The current exhibition at The Church in Sag Harbor, “Some Odes: Sam Messer with Paul Auster, Eleanor Gaver, Denis Johnson, and Sharon Olds,” explores the work of the visual artist Sam Messer and his creative connections with other artists and writers. It is a direct result of a dialogue between Mr. Messer and Sheri Pasquarella, the venue’s executive director.
Ms. Pasquarella will lead a guided tour of the show and discuss the process by which it came to be on Saturday at 6 p.m. A question-and-answer session will follow the tour. Tickets are $20, $10 for members.
“Some Odes” is also the impetus for a drawing salon in the style of Mr. Messer’s “drawing happenings” on Sunday afternoon at 2. The artists, Jackie Hoving and Norm Paris, met in 1999 while students of Mr. Messer in the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art program.
Like Mr. Messer’s drawings, Sunday’s event happens in a laid-back environment where the most difficult task is losing yourself to the act of drawing. Participants have been asked to bring a sketchbook, graphite or colored pencils and/or pens — no paints, charcoal, or pastels — and to take a seat in the main gallery space to draw the other people, the space, or whatever else catches the eye. The Church emphasizes that the event is a casual drawing session, not a class.
Referring to Mr. Messer’s belief in bringing people together through drawing, Mr. Paris said, “We are together and alone at the same time.” Ms. Hoving and Mr. Paris divide their time between Sag Harbor and Brooklyn. Both have exhibited internationally and are founding members of the artist-run nonprofit Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery.
Tickets are $10, $5 for members.
In one of its typical pivots from visual art to performance art, The Church will welcome Sons of Town Hall, comprising David Berkeley, an American writer and songwriter, and Ben Parker, a British songwriter and producer, for a show of songs and stories, next Thursday at 6 p.m.
The duo performs as George Ulysses Brown and Josiah Chester Jones, two 19th-century vagabonds with Victorian-era costumes whose back story involves meeting while down on their heels in London and setting out at sea for the New World. They promise to weave stories of sailing the seas and roaming the land between their vocal harmonies and rousing songs of the ocean.
The Philadelphia Inquirer called their show “part balladry, part performance art, and totally cool. . . . Think Simon and Garfunkel lost at sea, and you get a sense of the mythic world at play here.”
Tickets are $25, $20 for members.
