia’s when it was located on Main Street in Amagansett. In addition to portraits of such local literary legends as John Steinbeck, the exhibition will include portraits of “beyond” writers, among them Patricia Highsmith, Virginia Woolf, John Cheever, and Mark Twain.

A reception will be held on April 10 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Watercolor Classes

At Bridge Gardens

Lois Bender, an artist and educator whose work expresses the spirit and beauty of gardens and floral designs, will teach a three-session watercolor class starting Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton. The workshops are suitable for both beginners and experienced artists and offer training in drawing and sketching as well as watercolor painting.

Subsequent classes are scheduled for March 19 and March 26, also from noon to 3. The cost is $50 per class, and prepaid reservations, which can be made at gardenspiritsny.com, are required. 

Banks and Little 

On Spring/Break

The Sara Nightingale Gallery has decamped from Water Mill to Manhattan for the Spring/Break Art Show, one of many satellite art fairs happening concurrently with the Armory Show. Spring/Break is open daily through Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. 

Titled “Little Deaths,” the five-day exhibition includes paintings from Christian Little’s “Exhibitionists” series and porcelain sculptures by Monica Banks. Mr. Little, who lives in Kingston, N.Y., examines a voyeur culture obsessed with sex, drama, and the lives of others in his recent paintings. Ms. Banks, an East Hampton resident, addresses suffering and death in her detailed assemblages of anonymous victims of man-made and natural disasters.