The Rising Stars Piano Series will return to the Southampton Cultural Center for its 13th season with a two-piano program featuring Natalia Lavrova and Vassily Primakov on Saturday at 7 p.m. Both artists began their studies in Moscow before moving to New York City to attend the Juilliard School. Since joining forces in 2010 they have performed throughout the United States. The cultural center program will include works by Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky. Tickets are $20, free for students under 21.

A benefit reception and auction for the East End Special Players will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the home of Marie-Eve and Michel Berty at 44 Sayre’s Path in Wainscott. The Players, a group of actors with developmental challenges under the artistic direction of Jacqui Leader, have been performing for 25 years.

Guests at the reception can tour the modernist house, designed by Alfredo De Vido and Maziar Behrooz, take in the art collection, wander in the gardens, and enjoy a performance of vignettes from the troupe’s upcoming production. In addition, a film featuring the Players’ 2014 New York City appearance will be shown in the private screening room. Tickets cost $75 and can be purchased at the group’s website.

This summer, Taylor Rose Berry finally finished “White Noise” by Don DeLillo. While not earth-shattering news to most, it will be of interest to her friends, patrons, and those who attended the PechaKucha night at the Parrish Art Museum in June. During her talk that evening, Ms. Berry detailed her struggles with that book and how it led to her first and only failing grade on a term paper.

She has always loved books, she said more recently at Harbor Books, her store in Sag Harbor. “There’s some great pictures of me as a kid on the couch with my mom and my dad on each side of me, all reading.”

But she is also a procrastinator, in the habit of waiting until the last minute to do most anything. “It worked for me my entire life except for this time,” as a freshman in Philip Baruth’s postmodern literature class at the University of Vermont. “I got by really well, because I was a reader. I would say, ‘I’m not coming to class,’ because if they were only teaching the text book, I would just read it.”

She began the paper the day before it was due, still expecting to receive a good grade. When she got it back, “it looked like a crime scene.” She spent 20 minutes after class trying to talk him out of his red-inked observations such as “you use fillers for a lack of knowledge” and “your comprehension of the English language is juvenile at best,” but to no avail.

Years later, she ran into him and they revisited that discussion. “He told me he failed me because he knew I could do better. He didn’t think anyone else had told me that, and he thought it was his job to do so.”

“And I told him it was absolutely not his job, but here I am all these years later still talking about it” and finally reading the book a few weeks after the Parrish talk. She said she liked some of Mr. DeLillo’s other books better, but none of them are on her favorites list. “I can see why it’s considered a masterpiece,” but for her, given all she had been through, it was more like homework. She said she preferred James Tadd Adcox’s “Does Not Love,” a novel that borrows from DeLillo and was published last year, as something more approachable. “I loved it so much more.”

After a long passage in “White Noise” where a character runs the stadium stairs, “I thought, ‘Why did I just read that?’ ” It reminded her “of Steinbeck’s turtle crossing a road for 10 pages” in “The Grapes of Wrath,” which she had to read in high school. “I thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’ A lot of writers you read in school do that to you.”

“I read ‘Gone With the Wind’ in seventh grade. It is still one of my favorite books. After that, my mother wanted me to read ‘Anna Karenina’ and then ‘Dr. Zhivago,’ which was not the right jump,” she said. “Now I love them, but those books didn’t mean anything to me when I first read them. I just read them to finish, which is not the way anyone should read.”

To help her organize the children’s section at Harbor Books, she consulted Diane Frankenstein, an expert on children’s and adult literacy who seeks to instill love of reading in all ages. Her selection was “really thoughtful, not just the darlings you see everywhere. It’s things you haven’t seen in 15 years, or new things that are extraordinary.”

It’s important to her that the children she serves learn to love books — the objects themselves and the content within — as much as she does. For her, digital interface is a poor substitute. She understands the convenience of e-books and offers them on her website, but she prefers the feel of turning pages, the look of the printed word.

Her mother flew out to California for a recent two-week vacation with 20 titles of books loaded into her iPad. In contrast, when she went on a road trip from Seattle to San Diego, one of the early stops was Powell’s Books (Portland’s version of the Strand in New York City, but even larger). “I was like a kid in a candy store and had to buy a new piece of luggage just for the books I bought,” paying an extra $100 to fly them back home with her.

“The millennial generation has an odd reverence for nostalgia.” When she found her mother’s old vinyl records, she took them over to her grandfather’s house so he could show her how to play them on his stereo. “Now vinyl is everywhere. We were the generation that brought it back.”

The day she received her failed paper, she went to the Crow Bookshop in Burlington to decompress. As he was known to do, Mr. Crow walked over and handed her a book. “He always picked the book that was right book for you at that very moment. Whether you loved it or hated it, there would be something in it that spoke to you,” she said. He gave her “White Noise.”

In that moment she said she knew she wanted “to make people feel the way I did when he handed me that book.” Mr. Crow “had a magic touch. Someday I hope to have that skill. He gave me some of my favorite books in the entire world.”

Nine years later, she has made that dream come true in a storefront at the north end of Sag Harbor’s Main Street with wide paned windows and window seats, and lots of dark wood and finishes mingled with pops of color: red-shaded goose neck and overhead lamps, mini beanbag chairs in the children’s section, and wide cozy leather chairs in the center of the room.

Seated under a large black-and-white photo of Ernest Hemingway, one of her heroes, she says she doesn’t believe in finishing books she hates. When she does, though, she always finds something redeeming, “even if it’s just a line” or what Hemingway might call “one true sentence.”

At 14, she read Jill A. Davis’s “Girls’ Poker Night.” The first line was “ ‘Happy endings aren’t for cowards.’ Then, the book itself meant nothing to me, but 15 years later that line still sticks. When you read a book, something can change you or imprint on you that might come back.”

Ms. Berry will put “The Tender Bar” by J.R. Moehringer in anyone’s hands who asks her for a recommendation. At the Parrish talk, she shared a passage describing why the bar of his title was his community’s “safe place” and concluded with this: “We went there for love, for sex, for trouble, or someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.” It’s what she wants for her store, and why she imbued it with a “dark and cozy Old English” ambiance.

“You will never hear me tell somebody to put down a coffee, an ice cream, or a bottle of wine, or whatever their heart fancies.” Further, it’s perfectly fine to come in, pick up a book, “and read the whole damn book for all I care. To me it’s an investment. If you come in and enjoy your time here, you’ll remember my store when there’s a book you need.”

Mr. Crow “didn’t expect you to pay for things ever. His philosophy was that you could pay what you had, you could bring it back when you were done, or you could pay it forward.” Tearing up, she said, “I will always remember the books he gave me, and it wasn’t because I did or didn’t have the money, it was that he thought it was important enough to share them.”

Open House at Watermill Center

The Watermill Center will hold its fall open house on Saturday, starting at noon with a tour of the building, grounds, and collection and followed at 2 with a public rehearsal of Oliver Beer’s “The Resonance Project” and the opening of G.T. Pellizzi’s exhibition “Visitations.” The day will conclude with an outdoor reception.

Mr. Beer, a Watermill resident artist, is interested in the relationship between sound and space. “The Resonance Project” consists of films, sound pieces, and performances that use the human voice to make architectural spaces resound at their full frequencies. The artist has worked in a variety of contexts, including the Victorian sewers of England and the skyline tunnels of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

For “Visitations,” Mr. Pellizzi, who lives in Mexico and New York City, will present paintings, sculpture, and installations, in a dialogue with the Watermill Center’s collection. He will give a gallery talk at 3 p.m.

Saturday’s programs are free. Reservations are required, and can be made at the center’s website.

Rafael Ferrer at Ille Arts

“Reflections,” an exhibition of works on paper by Rafael Ferrer, will open Saturday at Ille Arts in Amagansett with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and remain on view through Oct. 12.

The works in the show were made between 2000 and 2010, which is said to have been a time of reflection for the artist after he bought a house in Greenport and sold his place in New York City. 

Mr. Ferrer, who was born in San Juan, P.R., achieved success in the late 1960s with a series of installations engaging process and conceptual art that were shown at museums worldwide. He subsequently moved away from that early work, and by the 1980s was creating paintings described by Roberta Smith of The New York Times as “visually and emotionally fraught . . . depicting radiant, shadow-pocked scenes of makeshift tropical dwellings and their inhabitants.”

Color at Harper’s Books

“Color Photographs,” Daisuke Yokota’s first solo exhibition in the United States, will open Saturday at Harper’s Books in East Hampton and continue through Dec. 1. A reception for the artist will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Yokota is a highly regarded photographer from Tokyo who, though only in his early 30s, has shown internationally. His work engages the various processes of photography and has manifested itself in the repeated re-photographing of images, the application of chemicals to them, and live book “performances.”

For “Color Photographs,” he “tried not to take pictures,” according to the gallery, instead layering sheets of unused, large-format color film and applying unorthodox developing techniques before scanning the results, which “show that the essence of photography rests not necessarily with the camera, but in film itself.”

Abstraction at Ashawagh

“Mostly Abstract,” a group exhibition, will be held Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 11 to 4 at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, with a reception set for Saturday from 5 to 7.

The artists, who work in a wide variety of mediums, are linked by a visceral and emotional affinity with the tradition of Abstract Expressionism. They are Casey Chalem Anderson, Beth Barry, Barbara Bilotta, Anahi DeCanio, Katherine Hammond, Bo Parsons, Sheila Rotner, Cynthia Sobel, Lieve Thiers, and Mark E. Zimmerman.

Walter Weissman Interview

Walter Weissman, an artist and photographer from East Hampton, will be interviewed about his work tonight at 6:30 at the Tenri Gallery and Cultural Center in Manhattan as part of its Artists Talk on Art series. Chris Byrne, a curator, Eunice Golden, an artist, and Doug Sheer, chairman of the series, will conduct the interview. The doors will open at 6, and tickets are $8, $5 for students and senior citizens.

“Portraying Artists: Photographs by Walter Weissman” will open Oct. 24 at Guild Hall in East Hampton and run through Jan. 3.

New at Marcelle Project

“Inner Circles,” an exhibition of paintings by Anna Jurinich, a Croatian-born artist who lives in Wading River, will open at Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton with a reception Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. and remain on view through Oct. 11.

Ms. Jurinich’s paintings explore the human condition, whether that of the world at large or her personal and family life. She cites Munch, Durer, and Blake as artists she feels a kinship with; Munch for his psychological undertones, Durer for his feeling for detail, and Blake for his spirituality.

“Audrey Flack: Heroines”

The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., will show “Audrey Flack: Heroines,” drawings and prints highlighting women neglected or demonized by history, from Saturday through Jan. 3. Ms. Flack, a pioneer in Photorealism who has been exhibiting for six decades, has work in the collections of major museums throughout the world. She lives in New York City and East Hampton.

Shinnecock to Montauk

The Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor will present “Shinnecock to Montauk,” an exhibition of artwork by Franklin Engel, today through Oct. 15. Receptions will be held Saturday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and on Oct. 3, also 5 to 6:30.

Mr. Engel, who was born and raised in New York City and is a life member of the Art Students League, has said that his first visit to the East End brought a new creative energy to his work. His paintings of the people and landscapes of the region are infused with a Fauvist expressionism and have been shown at many galleries in the city.

Philippe Cheng, a previous contributor to The Star who lives in Bridgehampton, has published a book of his art photography titled “Still: The East End Photographs.” A book signing will take place at Barnes & Noble at Broadway and 83rd Street in Manhattan on Friday, Oct. 2, at 7 p.m.

Mr. Cheng, who studied at the School of Visual Arts and New York University, spent some of his formative years working in the library of Magnum Photos, which he has said helped him develop as a photographer.

Elisabeth Biondi notes in her catalog essay his appreciation of monochromatic abstract artists such as Agnes Martin and Milton Avery, who were influences as well.

The photos are blurry and expressionistic. They sometimes take the form of barely recognizable landscapes or trees and other times look like simple arrangements of color. The gauzy presentations have a memento mori quality. They seem distant, and sometimes lost, like a fleeting memory.

The brilliant colors and light that he has isolated from the distraction of scenery remind us more clearly just what beauty we have in our midst and how it is slowly disappearing.

The book also includes a reflection by Jack Lenor Larsen of the LongHouse Reserve and an interview with Terrie Sultan, the director of the Parrish Art Museum. The book has been released by Jovis, a German publisher.

Seating is limited for the signing and is available on a first-come-first-served basis. Those with questions can contact Barnes & Noble at [email protected].

Stacy Sullivan, a vocalist with six CDs on her resumé, will perform “It’s a Good Day: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee,” her live show about the music and life of the late singer, at the Southampton Cultural Center on Saturday evening at 7.

Ms. Sullivan’s performance of the classic songs, rhythms, and arrangements that defined Lee’s career create a portrait of the singer’s rise from a tragic childhood in North Dakota to the pinnacle of musical success. In a 2014 review, Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it “an empathetic, melancholy portrait . . . [that] made you feel the howling loneliness of a star in a gilded cocoon.”

General admission is $35. A limited number of ringside table seats are priced at $45.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will hold open auditions for its production of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” on Sept. 21 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 6 p.m. The production, which will be directed by Joe Minutillo, will run from Nov. 9 through Nov. 29.

Male and female actors of all ethnic and racial backgrounds have been encouraged to attend. Available roles are George, Lenny, Slim, Candy, the boss, Curley, Curley’s wife, Carlson, Whit, and Crooks. Mr. Minutillo and John Sullivan, the associate producer, will be present. Sides are required for preparation. More information is available at baystreet.org.

Although the box office for the Hamptons International Film Festival doesn’t open until Sept. 26, its organizers are attracting early interest with intermittent announcements of its significant films.

The festival, which will be held over Columbus Day weekend, will open on Oct. 8 in East Hampton with James Vanderbilt’s “Truth,” with Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, Topher Grace, and Elisabeth Moss. Mr. Vanderbilt served as a mentor for the festival’s Screenwriters Lab in 2009.

In the film, Mr. Redford plays Dan Rather, a former news anchor at CBS who broadcast a report in his final days about how then-President George W. Bush used family connections to avoid combat in the Vietnam War. The film, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, will open in theaters on Oct. 16.

On Oct. 9, the festival’s Southampton opening night film will be “Youth,” a film by Pablo Sorrentino, which looks at a long friendship between two older men played by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel and how they each confront thoughts of retirement. The supporting cast includes Jane Fonda, Paul Dano, and Rachel Weisz.

The festival has also announced its narrative competition feature films, which include Matt Sobel’s “Take Me to the River,” Ciro Guerra’s “Embrace of the Serpernt,” Avishai Sivan’s “Tikkun,” Grimur Hakonarson’s “Rams,” and Diasteme’s “French Blood.”

The feature documentaries in competition will be Jon Fox’s “Newman,” David Shapiro’s “Missing People,” Jean-Gabriel Periot’s “A German Youth,” Michael Madsen’s “The Visit,” and Ilinca Calugareanu’s “Chuck Norris vs. Communism.”

The feature jury prizewinner in each category will receive a package of goods and services valued at over $85,000 to be used toward the making of another film and a cash prize of $3,000.

The festival’s jury this year will be Michael H. Weber, who wrote “500 Days of Summer” and “The Fault in Our Stars”; Dan Guando, who is head of United States Production and Acquisitions at the Weinstein Co.; Josh Charles, star of “The Good Wife” and “Masters of Sex”; Marshall Fine, an author, journalist, and film critic, and Sarah Lash, an acquisitions consultant at Conde Nast Entertainment.

Last week, the festival also announced its Views From Long Island and Conflict and Resolution sections. The Views From Long Island films highlight work either filmed on Long Island, created by those from Long Island, or featuring Long Island subjects. Those films that have a majority of their principal photography shot in Suffolk County will be eligible for a $3,000 Suffolk County Next Exposure grant. 

This year’s films are Marc Levin’s “The Class Divide,” Ron Davis’s “Harry & Snowman,” Alexandra Shiva’s “How to Dance in Ohio,” Robert Edwards’s “When I Live My Life Over Again,” and Pippa Bianco’s short film “Picturing Barbara Kruger.”

The festival’s Conflict and Resolution program is a selection of films addressing the human drama of war and violence. This year’s films are Nick Louvel and Michele Mitchell’s “The Uncondemned,” Dalibor Matanic’s “The High Sun,” Davis Guggenheim’s “He Named Me Malala,” Camilla Nielsson’s “Democrats,” Abigail Disney’s “The Armor of Light,” Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman’s short film “Last Day of Freedom,” Yasir Kareem’s short film “Kingdom of Garbage,” Dress Code’s short film “Plamen,” and Enric Ribes and Oriol Martinez’s short film “Take Me to the Moon.”

The Brizzolara Family Foundation will award $5,000 to one of the films, which will be followed with a panel discussion after its screening. This year’s selection will be presented by the Tribeca Shortlist, a new video-on-demand service set to launch in October that is a partnership between Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises.

Festival passes are now on sale, and festival box offices will open for individual ticket sales on Sept. 26 in New York City, East Hampton, and South­ampton. Tickets to the opening night film and after party will be available for purchase this month.

In the early 1990s, when she was in working toward her M.F.A. at Rutgers, Christina Schlesinger was feeling lost. “I asked myself, ‘When did I feel great?’ and I decided it was when I was a tomboy. I had all this energy and spunk.” She embarked on a series of works she calls “Tomboys.” Each piece consists of a photo of her as an adolescent screened on pieces of her old clothing — jeans, flannel shirts, and T-shirts — that were then attached to canvas and painted.

Two other series, “Dildos” and “Lesbian Sex,” were painted at the same time. Much of the work was sexually explicit. “I had all this work, but people weren’t ready to show it. Fast forward to now, with all the changes toward gay people that have happened so rapidly.” About a year ago she went to a meeting at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City. She asked the museum’s director, Hunter O’Hanian, to look at her work.

The result was “All True Tomboys,” an exhibition organized by the museum at the Prince Street Project Space in January. Several of the “Tomboys” paintings had been shown at the Ross School in 2012, and “Hands on Hips, Pink,” one of the dildo paintings, appeared on the Ms. magazine blog to illustrate a series of poems by Mary Meriam titled “Subverting the ‘Girlie’ Calendar.” In 2016, works from the series will be shown in a group show at the Schwules Museum in Berlin.

The “Tomboys” paintings fit snugly within a body of work that draws on images from all aspects of Ms. Schlesinger’s life, much of it informed by a collage aesthetic that combines images with other materials. “Now that I’m at the other end of my life, I’m thinking of who can be my mentors as I’m getting older. And I thought of my grandmothers. Grandmother Schlesinger was a suffragette, and Grandmother Cannon wrote books and was a classmate of Gertrude Stein.”

She showed a visitor a series of new portraits in her Springs studio, including one of her paternal grandmother and several of friends. The images are painted on pieces of paper that are taped together and mounted on old cotton sheets. “I think of them as very light, like flags or banners.”

The scraps of paper are recycled pages from notebooks, lesson plans, and handouts from her 10 years of teaching eighth-grade cultural history at the Ross School. Ms. Schlesinger had never been to the East End until she received a call from Courtney Ross in 1995, while she was working on a mural on Los Angeles. “I flew from L.A. to East Hampton, stayed at the Pink House, and at the end of the day they offered me the job. The whole trip was 24 hours.”

Teaching comes naturally to Ms. Schlesinger, who taught at York Prep in Manhattan from 2005 to 2008, was an artist in residence at the East End Arts Council in Riverhead in June, and taught an encaustic class at the Art Barge in August.

While she finds encaustic “a fun medium that gives you a lot of options,” since she was diagnosed in 2008 with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, “it kind of scared me into using more water-based paint. I don’t work with oil anymore. I was sick for two years, after which I tried to teach full time, but found I didn’t have the energy.”

The teaching tradition goes back at least to her grandfather, Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., who taught history at Harvard, and passed through her father, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., an historian, social critic, and author of, among many other titles, the three-volume “The Age of Roosevelt” and “A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House.” He had been a speechwriter and adviser for President Kennedy and served as special assistant for Latin American affairs during his administration.

“My dad was charismatic and charming,” she said. “I had fantastic experiences because of him and met all kinds of people, from Marlene Dietrich to Fritz Lang to all the Kennedys and Adlai Stevenson. When we were growing up he wanted to make sure we came downstairs to meet everybody.”

“I think my lineage is something I’ve always struggled with. The thing about having really successful parents is that it’s hard to feel you can measure up. You get that reflected fame, but you have to figure out your own life, which is separate from theirs. It’s been a blessing and a blight. It looks easy, but it’s tricky.”

Ms. Schlesinger attended Radcliffe College, from which she graduated cum laude as an English and fine arts major. From 1971 to 1980 she lived in Venice, Calif., where she became involved with feminism and community art. She studied at Cal Arts with Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, but left to co-found the Citywide Mural Project with Judy Baca and, subsequently, SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center.

She spent the 1980s in New York City, where she participated in numerous group exhibitions and joined the Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous political activists who confronted sexism and racism in the art world. During the 1990s she created several public art projects, including “Chagall Comes to Venice Beach,” which has been declared an iconic mural of Los Angeles.

Ms. Schlesinger and her domestic partner, Nan Fried, who teaches visual art at the Fieldston School, have been together for more than 30 years. In 1999 they traveled to China to adopt their daughter, Chun, who was almost 2 years old at the time.

“Adopting Chun was the best and most meaningful thing I’ve done in my life. When we were there, they asked us to wait in our hotel until they brought her there. When she was 11, we decided to return to the village with Chun. I had imagined this bucolic place, but it turned out it was a mining town built in the Soviet style. It was grim, polluted, and the orphanage was a concrete building on the side of a highway.” The orphanage had no information about Chun’s background, as she had been left on its doorstep.

“Being a mom led to my ‘Dorothy’ series of large, mixed-media canvases based on a 1950s coloring book of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ That was when I began the practice of adhering materials to canvas as part of the painting.”

Chun attended the Springs School from kindergarten through second grade and then transferred to Fieldston. She just left for her freshman year at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “Her college application essay started off, ‘When people ask me if I have my mother’s face or my father’s eyes, I can’t answer that.’ ”

Ms. Schlesinger divides her time between a loft in TriBeCa and a house on Deep Six Drive in Springs that she purchased in 1999. She also spends several weeks each summer at a family house on Cape Cod. “I don’t really like TriBeCa anymore. I don’t know anybody on the streets, and all the old stores and restaurants are being replaced by banks and nail salons. Now that Chun is in college, things will be different. I used to have to go back to New York City every fall because she was going to Fieldston, but now I have more latitude.”

As a result of that freedom, she was able to accept a job as a leave replacement teacher at Ross for the fall semester. She also plans to go to Los Angeles during the winter to refurbish the Chagall mural and see some old friends from her years there. “I feel I’m beginning a new chapter in my life,” she said.

Cohen and Vega at Ashawagh

Ashawagh Hall in Springs will exhibit photographs by Zachary Cohen and paintings by Matt Vega tomorrow through Sunday, with an opening reception set for tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Cohen will show 54 black-and-white photographs he produced in Paris in 1988 of the gentrification of La Bastille neighborhood as well as work from an ongoing series, “In Transit,” that focuses on places people pass through en route to other destinations.

Mr. Vega, who lives in Amagansett, will be showing a selection of small unstretched canvases chosen from 145 painted in August as well as larger stretched canvases, also from 2015. A photographer for two decades, his return to painting was marked by the use of letters as line and shape and as symbol. The newer paintings are concerned with the symbolic nature of marks.

The gallery will be open tomorrow from 5 to 8, Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m.

Danish Design

The Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill will show “Danish Design Meets American Art” tomorrow through Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. each day. A reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 7. The exhibition will include home accessories and accent furniture imported in limited quantities from Denmark by Kontrast, a company founded by Louise Fisher, a Montauk resident, as well as contemporary art selected by Ms. Nightingale. Kontrast’s offerings can be seen at shopkontrast. com.

Portraits Come Home

“Remnant Animism,” a show of paintings by Aubrey Roemer, is now on view at the Atlantic Terrace Gallery in Montauk and will remain up through September. The work originated last summer as part of “Leviathan: The Montauk Portrait Project,” Ms. Roemer’s effort to paint the portraits of 10 percent of Montauk’s population. The paintings were executed on old household linens and hung in clothesline fashion at Edward V. Ecker Sr. County Park in Montauk.

Since then, the work has traveled to the Vermont Studio Center and to Somerset, England, before returning to Montauk for waxing and final touches. As a consequence of the travels and exhibitions, the exposure to the elements has become part of the work. Ms. Roemer cites process art and cave paintings as among her inspirations.

Christensen Retrospective

The Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea will open its fall season today with a retrospective exhibition of work by Dan Christensen, the renowned Color Field painter who lived in Springs until his death in 2007. A reception will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. today, and the show will continue through Oct. 17.

The exhibition involves more than 20 paintings from various periods of his career, including rare early spray paintings from the late 1960s, saturated stained canvases from the 1970s, spray ovals from the 1980s, pulsating orbs from the 1990s, and rhythmic calligraphic swirls from his last decade.

His work is in more than 30 museum collections, and a traveling exhibition, “Dan Christensen: Forty Years of Painting,” was organized by Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 2009.

Strassfield Juries at S.C.C.

The Southampton Culture Center, on Pond Lane in Southampton Village, has a show on view of many regional artists whose work was selected by Christina Strassfield, the director and senior curator at Guild Hall’s museum. The show will feature work by Stephanie Reit, Ruth Nasca, Setha Low, Lance Corey, Linda Capello, Sara Douglas, Sarah Jaffe Turnbull, and Dan Sullivan, among many others.

The show is on view through Oct. 3. A reception will be held on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.