Those familiar with Linda Stein’s artwork might be surprised to find needles, thread, and fabrics lying around her TriBeCa and Northwest Woods studios. Ms. Stein, whose earlier works were often composed of such materials as driftwood, drawer knobs, and engraving plates, is now making what she calls “bullyproof” vests.

    On the one hand, the predominantly cotton vests stand in contrast to her earlier works; on the other, the transition is all too natural.

    Ms. Stein’s says that bullyproof vests were born from two of her previous series, “Knights of Protection” and “Warrior Women.” In both series — created from wood, metal, and stone — she channeled her emotions and conveyed a need for peace and protection after being evacuated following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Her most recent sculptures — armor-like pieces constructed with leather, metal, and acrylicized paper — can be seen in a traveling exhibition, “The Fluidity of Gender.” The exhibition is at the Alexandria Museum of Art in Alexandria, La., through Nov. 24. They can be hung on a wall, but they’re also wearable for short periods.

    “When people wear them, they often say that they feel empowered,” said Ms. Stein, who learned to sew from her father. “It made sense for me to start making vests that people can wear all the time.”

    The bullyproof vests often contain images of Princess Mononoke (a Japanese anime character), Lady Gaga, and early scenes from the Wonder Woman comic strip. But instead of what Wonder Woman said in the 1940s, her speech balloons assert phrases like: “I will fulfill my potential, gain my freedom, and not let cultural impediments and sexual stereotypes hold me down.” No two vests are alike. They start at $1,500, and the artist also creates custom vests for more.

    Using art to incite change isn’t new to Ms. Stein. In 1972, she founded Have Art Will Travel, a nonprofit organization that worked to foster gender equality through artistic and intellectual exchange. “I love talking about my art,” she said. “Otherwise, how do people understand the messages found in it?” At Ms. Stein’s studio in New York, Have Art Will Travel hosts an array of artists and lecturers who speak out against homophobia, racism, and sexism.

    In August, the organization hosted 12 young people from the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a nonprofit that gives a positive and supportive environment to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning young people between the ages of 12 and 24.

    “Many of these kids have been victims of bullying, molestation, and other abuse,” Ms. Stein said. “Through art they are able to express themselves freely, therefore no longer feeling powerless.”

     Ms. Stein’s nonprofit doesn’t just make its mark in the New York area. She hopes that her traveling exhibit will be shown in 30 museums and universities around the country before the show culminates in 2015. Through her art and vest sales, she has been able to foot the high shipping costs to get the show to venues that otherwise could not have afforded to host it. And she has funded enhanced programming at conferences that teach acceptance and raise awareness.

    “The more people wear a bullyproof vest, the more people will ask about them,” Ms. Stein said. “It gives a voice to people who are overlooked; at the very least, it starts a discussion on the issues.”

Retreat Art Benefit

    A juried art exhibition benefiting the Retreat will open at the Richard Demato Fine Arts gallery in Sag Harbor on Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. On view will be the work of 25 finalists chosen by Christina Strassfield and Kathryn Markel from more than 300 entries.

    Ms. Strassfield is the curator and museum director of Guild Hall. Ms. Markel is a gallery owner in New York and Bridgehampton. They will announce a “best in show” winner that evening who will have a solo show at Richard Demato Fine Arts at a later date. Although the gallery is hosting the event, all of the art sold during it will benefit the Retreat and the artists in a 50-50 shared arrangement. The Retreat is a domestic violence agency in East Hampton that provides services to women and children.

Rivers Collaborates

    The University Art Gallery at the State University at Stony Brook is showing “Larry Rivers: Collaborations and Appropriations” through Dec. 8. The exhibition, organized by Helen Harrison, has 11 large paintings and a grouping of 8 drawings. The artist’s lithographic series “Stones,” on which he worked with Frank O’Hara, is also included, along with two films by Rudy Burckhardt starring Rivers and other South Fork cohorts.

    Rivers, who was a longtime resident of Southampton, was a realist painter at a time when abstraction was favored. He began his career as a jazz musician, and Ms. Harrison writes in the exhibition catalog that the collaborative and experimental nature of jazz may have carried over into his artwork. Ms. Harrison will give a gallery tour on Nov. 7 at 1 p.m. Admission to the gallery is free.

Raymond Goes South

    Anne Raymond, an East Hampton painter, will have a show of her artwork at the Elder Gallery in Charlotte, N.C. “Moments” will showcase her atmospheric and gestural style as applied to nature. The exhibition will open on Friday, Nov. 2, and will remain on view through Dec. 30.

Flack to Speak at Oberlin

    Audrey Flack of East Hampton will speak at Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum in Ohio next Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

    The painter, sculptor, and photorealist will give a talk titled “Women: The Passion and the Sorrow.”

The Art of Disguise

    Just in time for Halloween, Neoteric Fine Art in Amagansett will present “Incognito: The Art of Disguise,” which looks at the implications of assuming other identities and characters for ourselves through costume and disguise. The show’s thesis is that there is a psychological element in the ritual of role-playing. Costumes allow this role-play to occur and give one’s persona an opportunity to take on the identity of another, freeing the self to act out its inner psychic melodramas.

    Scott Bluedorn, Andrea Cote, Margaret Farmer, Charles Ly, Christine Lidrbauch, Christian Little, Diana Lives, Lutha Leahy-Miller, Annysa Ng, Maria Pessino, and Kate Petrone are some of the participating artists. An opening reception and costume party will be held tomorrow from 5 p.m. to midnight. The show will remain on view through Nov. 24.

Shadow Falls on Ashawagh

    “Shadow,” a show of contemporary art, will open on Saturday morning at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. A reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m., and the show will continue through Sunday. The shadow of the title refers to the actual effects of light on objects, or it can be implied — shady dealings of politicians, the tracking of cookies and search engines on the Internet, the paranormal, or the Jungian unconscious.

    Artists participating in this show include Abby Abrams, Roisin Bateman, Lucille Berrill Paulson, Rosalind Brenner, Michael Cardacino, Susan Burr Carlo, Eileen Casey, Marilyn DiCarlo-Ames, Art Donovan, Ellen Dooley, Dru Frederick, Gerry Giliberti, Steve Haweeli, Elizabeth J. Holmes, Wilhelmina Howe, Paula Kelly, Nancy Kiembock, Anthony Lombardo, Cynthia Loewen, Andrea McCafferty, Jonathan Morse, Zoe Pennebaker, Joyce Raimondo, Bob Rothstein, Joyce Silver, Tom Steele, Mary Stubelek, Robert Sullivan, Robert Wilson, Mia Wisnoski, and Athos Zacharias.

Don Saco’s Sculpture

    Don Saco’s sculpture is on view at the Southampton Cultural Center through Nov. 13. The exhibition is devoted to Mr. Saco’s most recent work from the past two years, inspired by ballet dancers and their movement as captured by Andrea Mohin, a photographer for The New York Times. Mr. Saco is also showing some two-dimensional works — vertical and flat iterations of geometric shapes.

   “Inherit the Wind,” a play based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial and written in the 1950s in reaction to McCarthyism, has vital resonance for our own era, particularly on the eve of a national election. The tight and well-acted production by Michael Disher for Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center is well worth seeing, not only as a diversion but for its underlying message.

    Almost a century after John T. Scopes agreed to serve as a test case for a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution in schools, school battles over creationism and evolution continue in many states. This is not a play about that. Rather, the playwrights chose the trial as a way to ground a broader examination of the theme of intellectual freedom, striking a final note of conciliation rather than an overall indictment of faith over reason. The play implies that neither need be adhered to over the other, as we should be free in this country to decide for ourselves what is right.

    Mr. Disher’s full productions always rise to the challenge of working with very little. His preference for staging plays rather than doing readings continually offers instruction in just how much can be accomplished with the mere suggestion of sights, sounds, clothing, and props.

    His minimalist sets on the small stage continually capture the essence of the milieu and allow the audience to enter the scene and fill in the blanks as they see fit. His costumes, even when just alluding to the fashion of the period, add to the credibility of the staging. Here, a couple of tables, chairs, and a raised platform can serve triple duty as meeting house, church, and courtroom, the outdoors suggested by the theater’s aisles. Music often serves as another element of setting and Mr. Disher’s choice of introduction, interlude, and sometimes concluding songs contribute much to the mood of the piece.

    His actors, while all community-based, often rise to the level of professionals, if not already professionals themselves. This cast hits all the right notes, with particularly memorable performances by Alan Stewart, Doug Walter, Jack Seabury, and Amanda Stein.

    Mr. Stewart plays Matthew Harrison Brady, the character based on Williams Jennings Bryan, a populist who argued in favor of the Tennessee law. Daniel Becker plays Henry Drummond, based on Clarence Darrow in his defense of Scopes, who is alluded to in the role of Bertram Cates, played by Vincent Carbone.

    Ms. Stein plays Rachel Brown, Bert’s vulnerable sweetheart, and Mr. Walter is her father, the firebrand Rev. Jeremiah Brown. Mr. Seabury is E.K. Hornbeck, the character based on H.L. Mencken, who reported on the trial. Hornbeck is the true atheist in the play. Drummond appears to be that lawyer who seizes on an issue more for the challenge and attention it attracts than as a matter of principle. In the end, he splits the difference.

    They receive strong support from Terrence Fiore, Richard Gardini, Barbara Jo Howard, Deborah Marshall, Matthew Peraza, Tony Peraza, Philip Reichert, and Stephan Scheck.

    This is topical and political theater, but illustrates how, even when diametrically opposed, two sides of a debate might be reconciled for the greater good of the whole. What is more important: evolution, creation, or the right to believe in one or the other? In an often bitterly partisan country, this is something worth being reminded of as we go to the polls in November.

Journey in Song

    A unique and powerful night out has been promised for tomorrow’s event subtitled “Journey in Song,” with Inda Eaton, Nancy Atlas, and Caroline Doctorow. The three local powerhouse female musicians will join together onstage at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall. The ticket price is $20 for an evening of Americana, folk, country, and rock. All three are popular performers, “great songwriters, and fun people,” according to Ms. Eaton.

    The women will collaborate to perform their original work backed by One Hot Band, which consists of Jeffery Smith on percussion, Russ Seeger on guitar and fiddle, Neil Surreal on keyboard and accordion, and Jimmy Farmer on upright bass. Special guests are also expected.

    Advance tickets to the 8 p.m. show, called “Way Out East,” are available at Crossroads Music in Amagansett, Becker’s Hardware in Montauk, and Ironhorse Graphics in Bridgehampton.

Spooky Tuba

    The Long Island Tuba Quartet will perform a “Halloween (Sort Of)” concert at the Montauk Library on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

    This is the group’s sixth annual visit to the library and the members, Don Sherman and Michael Canipe on euphoniums and Jeff Furman and Bill Troiano on tubas, will share an eclectic program. Popular, classical, film scores, and original works are all part of the mix, which is recommended for young and old alike.

    The group formed in 1986 and performed at Tubafest, sponsored by the Suffolk County Music Educator’s Association. It was so popular, the members decided to keep it going and now perform at faculty department music recitals for various school districts, and at weddings and Christmas parties in addition to libraries and parks on Long Island.

    The concert is free and open to the public.

Ballet Among the Vines

    On Sunday, Wolffer Estate Vineyard Winery will host the New York City Ballet for an afternoon of food, wine, and dance. Jared Angle, a New York City Ballet principal dancer, will lead the program of George Balanchine’s work, celebrating the ballet troupe’s founder and his love of food and wine as well as dance.

    The performance begins at noon with four dance excerpts performed by Mr. Angle and Rebecca Krohn, another principal dancer, and joined by Sara Adams and Russell Janzen, who are corps de ballet members. A string quartet of New York City Ballet Orchestra members will accompany them.

    A wine and cheese reception will follow the performance. Tickets are $125 per person with $100 fully tax deductible as a contribution to the ballet. Reservations are required.

Good People in Quogue

    The Hampton Theatre Com­pany ­will present “Good People,” a play by David Lindsay-Abaire, beginning tonight through­ Nov. 11.

    The play, which won the Horton Foote prize for outstanding new play, is about the divide between those who make it and those who do not and the moral dilemmas that guide them along the way.

    Morgan Vaughan plays the role of Margaret, a single mother from South Boston struggling to survive after losing her minimum wage job, a role Frances McDormand played on Broadway. Joe Pallister is her former boyfriend, Mike, a successful doctor. Nehassaiu deGannes, who was in Guild Hall’s production of “Equus,” plays Mike’s wife, Kate. Diana Marbury, the company’s artistic director, plays Margaret’s landlady, Dottie. Linda May makes her company debut as Margaret’s friend Jean. Brennan Vickery plays a young boss at the Dollar Store.

    “Good People” will be presented on Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. at the Quogue Community Hall. Ticket prices are $25 for adults, $23 for those over age 65 (except Saturdays), and $10 for students under 21. For further information or to make reservations, visit the company’s Web site, hamptontheatre.org.

   To look behind the scenes of an event that you’ve come to look forward to, large or small, and find the efforts of one person holding it all together can be surprising. If, that is, it isn’t the new normal in this constrained age. Poetry Pairs at Guild Hall regularly brings top-flight readers here while adding a touch of the literary to that institution’s otherwise varied lineup. Thanks to Fran Castan.

    The series has essentially been her baby since 2007 — “to the point of exhaustion and no money,” she said, only half-kidding, over the weekend from her house in Springs.

    Exhausting, for instance, is the mere mention of airfare. But attention must be paid: For Sunday’s Poetry Pairs, Molly Peacock will have to be flown in from Toronto to read from her book “The Paper Garden.” Published in 2011 and out in paperback earlier this year, it tells the story of the British collage artist Mary Delany, who started her work in the 18th century at the age of 72 and went on to produce close to 1,000 botanical collages, more or less inventing an art form. Today they’re on display at the British Museum.

    “Molly writes from the perspective of a poet about an artist from a different medium,” said Ms. Castan, a poet in her own right who will introduce the writers to provide some background. Ms. Peacock will give a PowerPoint presentation of images, and she will read poems, too — from her collections “Cornucopia” and the more recent “The Second Blush.” Her work has been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review.

    And — hold the airfare — she’ll be joined by Grace Schulman of Springs and New York, who has a new book of poems, “Without a Claim,” due out next year from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ms. Schulman, distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, was a poetry editor at The Nation for more than 30 years and formerly ran the 92nd Street Y series in Manhattan, which, Ms. Castan pointed out, for a long time was the only game in town, readings-wise.

    Entry to Sunday’s reading costs $5, $3 for Guild Hall members, and comes with refreshments afterward and a chance to meet the poets and have books signed. Poetry Pairs starts at 3 p.m. and has been funded by Daniel and Joanna S. Rose and the nonprofit organization Poets & Writers.

    Guild Hall will revisit the much praised and beloved photography of Fritz Leddy on Saturday with the opening of “Fritz Leddy, Part 2,” a new selection from the more than 2,000 negatives the former East Hampton Village police chief left behind in the basement of the department, and which were found in 1999.

    Doug Kuntz, who organized and printed the first show, has once again taken on those duties and is guest curator. He will lead a gallery talk on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. before the 5 p.m. public reception for that show and three others that Guild Hall will open the same evening (see related article on C4).

    The photographs were taken with a large-format 4-by-5 negative camera, from 1937 to 1968. Some of the favorite images from the last show from 2006 will be featured along with many new ones.

    Mr. Kuntz, a former photo editor for The East Hampton Star, said the negatives were found in envelopes, “a lot of them had the date, place, and named some of the people. Some just said Main Street and a date.” Although the negatives were mostly well organized, much of the identification and a few corrections came from the hundreds of people who saw the last show. “There was a book in the gallery and some people would identify a whole group of 25 people. They wrote every name out in longhand.”

    Mr. Leddy was born in Red Bank, N.J., in 1906. He followed his father, Harry Leddy, to East Hampton in 1929 as part of a security firm. He became a special patrolman for the Police Department in 1932 and was named chief five years later. He took a leave of absence to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1950 to 1952 and then returned to East Hampton, becoming the first head of the village’s detective division in 1968. He retired the next year and continued to enjoy photography as well as golf, gardening, and nature in the years before his death at his Cove Hollow house in 1987.

Facing the Portrait at Ross

    The Ross School gallery in East Hampton will exhibit contemporary portrait paintings in a show opening tomorrow with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m.

    “Face Off” will feature the work of Sydney Albertini, Jack Ceglic, John Hardy, Christa Maiwald, and Christina Schlesinger. The show was organized by students in Jennifer Cross’s museum studies class — Julian Fava, Rebecca Hamilton, Jeheli Odidi, Hongjie Zhu, and Sun Zhehai.

    The artists were chosen for their somewhat traditional to more unorthodox approaches to depicting the human face. Subjects may include the artists themselves, famous faces such as Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, local personalities such as Philip Schultz and Bill King, and friends and family of the artists. There will also be a selection of portraits by art teachers, current students, and recent graduates of Ross.

    The show will remain on view through Dec. 15.

Jackson to Retire at Parrish

    The Parrish Art Museum has announced that Anke Jackson, its longtime deputy director, will retire in mid-November.

    Scott Howe, who joined the staff at the beginning of October, will replace her.

    Ms. Jackson was born in Germany and immigrated to New Orleans with her parents in 1953. She attended Louisiana State University as an undergrad and continued her post-graduate studies at Rice University in Houston. She joined the Parrish in 1977 as an education coordinator and press officer and was associate director for budget and operations from 1981 to 1989, when she became deputy director.

    Ms. Jackson was instrumental in building a permanent collection vault on Job’s Lane in 1986 and in the process that resulted in the museum’s new building in Water Mill, serving as the “owner’s representative” on the project since 2009.

    Mr. Howe was previously associate director of UrbanGlass, an open-access glass studio in Brooklyn. Prior to that, he was director of education and public programs at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va. He served in the Peace Corps/Cameroon and has advanced degrees in art history and art education from the University of Texas at Austin and Teachers College at Columbia University.

Harms in Connecticut

    Robert Harms is exhibiting “Little Fresh Pond: Selected Works” at Brick Walk Fine Art in West Hartford through Dec. 1.

    Mr. Harms takes his inspiration from his pond-front house and studio in Southampton, drawing from seasonal changes and differing light to make abstract, but evocative, watercolors and paintings.

    In an article in The Star from 2009, Mr. Harms said the pond and the paintings that result from it are “not just subjects, but also moods. On a gray day it’s more effort to paint. I’m more energized when it’s sunny.”

    The article noted that “his meditations allow for an aesthetic experience that can be quite literal to those who know the subject and a beautiful abstraction to those who don’t. ‘I don’t take the beholder out of the equation. It’s like when people read a book, it changes in our minds. It’s different for each person reading it.’ ”

New Show at Drawing Room

    The Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton will present paintings by Sharon Horvath and ceramics by Diane Mayo tomorrow through Jan. 6.

    In her latest paintings, Ms. Horvath interprets the experience of space whether on the expanse of beach or collapsed into a rearview mirror using pigments ground from minerals and suspended in polymer that she then draws over in ink.

    Ms. Mayo is a longtime resident of Montauk and is inspired by Cypriot pottery in her own ceramic sculptures. The recent work mixes her own inventive shapes with Bronze-Age forms: low-handled bowls have asymmetrical elements, a tall column has a biomorphic base. The pieces are brightly colored in her signature raku glazes.

Ashawagh Benefit Show--POSTPONED

  Due to the aftermath of the storm,   “Small Works/Big Views,” an exhibition of work by six artists scheduled for this weekend has been postponed until some date to be announced in 2013.

So when this mysteriously titled art book, “Cappy,” written by Terry Wallace, an East Hampton gallerist, crossed my desk, I asked myself, who is Cappy? I was quickly reminded of an old adage regarding artists’ monographs — beware the dust jacket of an art book that doesn’t illustrate art. The cover’s photograph is of a craggy middle-aged Scandinavian fisherman type, squinting directly at me and the camera. And the illustration on the back is a haunting photograph of the same person as an ancient mariner.

    But the book’s subtitle is “The Life and Art of C. Hjalmar Amundsen,” clearly putting the word “life” in front of “art.” So I thumbed through the text and illustrations to find some beautiful and carefully painted scenes of whalemen on the hunt, the Cedar Point lighthouse, World War II Navy ships, a brig passing Culloden Point, and Rockport’s famous Motif No. 1 and Gloucester Harbor in Massachusetts. Well-delineated and dramatically composed works representing realist regional 20th-century American painting.

    Then there are the photographs of a 1950s art show at Tuma’s tackle shop in Montauk, the artist in costume for a 1930s Beachcombers Ball in Provincetown, Mass., and posing with a harpoon at the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. So I flipped through again and saw some very schematic paintings that are so generic as to be clearly decorative. Are these different periods? No, here is an artist who did over-the-sofa work for commercial sales and careful and handsome work that he could be proud of, for art-loving clients. This was going to be an unusual art book.

    The distance between museum art and “Saturday Evening Post” covers was very clear when I started to camp out in my high school art room in the 1960s. Norman Rockwell was not an artist. Andrew Wyeth was not an artist either. They and the “designers” of record jackets, paperback book covers, and greeting cards were all not part of the pantheon of fine art. Fine art was above these popular narrative images. My teacher, Mrs. Webster, had a name for this other kind of non-art. It was called calendar art — and this was not a compliment. Be it the Currier & Ives reprints on my grandmother’s calendar, the hunters and their sleek bird dogs on my father’s calendar, or the hardly covered women on the greasy calendar at the Ford garage — this was not art. My small upstate New York town seemed very interested in compartmentalization. Things were so black and white. This was the olden times when men were men, women were women, and fine art was fine unless it wasn’t.

    By the time I hit college, all hell had broken loose in the visual and performing arts, and as Cole Porter so aptly penned, “anything goes,” and it is still going.

    After finishing the book, I can say that Cappy Amundsen’s life and works unfold into a tale that might be more common than most of us know, but has rarely been so carefully documented. In an art world that helps promote Jeff Koons-type hucksterism, this monograph reminds us all of that thin line between hokum and hosannas. What is captivating about Mr. Wallace’s entertaining and educational tome is that it introduces us to an astonishing person, C. Hjalmar Amundsen (known to his friends as Cappy), whose life is possibly more a work of art than some of his canvases.

“Cappy”

Terry Wallace

M.T. Fine Arts and

Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, $35

    It also chronicles a rich period (1930s to 1960s) of cultural change by following this engagingly picaresque character who wove himself into the fabric of his adopted village of Sag Harbor. The story starts with Mr. Wallace and his serendipitous discovery and purchase of a box of Amundsen’s scrapbooks, but first a digression.

    It should be stated that Mr. Wallace’s East Hampton Village gallery features 19th and 20th-century representational art that focuses on the land and seascapes of eastern Long Island. Childe Hassam and the Moran family of artists are his stock in trade. When a Sag Harbor resident stopped by the Wallace Gallery in 1996 to ask if Terry had any Cappy paintings for sale, Mr. Wallace didn’t know what the gentleman was talking about. Within an hour the story of Sag Harbor’s beloved, eccentric artist was shared and Mr. Wallace’s curiosity was stoked. He wondered how this artist’s work had eluded him and began searching out works by Cappy in private collections in Sag Harbor as well as in that village’s library and whaling museum.

    In 2007, Mr. Wallace started a popular series of short interviews involving local citizens on WLNG Radio. He asked his audience to share their Cappy stories, and soon after that the box of Amundsen’s memorabilia arrived at his gallery door. What was contained in this hoard is the tale of a talented boy and his fascinating life in and out of (and around) the world of fine and commercial art as it existed a century ago. The scrapbooks proved to be an autobiographical collage. They are filled with newspaper clippings, faded and discolored Polaroid snapshots, gallery guides, and programs. This array of life’s highlights was just waiting to be cataloged, scrutinized, and strung together into an impressionistic portrait.

    As Mr. Wallace started his research project, he jotted down adjectives that he found associated with Cappy Amundsen, such as “bohemian, intelligent, complicated, athletic, obstinate, individualistic, opinionated, innovative, dedicated, assertive, committed, strong, visionary, cantankerous, adventurous, even-tempered, alcoholic, talented, competitive, trusting, headstrong, realist, naturalist, ecologist, versatile, independent, disorganized, passionate, generous,” and more. These combined character traits would have challenged the best of the writers of black-and-white-era TV soap operas.

    What comes out of this material is a childhood surrounded by creative people. Cappy’s grandfather born in Norway was a stone carver who worked on Henry Hobson Richardson’s grand New York State Capitol building, and his son (Cappy’s father) was an illustrator. Though the family had first settled in Williamsport, Pa., Cappy’s life started in Brooklyn in 1911. When he was 4, his family moved to Hackensack, N.J. His father was well employed and enjoyed fishing on Long Island’s East End. Cappy remembered seeing a photograph of the two of them posed beside the Sag Harbor bridge when he was but 2.

    Amundsen attended good schools (Fairmount Academy and Blair Academy) and enjoyed the Pine Bluff Camp in Port Jefferson during his early summers. It was there that he fell in love with sailing. But for years a scandal hung over the head of Cappy’s father — his first wife left him and ran off with the violinist Janos Rigo, who was also married. It was a popular story with the newspapers, and though today the whole matter seems tame, it remained a topic from 1907 until 1934. And even after Cappy’s father divorced his wife in 1910 and soon remarried, his embarrassment didn’t subside.

    When his father’s second wife, Cappy’s mother, died in early 1929, the family fell apart. The crash of the stock market didn’t help either.

    Interestingly, Cappy was born Casper Hjalmar Emerson III. It was after his mother died that he adopted the last name of Norway’s most famous polar explorer, Roald Amundsen. This became legal years later, and it was just one of Cappy’s aliases. Cappy said that he had not been encouraged by his father to become an artist. But his father remained employed during the Depression, and this might have been inspiration enough for a kid with a high school diploma seeking a job.

    He found part-time work with a gallery on New York’s lower Fifth Avenue as a designer, and he studied at the Grand Central School of Art. It was a time when a number of artists influenced by the Ashcan School began to search for American subjects. Unlike the 19th-century Hudson River School that inspired the public with its deep nationalistic feelings for the American wilderness, this later generation of realist painters didn’t look for sublimity, but rather used a painterly gutsiness when applying their fluid brushwork to images of Gloucester Harbor and Rockport wharves.

    These colorful paintings are filled with dock crews and commercial fishing fleets. Artists like Emile Gruppe and Anthony Thieme dashed through New England scenes that seem comforting today, but were American post-impressionism then, and (because of their vacation locations) quickly became pleasing and profitable for their practitioners.

    Cappy went to Maine and would have had to make a point not to see this art. When Cappy arrived back from New England, he must have carried rolls of completed seascapes and dock scenes, because on May 28, 1932, he registered with the Artists Aid Committee to have his work in the first Washington Square Art Show. A photograph from 1936 shows the artist exhibiting oil and watercolor paintings of Rockport Harbor, three-masted ships, portraits, and sailboats, all hanging or leaning on the wrought-iron fence surrounding Washington Square. He continued to have work in the show for 30 years. He spent time in Provincetown painting, playing with its avant-garde summer folk, and picking up money working in the commercial fishing industry.

    He visited Sag Harbor again in 1945 and bought a house there soon after. He and his wife fell in love with what has been described as a scrappy village during those years. Mr. Wallace devotes much time to Cappy’s role in his new community and captures all the charms of a small town not yet discovered by the summer people. His paintings began to pay homage to the village’s 19th-century off-shore whaling industry and its winding streets, old houses, and beautiful harbor. He painted, he played, and he drank.

    It is all interesting, if not sad. But what is a most amazing revelation is Mr. Wallace’s discovery of Cappy and his painting industry. Yes, I said industry. There is no other way to see it. Cappy Amundsen signed hundreds of his paintings using a variety of pseudonyms. There are several theories espoused, but I think the jury is still out. He signed paintings as Hjalmar, A. Emerson, J.J. Enwright, W. Hughes, Wm. Ward Jr., F.H. McKay, H. Nansen, Sven Sagg, R.B. Cooper, J.C. Bennett, John Dunne, L.C. Bonac, and many others. Humor is certainly present in some, and others are most likely jokes on friends’ (or enemies’) names. I would like to own a canvas by either L.C. Bonac or Sven Sagg. The art may be in the name.

    It could be that his prolific output made galleries nervous. Rather like certain mystery writers who feel that one book a year is enough for loyal readers, so the second and third books have different detectives and “different” authors. Please don’t let the public know that the artist keeps six canvases going at a time and completes them all before dinnertime. Could be, but it seems that these generic works were geared for a clientele that really wouldn’t care. I think it’s the artist’s sense of humor — perverse in the best sense of the word.

    You will enjoy meeting Cappy and riding the wide swings in his life and art. He illustrated books, designed posters, painted the New England harbor scene on your Sag Harbor aunt’s wall, and made friends everywhere he went. He taught local artists, founded Sag Harbor’s first outboard racing regatta, organized the Sea Scouts and the Montauk Sailing Club, and created an extraordinary screen of wire fish for an exhibition at East Hampton’s Guild Hall.

    Thanks to Terry Wallace and that box of scrapbooks, we have all discovered Cappy, but certainly not all his secrets.

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    Richard Barons is the executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society. He lives in Springs.

    Earlier this year, “Cappy” won an Independent Publisher Regional Book Award, or Ippy, for best nonfiction title in the Northeast. Cappy Amundsen died in 2001.

His Gramercy Park apartment comes complete with a northern exposure to the Empire State Building, but it’s not a view Richard Rutkowski enjoys often.

    Whether in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Paris, Scotland, Japan, or even the house he inherited from his father in Water Mill, he has racked up a lion’s share of frequent-flier miles. As a director and cinematographer, husband, and father, the East Hampton native has had a vagabond existence for the past several years.

    His recent directorial project “The Space in Back of You” will be screened on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Jerome Robbins Theater  at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan. The film documents the creative life of Suzushi Hanayagi, who collaborated with Robert Wilson for more than two decades. The Japanese dancer and choreographer adapted and synthesized traditional dance from her country with modern performance art to bring new vision to the forms.

    The film traces their relationship, as well as her individual development, through her performances and the recollections of her colleagues. When Mr. Wilson discovered his friend suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, he traveled to Japan to see her in the facility that cares for her. While recreating her past through archival footage, Mr. Rutkowski also follows Mr. Wilson’s journey and his efforts afterward in putting together a tribute to her at a performance at the Guggenheim Museum in the city. The film had its Japanese premiere in September and was shown in Paris last winter.

    Mr. Rutkowski met Mr. Wilson at Harvard College in 1985 as a freshman when he was cast as an extra in the theater director and designer’s production of  “CIVIL warS.”

    “He cast 25 or 30 extras to do tasks and form tableaus. We moved furniture in and out of scenes,” Mr. Rutkowski recalled at his apartment recently. “At rehearsal one evening he asked if anyone knew how to do an architectural model. I had taken an architecture course and knew how to draft and cut the foam core, so I raised my hand.”

    The next night, Mr. Rutkowski went to where Mr. Wilson was staying in Boston. “We did about everything possible except make a model. He wanted to talk about how the show was going and future work. He wanted to listen to opera. There was a slide talk he needed to deliver and he needed someone to organize the slides.”

    It was obvious that the director required “somebody to stay up very late at night with him while he consumed vodka, and stay clear and present, take notes, and be ready for the next day.” He also needed someone to keep track of all of the projects he worked on simultaneously. Mr. Rutkowski became that person, at least in the summers and on holiday breaks from school. He even made the model, which was for an installation at a dance club in Manhattan, the Palladium, though it was never built.

    Eventually, he helped Mr. Wilson find the location that became the Watermill Center. “It was a good working relationship. It led to a lot of things.” Although Mr. Wilson’s ties and contacts were in the theater and Mr. Rutkowski ended up in film, he stayed in touch with Mr. Wilson and even made a film at the center, “Sunshine Superman,” about Christopher Knowles, an artist who was the librettist for “Einstein on the Beach.”

    Similarly, Mr. Rutkowski eschewed visual arts and more creative pursuits, which were the purview of his father, Casimir Rutkowski, a landscape painter, who could often be seen outdoors capturing the familiar scenes of the South Fork. “My father came to the area a little late compared to the famous painters of the Fairfield Porter or de Kooning generation. He got to know some of them and was drawn into the social circle of Paul Georges.”

    As a child during the 1970s, he found that living in East Hampton and its environs offered the opportunity “to see living legends by accident: Lauren Bacall getting ice cream, Paul McCartney at Gristede’s, or Paul Simon out front of Stephen Talkhouse. So you did not have to imagine having a connection to the arts, it was right there on the sidewalk.” 

    Still, “I wanted to do things that skewed more technical, like being an architect or an engineer. Then in college I made a short film during my sophomore year and I really took to it.” The decision to become a cinematographer initially came from necessity — he needed the work — but also appealed to his techie side. “I had what I felt was a natural penchant for making an image and operating the gear that made that image.”

    Mr. Rutkowski’s credits as a cinematographer and camera operator include work on Neil Burger’s “Interview With the Assassin” and “Limitless,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream,” Adrian Lyne’s “Unfaithful,” Joel Schumacher’s “The Number 23,” Wes Craven’s “My Soul to Take,” Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer,” Larry Clark’s “Kids,” and David O. Russell’s “Flirting with Disaster.”

    For Mr. Aronofsky, who is known as a demanding director, he spent days in a tent shooting drug paraphernalia and powder going through straws over and over again, until he got the images that were finally used in the movie. While the camerawork on a film is terribly important, he said, “It’s not everything. What is important is point of view.”

    If the cinematographer, director, producer, writer, and production designer “can look at the material for what it is, source out the clearest and most interesting way to tell that story, and stick to that point of view and not back away from it when times are tough, then you will make something memorable and even something beautiful.”

    Recently, he has crossed over into television production and is the cinematographer for “Boss,” a show set in Chicago starring Kelsey Grammer, for the Starz Network. It was both a practical and aesthetic choice. “Independent film has backed up a bit in the past few years. It was hard to get scripts on good or even mediocre films. At the same time, television was having a massive renaissance fueled by ‘The Sopranos.’ Nontraditional networks like AMC were making shows that looked and felt like films. It was a new way to work and you could get away with mature, adult themes if you packaged it in the right context that was likely to bring the viewer back every week.”

    He is currently looking at new projects in New York City and Los Angeles, where his wife, Betsy, who teaches art and photography, and his eight-year-old stepdaughter, Daisy, are based.

    Mr. Rutkowski was exposed to theater and television production early on in East Hampton. In middle school he was chosen to be a Toy Soldier in a version of “The Nutcracker” at Guild Hall staged by Gwen Verdon with her dance troupe. She taught him how to waltz for a scene at the start of the show. Then in high school, “I hosted the local cable-access show ‘Town Hall Report,’ a simple and fun production emanating right from East Hampton High School under the guidance of a wonderful teacher there, Sal Tocci.”

    Although he was not at first interested in movies, “In about 1980 they shot the film ‘Deathtrap,’ directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, right off of Main Street. From a teacher at the high school I learned that a local guy named Bran Ferren, son of the artists John and Rae Ferren, was the effects technician responsible for the awesome lighting effects sparking from atop a crane in the chilly East Hampton night.”

    He later learned that “Bran was an indifferent and nearly failing student until his English teacher let him write his essay on the then-new technology of lasers. I liked that story then and still do.”

   Along with a new building, the Parrish Art Museum is about to have a new board chairman and a new president. The appointments of Frederic M. Seegal as chairman and H. Peter Haveles Jr. as president will take effect on Jan. 1. Mr. Seegal joined the Parrish board in 2011, serving on its executive and strategic planning committees. He is a current trustee of the New York City Center, the San Francisco Symphony, and the James Beard Foundation, and a former trustee of the San Francisco Opera, the Neuberger Museum, and Southampton Hospital. The vice chairman of the Peter J. Solomon Company, an independent investment banking advisory firm, he joined the company in 2009 after spending most of his 35-year career at Wasserstein Perella, rising to become its president.

   Mr. Haveles has been a Parrish trustee since 2009. He has served on the executive committee and is co-chairman of the annual fund and development committee. He is a partner in the complex commercial litigation department at Kaye Scholer in Manhattan. He is a past president of the Boston University School of Law Alumni Association and is president of the board of the Irish Georgian Society.

   Douglas Polley and Carlo Bronzini Vender, who are the current co-chairmen, will continue to serve on the board.

   In addition to the new officers, Chad A. Leat, vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup, was elected a director. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas, a member of the Economics Club of New York, and a member of the board of directors of the Hampton Classic Horse Show and Global Indemnity P.L.C. A collector of contemporary art and an equestrian, Mr. Leat is single and lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton.

   The remaining officers will continue their roles. They are David Granville-Smith and Alexandra Stanton, vice presidents; Norman Peck, treasurer; Jay Goldberg, assistant treasurer; and Dorothy Lichtenstein, secretary.