Mention kayaking within earshot of people who have experienced it and you'll see a certain look come over their faces, subtle changes in posture. Their brows unfurrow, their voices grow calm, and their eyes seem to hold a little of the same light that glints off the water when the sun's low in the sky and the shadows are long across the kayak's bow.

"It isn't a sport thing. It's an escape," Jay Damuck said, extolling the virtues of kayaking before a morning paddle in the waters off Shelter Island recently.

In an era when people seem to be plugged in, on line, and on duty more than ever, it's no wonder a sport that offers an escape from daily pressures is becoming so popular.

"I've had people call me up and tell me they're going to drop their therapist," Mark Terry, an Amagansett-based kayak tour operator, said. If that isn't a testament to the merits of kayaking, what is?

New Perspective

Mr. Terry started East Coast Adventure Tour Company last year, and Mr. Damuck opened Shelter Island Kayak three years ago. Both were drawn to the business for the same reasons their clients now seek them out - a touch of adventure, a dose of tranquillity, and a unique way of seeing for yourself the treasures of the area's wetland waterways.

"It gives you a different perspective on the area when you see it from the water," said Mike Bottini, a planner with the Group for the South Fork. Mr. Bottini has navigated the waters of the South Fork by kayak for years. When the Group sponsors a canoe trip, Mr. Bottini guides the canoers in his kayak, which is easier to maneuver.

Invented by the Inuits, the narrow vessels were originally constructed of wood and stretched animal skins. These days many of the newest ones are made of molded plastic, but a high-end kayak can be made of fiberglass, wood, or even canvas on a wood frame.

There are sea kayaks, which are long and fast, but more prone to tipping, and river kayaks, which are shorter, more stable, and very maneuverable. "In a river kayak every paddle stroke can change your direction," explained Diana Dreeben of the Riverhead company Peconic Paddler.

"It appeals to me because it's such an ancient and basic thing," Mr. Damuck said. "There's so much technology - answering machines, faxes, a computer ignition system in my car. This is just a paddle and a piece of plastic."

Another of the big selling points of kayaks is that they can carry a paddler into just three inches of water or through the roiling ocean waves that are usually the domain of board surfers alone. That opens up to paddlers not only the wonders of the ocean, bays, and harbors, but also narrow mosquito ditches, slow-moving creeks, and hidden ponds.

One With Nature

Provided the kayakers don't litter, the sport has little or no impact on the environment, which appeals to conservationists. And, while a little bit of knowledge, some basic skills, and common sense are required, amateur calm-water kayaking does not require months of training or Herculean strength.

Explorer types can bob along over clustered clam beds, scurrying crabs, and red beard sponge, paddle near shorebird nesting sites without disturbing the birds, and try to keep up with the dragonflies darting off the water.

Enthusiasts say that in a kayak they feel a part of the wetland world rather than an intruder in it.

Some, however, are hard put to leave the trappings of a fast-paced life on shore. "We've had a few people bring their cellular phones with them," Luke Svanberg said, as he paddled leisurely along in Cedar Point Park, pausing to point out a school of alewives flapping at the water's surface.

Growing Demand

Mr. Svanberg leads kayak tours for his brother Lars's company, Main Beach Surf and Sport in Wainscott, teaching tour participants the basic rules of the waters, and guiding them through an introduction to wetland ecology.

When Lars Svanberg heard The Star was doing a story on kayaking, he said, "It's about time you woke up over there." He was one of the pioneers of kayak tours and rentals on the South Fork and has watched a dramatic rise in the sport over the past couple of years.

Peconic Paddler, which opened in Riverhead 12 years ago, was the first big kayaking operation on the East End.

Since then an increasing number of entrepreneurs have opened tour companies and rental businesses on the East End to meet the growing demand and take advantage of a lucrative market. The boom is evident not only by the kayak trailers parked at some of the more popular paddling spots, but by the number of cars and trucks driving around with one of the lightweight vessels tethered to the roof.

Where They Go

Main Beach's tours focus on Alewife Brook and Pond and Georgica Pond, which offer two very different views of local wetlands. While Alewife Brook is surrounded by parkland, Georgica Pond is surrounded by private property. There is just one public access point to Georgica Pond, near the corner of Wainscott Stone Road and Montauk Highway, so what people see from the water may be the only view they get of the pond.

Accabonac Harbor in Springs, with its classic salt marsh, is a particularly prized spot for kayaking, and almost every evening, while the weather holds, a line of paddlers or the lone kayaker can be seen around Tick Island. "Accabonac has a lot of history, too," Mr. Bottini said. "Almost every rock and point has a name."

Northwest Creek in East Hampton, also bordered by parkland, is another good place. Many make their way to Napeague Harbor, where they can paddle along the shore and disembark to explore Hicks Island.

Rougher Waters

Mr. Terry often delivers kayaks for children's parties at Fresh Pond in Amagansett. Mr. Damuck likes Coecles Harbor and Congdon's Creek, off Shelter Island, and Mr. Bottini recommends Sebonac Creek in North Sea.

James Greenbaum, a Montauk attorney who took up kayaking this summer, suggests Fort Pond, Fort Pond Bay, and Lake Montauk as good spots out east, but also raves about paddling on the ocean.

"That's for people who are really into it," he said. As a surfer first, he found kayaking to be a good alternative sport in a bad year for surfing, as this one has been. "A three-foot wave - on a kayak, that's over your head," he said.

Go The Distance

What thrills him about wave riding is what scares most people away from paddling in the ocean. It takes a lot more know-how to brave a wave than to hug the shore watching the wildlife, but for a skilled surfer, he said, "it opens up a whole new world."

While a surfboard is made for shorter rides and a canoe can be a bit heavy for long solo trips, kayaks were designed for distance, enabling a paddler to travel in and out of little coves, along the ocean coast, even up one side of the South Fork and down the other.

Each area offers something a little different and some spots are better left a secret. After talking to just a few paddlers, one gets the sense that a prime kayaking spot might be something you have to track down for yourself.

Three years ago, Mr. Bottini drew up a plan for a canoe/kayak waterway guide that would include maps of good routes and possible camping or bed and breakfast spots along the way for those who'd like to make overnight trips or might not be familiar with the area's waters. Outside of Cedar Point Park in East Hampton, there aren't any designated camping spots now that tie in with good kayak routes.

With all the paddling activity, it seems the time for such a guide couldn't be better, but Mr. Bottini has been so busy with his duties at the Group that he's had to put this project on the back burner.

Though it's hardly likely the East End will become a hub for ecotourism, the area has long drawn a large contingent to outdoor sports and the waterways of the East End, some say, provide kayaking to rival that of any of the better-known destinations around the country.

Critical Mass

Dorothy Dalsimer of Southampton would agree. She took up kayaking long before it was the latest "in" sport. She went to Baja, Calif., on a kayak trip last year, when she was 83. A few years before that, it was Belize.

This summer, she stuck to the South Fork, taking daylong trips, stopping for lunch, and often fishing or gathering scallops and oysters aboard her kayak. If the weather stays warm this year, she just may keep kayaking through the winter.

So when does all this activity become too much of a good thing? Will the crowds on the roads spill over to the waters?

"There's something called a sustainable load," Mr. Terry said a few weeks ago. "You have to look at the size of the system to determine how many kayak loads it can handle." Mr. Terry, who has a degree in environmental science and forestry, doesn't think the waterways here are anywhere close to critical mass. Certainly not at this time of year.

"Most people only go out once or twice a week," Ms. Dreeben of Peconic Paddler said yesterday. "It'll never get too big."

"All people should retire earlier than later," according to Vincent Grippa. "They get so used to working, they don't know what else to do." The owner of Jewels by Virtu in East Hampton, although unwilling to divulge his age, is taking his own advice.

So a discreet sign announcing "retirement sale" hangs in the window of his small shop on the Circle behind the Bank of New York. His regular customers have been stopping by, enjoying the 40 to 50-percent discounts and lightening the load of fine rings, necklaces, and bracelets in the display cases.

Bargain-hunters have until Sept. 28, the last day the shop will be open, to do the same.

Filling His Time

It sounds like Mr. Grippa will have little difficulty filling his time. "I may take piano lessons," he said. "I have a Steinway. It sits silently."

There may be voice lessons in store, too, he said, demonstrating a fine tenor, "but only for my own amusement. I don't have any close neighbors to amuse - or disturb."

Travel is also in the works. "I haven't been to Europe in years," he said. Trips to Italy and Spain are possibilities.

Then again, "If I get bored in retirement, I may open the store again in the spring, but on a smaller scale, as a summer shop."

Regular customers have already asked the jeweler to continue handling repairs and special purchases for them.

Second Generation

Mr. Grippa came naturally, if by a somewhat circuitous route, to his chosen field. The youngest of eight children, he was born in New York to Italian immigrants. His father was a jeweler with a shop on Second Avenue.

"He was a real craftsman, a wonderful, wonderful jeweler," Mr. Grippa said, although "he never made it big."

The father died when the son was 12, and an older brother opened a watch repair shop in the Chrysler building. At the age of 16, Mr. Grippa joined him, turning his weekly salary of $2.50 over to his mother.

"Oh, I hated it," he recalled. "I went to work early and came home late. I never saw the sun."

Sailing For Switzerland

The hours were not the only problem. "I'm not very mechanical," he confided. "I'm much more artistically inclined. I've always enjoyed drawing and sketching things."

In fact, a neighbor, a struggling commercial artist, used to ask Mr. Grippa for help on his projects. "Then he'd call me the next day at work and say, 'They accepted it!' and I'd do a slow burn."

Unhappy as a watchmaker, Mr. Grippa made up his mind to move to Switzerland, with a lead on a job with a major jewelry company, but his employment plans fell through after he had already booked passage.

Undeterred, he sent 20 letters to Swiss businesses asking for work, and received 17 polite rejections before he set sail.

Learning To Behave

He eventually found a job with a small import-export firm in Geneva, but the pay was not good, barely enough to cover the rent, which, he said, was inflated because he was American. "Everyone thought I had money, but it was tough for me."

That job fell apart too, when the company's owner was unable to finalize deals Mr. Grippa had arranged to bring American products such as Kleenex and Pepsi-Cola to Switzerland.

"It was a difficult but pleasant experience," he said. "I learned how to speak French and behave with people. I think everyone should travel."

Personal Question

Returning to New York, Mr. Grippa found work in a department store, though not without difficulty. "No matter what job I applied for, people told me I was either overqualified or underqualified."

Desperate, he walked into Klein's and asked to speak to the president. "I told them it was personal."

"The gentleman came out and said, 'I don't think I know you.'

" 'You don't,' I said, 'but I need a job.'"

Impressed with Mr. Grippa's resume and chutzpah, the president hired him as an assistant manager in the jewelry department.

It Wasn't Tiffany's

"I lasted all of two weeks," he said. "I was waiting on three customers one day. It was the store's policy to only wait on two at any one time. Another woman came up and asked me a question, and I said, 'I'm sorry, madam, you'll have to wait.'"

The manager then appeared. Instead of chastising Mr. Grippa for being curt, "he said to me, 'Why didn't you tell that lady to . . . . This is not Tiffany's. This is Klein's.'"

Mr. Grippa landed on his feet, working at other jewelry and department stores, before he joined David Webb, a jewelry designer. The job frequently took him to Paris, where he helped design and market jewelry.

His Own Shop

"People ask me, 'Do you design?' and technically, the answer is no. I never really sat down and designed jewelry, but I am presented with models and I suggest changes."

His suggestions to manufacturers have caused some headaches. "They tell me I'm more difficult to work with than Tiffany's. I tell them, Tiffany's sells a name. I have to sell a product."

By the late '60s, Mr. Grippa wanted to slow down. He moved to East Hampton, hoping to open his own shop, but "Everything I could find, I couldn't afford."

Eventually, he cut a deal with Peter Milholland, the owner of a gift shop on Main Street called the Black Whale. "I said, 'Give me a five-year lease, and I'll buy your merchandise.'"

Built Like The Rock

Once in business, Mr. Grippa renamed the shop Virtu, a play on his first name and a Latin word meaning a love or appreciation for things of beauty. Jewelry was a sideline. "I kept some things on hand," he said, "and one day a woman bought a diamond ring."

By 1977, he was looking to expand. Unable to find a suitable rental, he decided to cross the street and build his own store.

"It's built like the Rock of Gibraltar," he said proudly. The building has a slab foundation and thick concrete walls, required by insurers.

Robbery

Although he continued in the giftware business for a time, selling fine china and crystal as well as jewelry, Mr. Grippa eventually scaled back.

Despite being "vulnerable" in a small jewelry shop, he was robbed just once. It happened in 1993.

"Two rather seedy females came in," he said. "They told me they had $2,000 to spend on a bracelet." He showed them a slightly higher-priced piece, and the pair said they would return.

"They came back the next day and said, 'We have more money to spend,'" and asked to see a $7,500 bracelet. They also looked again at the piece from the day before.

"They took both and walked toward the door, as customers often do to get a better look," the jeweler recalled. "The next thing I knew, they were running out the door."

Business The Old Way

Mr. Grippa, who said he was not himself at the time because a friend had recently died, stood watching "for what must have been 30 seconds. I fully expected them to come back." By the time he hit the burglar alarm and ran after them, the girls and the jewels were gone.

So, too, is the old way of doing business, he said. The rule-of-thumb markup in the jewelry business, according to Mr. Grippa, used to be to double the price of an item and add an additional 10 to 20 percent. "You can sit on your inventory for a year, or maybe two to five years."

A Wedding Present

Now, he said, stores often inflate the markup and offer phony discounts. "Sometimes I go to the mall and I see young couples looking at engagement rings. They're spending $3,000 to $4,000 for a ring. They could have gotten a better one from me for $1,000."

Over the years, there have been stories that bear retelling, but Mr. Grippa is not the man to tell them. "Good jewelers," he believes, "are like priests. They never divulge their secrets."

"Suppose you say, 'Mrs. Jones, how do you like that pearl necklace your husband bought?' But maybe Mrs. Jones never got that necklace. . . ."

Still, he can't resist one tale. A well-heeled woman from a distinguished family came in once, looking for a wedding gift for a society couple. She settled on two planters decorated with frogs - at $6 apiece, the cheapest item in the store.

The plot thickened when the bride - a countess, according to Mr. Grippa - came in to exchange them. The jeweler, embarrassed for his customer, did not know whether to give the bride an inflated credit in hopes of being reimbursed by the gift-giver, or tell her the truth.

He settled on the truth. "You mean she only spent $12?" blurted Countess So-and-So. Mr. Grippa did not recall if she stuck around for a refund.

While the rest of the East End is winding down after the summer, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, which has just announced its fall program, seems to be doing just the opposite.

"Our exhibitions and programs are flourishing this fall," said Trudy Kramer, the director of the museum, "proving yet again that the Parrish is truly a year-round cultural resource."

Taiwanese art, contemporary photography, a series of talks with authors and talks about artists, a film series, and an exhibit of the paintings of Fairfield Porter are on the agenda.

Artistic Symbiosis

If there is an overall theme, it is the symbiosis between writer and artist: writers who are influenced by art in their work or artists whose paintings draw upon literary references, painters who are also poets, writers who write about art, or writers who also work in the arts.

In the next event in this fall program, tomorrow at 12:30 p.m., Robert Long, a writer and poet, will talk about collaborating with Alfonso Ossorio on a work that appeared in the Guild Hall Museum's 1982 "Poets and Artists" show. The exhibit featured collaborative efforts between many of the East End's leading poets and painters.

Mr. Long, who recently joined The Star's editorial staff, has contributed poetry to The New Yorker, The Nation, and American Scholar and has published a book of his poems, "What Happens." The museum's exhibit of Ossorio's "Congregations" can be seen through Sept. 28.

Rare Opportunity

The Parrish will open an exhibit of works on paper by contemporary Taiwanese artists on Oct. 5. "Tracing Taiwan: Contemporary Works on Paper" was organized by Alice Yang, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in February shortly after becoming the museum's curator of collections and exhibits.

The show offers a rare chance in this country to see Taiwanese contemporary art, much of which contains innate political commentary on the state of the country and its relationship to the Chinese mainland.

"The show gives us a sense of what current work is like in places where there is an active political climate," said Ms. Kramer.

Porter Show

Concurrently with this show, which runs through Nov. 16, there will be an exhibit of paintings by Fairfield Porter from the museum's collection. The artist, an influential realist who died in 1975, spent much of his time on the East End during the most important working years of his life.

"Fairfield Porter was so catholic and broad minded in his interests," said Ms. Kramer, "he would have loved his work being placed in this international context."

"There is a lively cross-cultural exchange going on now between American and international artists, and the pairing of Porter with the Taiwanese artists amplifies this issue."

Major Photographers

Contemporary photography, speci fically photographs of hands, will be the subject of an exhibit set to open in November.

"Collection in Context" will have 67 works, dating from 1947, by such master photographers as Richard Avedon, Judy Dater, William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Barbara Kruger, Annie Liebovitz, Sally Mann, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Gilles Peress, Sebastiao Salgado, Cindy Sherman, and Alfred Stieglitz.

Films made by photographers will be the subject of a two-part discussion series with Marion Wolberg Weiss in December. A session on Dec. 7 will feature short films by the Lumiere Brothers, Robert Frank, and Danny Lyon. The subject on Dec. 14 will be Larry Clark's controversial "Kids."

Porter and Tuten

Focusing more precisely on the artist-writer symbiosis, three writers who live on the East End for much of the year will be interviewed by Ellen Keiser over the coming months, starting with the poet Anne Porter. She won't be reading her own poetry on this occasion, however, but that of her husband, Fairfield Porter, in conjunction with the opening of the show of his paintings.

Frederic Tuten, professor emeritus of the City College of New York, will read from his latest novel, "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," which includes artwork by Eric Fischl.

The author will discuss how painting has influenced the subject matter and style of his novels, which include "Tintin in the New World," "Tallien: A Brief Romance," and the much-acclaimed "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March."

Gruen and Schapiro

John Gruen, senior editor of Dance magazine and a noted photographer, will show slides and discuss his work. His books include "The Artist Observed," "Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography," and "Flowers and Fables."

Meanwhile, Miriam Schapiro, a leader in the feminist and pattern and decoration movements, will teach an intensive four-day master class at the end of October to explore the connections between autobiography and art.

Ms. Schapiro, whose work could be described as autobiography made visual, most recently exhibited at the National Museum of American Art in Washington.

There will be a full supporting roster of lectures to accompany the major exhibits at the Parrish, plus plenty of programs for children.

Comedy, drama, farce, and a Gershwin musical are on the 1997-1998 schedule for CTC Theater Live of East Hampton. This will be the company's 16th season of community theater. Vaughan Allentuck, one of the co-founders of the company, is the new president of the CTC board of directors. Ms. Allentuck said earlier this week that she didn't expect any big changes in the company's direction; rather, CTC will continue to present "class-act plays" in new productions.

The 1997-98 season kicks off on Nov. 7 with Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park," to be followed in January by the Tennessee Williams drama "The Glass Menagerie," and in February by Jack Sharkey's farce "The Murder Room," described as a "hilarious murder mystery."

Tried And True

This year's spring musical selection is "Crazy for You," the revival of George and Ira Gershwin's 1930 show "Girl Crazy." "Crazy for You" received the 1992 Tony Award for Best Musical.

Barbara Bolton will direct "The Glass Menagerie," while the other three shows will be supervised by CTC's resident director, Serena Seacat. As in past years, all will be presented at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall.

Earlier this week, Ms. Seacat described the attractions of working with tried-and-true material. Al though many people may have seen "Barefoot in the Park" or "Girl Crazy" in previous incarnations, she noted that "new actors bring something fresh and new to a production, and when the play is good, the audience sees it in a whole new way."

Two Special Events

Ms. Seacat has earned particular praise for her direction of musicals, such as last season's lavish staging of "Anything Goes," for which a number of the players learned, under Ms. Seacat's tutelage, to tap-dance.

The director is looking forward to this spring's "Crazy for You," which she predicts will present similar challenges and rewards. "It's good for actors to have to stretch their talents to the limit," she said.

The company is planning two fund-raising events this season. A Dec. 7 Jolly Holly Brunch, at Della Femina restaurant on North Main Street, will provide an opportunity for CTC to honor people who have worked with the company for a long time, or who have assisted with its mission over the years. Last year's honoree was Deedee Windust, CTC's first and only president until this year.

On Feb. 8, at Bobby Van's in Bridgehampton, For the Love of Theater, an evening of dinner and cabaret, will showcase musical selections from each of CTC's spring productions, featuring performances by original cast members.

Information on ticket sales, season subscriptions, and tickets to the two fund-raising events can be obtained by calling CTC Theater Live.

The League of Women Voters, which does an admirable job of educating voters and encouraging them to go to the polls, certainly has its work cut out for it in Southampton Town this year. There are just six contests, but an usually large number of candidates - 30 - who will be distributed over seven lines on a ballot that bids fair to be as confusing as it is complex.

To begin with there are three horses for Town Supervisor, one a non-starter. Stacy Kaufman-Riveras, after being trounced last week in the Democratic primary, announced she would drop out of the race. It was too late, however, for her name to be stricken from the lineup. Ms. Kaufman-Riveras reckoned without her Preservation Party petitions, which were challenged by the Democrats but then declared valid by the Suffolk Board of Elections, putting her on the ballot whether she wants to be there or not. The lineup could change again between now and Nov. 4 if anyone else drops out, although the ballot itself is cast in stone.

Both the committed candidates for Supervisor - Vincent Cannuscio, the incumbent, and Arthur DiPietro, the challenger - are registered Republicans. Mr. DiPietro, however, will be running on the Democratic, Southampton, and Independence Party lines.

There are seven persons contesting two Town Board seats. Two are Republican-Conservative incumbents, two are Democrats with Southampton Party endorsement, two are Preservation Party candidates (one of whom has Independence Party backing), and the seventh is a Conservative who is running only on the Independence line.

Thirteen candidates are competing for five Trustee seats. The list of their party affiliations reads like the directions for assembling a 10-speed bike.

This horse race looks more like a steeplechase, which probably is good news for voters. Whoever said democracy was supposed to be neat?

Researchers at the University of Illinois have announced, with appropriate public-relations fanfare, that trees are beneficial to the people living near them.

Duh.

Greenery, the scientists say, has a demonstrably calming effect upon human passions, in particular anger and hostility. They cite statistics showing that residents of a landscaped Chicago housing project reported far fewer incidents of domestic violence than those in buildings without trees, that children played more "creatively" on grass than on concrete, and that parklike surroundings encouraged relaxed sociability - walking and talking, presumably, rather than heading hell-for-leather home, avoiding eye contact and clutching the Mace.

"All kinds of things that are aesthetically nice have measurable and important effects on human behavior," the reasearchers discovered. "Heart rates improve; blood pressure goes down." The team concluded that green amenities are needed just as much in urban neighborhoods as "streets, sewers, and electricity."

Depend upon it, science can almost always find a way to spend money proving what is perfectly obvious to the rest of us.

The proposed conversion of the East Hampton Medical Group into a funeral home has stirred up a lot of dust.

Neighbors, sounding appalled at the prospect, have found many arguments against it and have underlined their opposition with a pair of lawyers. Their point of view is that a funeral home is unsuited for a residential area and would contribute to unwanted commercial spread along Pantigo Road, the stretch of the Montauk Highway just east of the Village Sheep Pound.

At the risk of adding fuel to a fire, we disagree. Funeral homes are not commercial enterprises, but fall somewhere between medical facilities and churches. They are commonly found in residential districts, in small towns and large. Like ministers, funeral directors are called on to arrange services and burials and to comfort the bereaved. Other aspects of their work pertain to the physical remains. The clients of a funeral home happen not to be living, but they can still be considered residents, albeit transient ones.

While there may be minutiae in the East Hampton Village Zoning Code that could place the change envisioned for the building in doubt, the idea of using it as a funeral home is in keeping with the past. That would be a less intense use of the structure than a busy medical group and would occasion less traffic, less regularly.

Because most of us find it difficult to think about death and to be confronted by it, it is understandable that this proposal has its adversaries. Nevertheless death, although at the opposite end of the physical and emotional spectrum, is as much a part of life as birth and cannot be denied. A funeral home centrally located on Pantigo Road makes sense.

A new member of the East Hampton Village Design Review Board was named last week by the Village Board, with nary a nod to the public.

The decisions of the members of the Design Review Board are among the village's most far-reaching. The Design Review Board is more active than the Planning Board these days, given how little open space is left to be subdivided, and it deals with significant projects. Recent examples are the RECenter, the new building proposed for the Most Holy Trinity congregation, and the conversion of the former Mark R. Buick dealership.

The new appointee, C. Howell Scott, may be eminently suited to judge whether applications are in keeping with "the character and quality of our heritage," to quote from the Village Code. He may have an understanding of design and a talent for deliberation. On the other hand, he may not. He has not been visible in any way in the affairs of village government.

Ted Borsack, who served the village well for about 10 years, is deserving of time off. His intention to leave the board, however, should have been made public to allow other interested residents to be put in nomination and the selection process should have offered the public a chance to assess the board's official candidate.

With no political parties active in the village to take issue with what the board does, it is perhaps to be expected that it would revert to "old-boy" procedures. That doesn't make it right.

Optical illusions and visual tricks, more the tools of a magician than an artist, are the weapons that David Suter wields in his exposure of duplicitous human weakness and stupidity.

With a few swift strokes of the pen, his drawings can nail the ambiguity of a political thought or expose a social injustice in a way that leaves no room for argument.

The drawings, which appear on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, Time, Harper's, and The Atlantic, have become so instantly recognizable that they are known as "Suterisms," which is also the title of a book of his work published in 1986.

Virtual Reality

What is not so well known is that from 1985 Mr. Suter was one of the early telecommuters on the East End. Working at a prolific pace from his house in Amagansett, turning out as many as three drawings a day and winging them off to editors by fax, he seldom had to leave his house.

"It was completely isolated," he said. "No one was around."

His wife, the painter Catherine Eldridge, had Amagansett Conklin ancestors and his three daughters, now 14, 12, and 7, went to the Amagansett School, but after some years he began to wonder if isolation was such a good idea.

"It was like virtual reality - I was in daily contact with people I hadn't seen in person for seven years. And to them, I was becoming almost an abstract personality."

Watergate Drawings

So, feeling the need to reconnect to the real world, Mr. Suter and his family now spend half the year in New Canaan, Conn., whence he can commute to New York City in person from time to time.

Growing up in Washington, D.C., with a mother who was an artist and a father who worked for the C.I.A., he was exposed to politics and art from the start.

"I always knew I would be an artist. As a child I used to doodle in class instead of paying attention to the teacher."

As one of his first jobs, The Washington Post assigned Mr. Suter to do courtroom drawings of the Watergate trial, and he continued doing straightforward political portraits for some time. The drawings, heavily cross-hatched and detailed, are very different from his present clean, succinct, minimal style.

Double Images

As he became more aware of the stories lurking beneath Washington's political surface, so he became more interested in the surreal or subterranean world that lay beneath the external features of the personalities he was drawing.

"The more I got into the political structure and saw its ambiguities and ambivalence," he said, "the more I became interested in the use of double images. And the older you get, the more you become aware of human tragedy and fatal flaws."

For a piece on Reaganomics, the President's face became an empty factory with unemployed workers. An office worker sits at a desk that is a giant hand, crushing him. A jagged line on an office graph showing the Wall Street slump continues off the wall and splits the whole building in half. The wheel of a car steered by a drunk driver becomes a liquor bottle and glass.

Understatement

By now a full-fledged Op-Ed artist, Mr. Suter moved to New York City in the mid-1970s.

"I'm interested in understatement as a style," he said, "and in trying to produce a feeling of inevitability, where all the parts fit together as if there could be no other way."

Asked how he managed to get so many ideas that he can turn out some 900 drawings a year, Mr. Suter said they just came out of the blue.

"It can't be calculated," he said, remarking that he had tried to program himself to get ideas in his sleep, but it didn't work. "I try to strike some kind of a balance between intention and happy chance."

1914 Cottage

Mr. Suter's house in Amagansett is one of the original cottages on the Bell Estate, built by Dr. Dennistoun Bell in 1914. Zigzagging down ever-smaller country lanes and a long, overgrown driveway, one steps back into the past upon arriving at the weathered house, surrounded by huge chestnut trees.

It was both an economic and aesthetic choice to preserve the house in its original condition. The family even lived for some years with the original generator, which would reliably kick in whenever the power went out.

It was here, in a small brick studio that looks like an English gatekeeper's cottage, that Mr. Suter first branched out from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional.

"I thought I might make some ornamental fences and gates. Then I turned to miniature gates. And then I realized that what I really wanted to do was sculpture."

These extraordinary works, rough-hewn sculptural fantasies from the same churning mind that produces the cartoons, have been exhibited twice by Morgan Rank in East Hampton and will shortly be shown in London.

"Working as an illustrator, you get tired of everything being confined to this flat plane. You want to break out of it, and sculpture's done that for me."

The vital component is the mirror - a way of achieving a double image in a three-dimensional format.

Done By Mirrors

"What sprang to mind was 'Alice Through the Looking Glass' and the expression 'It's all done by mirrors' - though that implies that doing things with mirrors is easy, which it isn't. There was also the aesthetic challenge of using something that might be considered in bad taste and changing it into something interesting," said the artist.

The two shows at Morgan Rank were sold-out successes. Adults became children again as they looked at a piece once, then realized that when they looked into the mirror incorporated in it, they saw something completely different.

A horse races past a mirror, but in the reflection it is going in the opposite direction. A man sits astride a rearing horse, staff in hand - but look down into the mirror and the staff extends, skewering a fearsome dragon.

In a mechanical piece, a large hand moving strips of wood becomes a sailing ship moving up and down on the waves.

Eighty percent of the effort goes into the idea and the planning, Mr. Suter explained, the technique itself being rather primitive and tiring - chopping the sculptures out of pieces of wood.

And as if this new avenue of self-expression weren't ambitious enough, Mr. Suter recently embarked on a project that is positively daunting in its ambition and the amount of work that will be involved before it is completed: a hand-drawn film of "Hamlet."

Mr. Suter has been fascinated for years by Hamlet's ambivalence, feeling a connection with the ambiguity of his drawings. He wanted to see if he could match up Hamlet's uncertainty with the multiple interpretations that are available (does Hamlet really see the ghost, or is it just in his head, for example).

A Daunting Project

Only three minutes of the film are completed - which is actually quite a lot, considering that each second requires 25 drawings.

And that is just the introduction, though Mr. Suter has also finished a couple of seconds of the soliloquy.

With admirable sang-froid, he agrees he has undertaken a daunting project, but, as he says, there's no deadline and he believes he can finish in a couple of years.

"I've always liked the idea of trying to see what you can do all by yourself," he said. "It would be nice if it turned out that Stonehenge had been built by just one guy over a long time."

A Different Person

Mr. Suter has a square, stocky build and a square, bulldog face. Quiet-spoken and rather unsmiling, he has the impenetrable glance one might expect of a man who has spent decades pondering life's ambiguities.

When your back is to him, you have the uneasy sensation that if you turned quickly, you might find a completely different person there, or a mirror image, or some object representing "the artist being forced to explain himself."

Or perhaps it is just that after a while the vivid imagination of this artist starts to rub off on those around him.

Along with the annual migration of striped bass past the Montauk Lighthouse, the annual Montauk Locals Surfcasting Tournament is due to start soon - by Oct. 1. And, as casters cast their eyes toward the sea, a movement is afoot to keep those who use another fishing method off the rocks.

Joe Gaviola, a surfcaster who frequents the rocks in the fall, reported that the Montauk Surfcasters Association was about to ask the State Department of Parks and Recreation to intervene on their behalf.

He explained that last year between two and eight persons using fixed baits, that is, baits held on the bottom with heavy weights attached to heavy fishing line, had staked out positions on the rocks.

The baiters, said Mr. Gaviola, "effectively close it" for the many surf casters who cannot cast near the fixed lines for fear of becoming snarled. The technique is a waiting game, the opposite of the surfcasters' cast-and-retrieve approach.

Casters normally reel in their lines to make way for someone else's big fish that's hooked and running. Bait fishers cannot accommodate their neighbors in the same way.