Arts

A rare, tall-case alarm clock made in East Hampton in 1798 by the Dominy family was sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York on Saturday to an unidentified bidder, who will pay $110,500.

At Watermill Center

    The Watermill Center will hold two open rehearsals on Saturday beginning at 4:30 p.m.

    Catarina de Oliviera and Camilla Wills will present two collaborative pieces that will be performed as the sun sets. According to the center, the artists reject the generally accepted system of time and explore their own relation to time, duration, and history while referencing Christopher Isherwood, epileptic characters, Suely Rolnik, and a grandmother.

Every small town has its traditions, lore, and characters that it takes for granted. What becomes fascinating is what happens when those same memes are refracted through an outsider’s lens. The latest East Hampton tradition to achieve a new life through this type of treatment is the town’s junior lifeguard and ocean rescue programs, the subjects of a documentary in progress. The film promises, like so many documentaries, to bring fresh insight and perhaps even fame to an institution old-timers here simply take for granted.

    A tall-case alarm clock made by Nathaniel Dominy IV in East Hampton in 1788 will be auctioned in a sale taking place at Sotheby’s tomorrow and Saturday. The clock is thought to be the first alarm clock that the artisan made and is rare for early American clockmakers, who often imported their clockworks from Europe instead of crafting them themselves.

Show Says Thanks

    Hampton Photo, Arts, and Framing of Bridgehampton will present “The Thank You Art Show” at Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend, beginning with a reception on Saturday evening from 5:30 to 11. It will be on view on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. as well. The theme is giving thanks to the shop’s friends and customers. More than 100 artists will participate in the mediums of painting, photography, sculpture, origami, and more.

Almost as often as his last name is mispronounced, Joe Delia (Da-lee-ah), leader of the band Joe Delia and Thieves, is mistaken for Mick Jagger by fans who follow him around the East End trying to take his picture. The resemblance is uncanny, from facial features to body type, and his overall cool, rock-star vibe. Those who have experienced firsthand his style and talent, those of a true rock ’n’ roll artist, understand the case of mistaken identity completely.

    Three performance groups, the Choral Society of the Hamptons, the Studio Playhouse Community Theatre, and Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center, will hold auditions in the coming weeks, both musical and theatrical.

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons is beginning rehearsals for its spring concert, to be held at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church on March 18, and is seeking experienced singers. The spring concert will be conducted by Jesse Peckham and feature John Rutter’s Requiem, among other works.

New Year, New Art

    “Art in the New Year” is the next show at Ashawagh Hall this weekend. The show will feature work by Cynthia Loewen, Mary Milne, Stephanie Reit, and Lewis Zacks. Ms. Loewen has a long résumé of exhibits and memberships in numerous South Fork arts groups. A painting of hers was featured in the short film “The Sea Is All I Know,” which was shown at the Hamptons International Film Festival. She is also a curator.

By all accounts, the exhaustive and redefining Willem de Kooning retrospective on the Museum of Modern Art’s entire sixth floor is a blockbuster, and an opportunity to come to terms with the artist’s unique contribution to 20th-century art.

 The future of the Bay Street Theatre will be discussed next Thursday night from 7 to 9, with all interested members of the public welcomed to join. The year-round, not-for-profit theater’s management and board members will explain their plan for relocation to a permanent home in 2013.

This year’s Grammy Awards include four nods for Randy Brecker, an East Hampton resident, veteran jazz, rock, and R&B trumpeter, flugelhorn player, and composer.

    Mr. Brecker’s “The Jazz Ballad Song Book,” with the Danish Radio Big Band, was recently nominated for best large jazz ensemble album. The album also received a nomination for best instrumental arrangement, with credit to Peter Jensen. One of its tracks, “All or Nothing at All,” was nominated for best improvised jazz solo.

New Shows at Vered

    Vered Gallery in East Hampton has two shows on view in January. The gallery will continue the “Landscape/ Seascape” theme with works by Robert Dash, Wolf Kahn, Thomas Hart Benton, Balcomb Greene, Thomas Moran, and Milton Avery, among others. Mr. Kahn’s “Mammoth Vista,” a massive autumnal water view from 1992, is the centerpiece of that exhibit.

Those who like their Shakespeare productions out in the cool summer night air will be heartened to hear that a new festival is taking root through the Hamptons Independent Theatre Festival, more familiarly known as HITFest.

Ashawagh’s Illuminators

    “East End Illuminations,” a group show at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, curated by Cynthia Sobel, will feature landscapes, abstract watercolors, prints, mixed-media works, and photographs.

    Ms. Sobel has brought members of the Wednesday Group of plein-air artists and the Crazy Monkey Gallery artists cooperative together for the exhibit. They include Ms. Sobel, Frank Sofo, Daniel Schoenheimer, Andrea McCafferty, Alyce Peifer, Anna Frank­lin, Deborah Palmer, Gene Samuelson, Lynn Martell, Jim Hayden, and Jana Hayden.

We’re all different people every day, as is said. You might be a Broadway singer and actress reprising “Camelot” with Jeremy Irons one day, playing opposite Matthew Modine’s Thomas Jefferson the next, and going on to headline the Noel Coward Awards, maybe squeezing in a dinner with Alec Baldwin.

    Elizabeth Taylor’s diamonds weren’t the only items attracting interest at New York City auction houses last week. On Dec. 13, many well-heeled city and East End art aficionados gathered on the top floor of Sotheby’s Upper East Side auction house to view a small but strong collection of Jackson Pollock works rarely seen outside of the houses of the private collectors who own them.

     It was November in Northwest Woods and Walter Weissman’s front lawn was blanketed in crunchy tobacco-colored leaves. The cottage on Atlantic Street, which he shares with Eunice Golden, a painter, gives her the bright and airy studio space she needs and him his own space to work on his photography as well as a basement to work on his sculpture of constructed and deconstructed objects.

    Dennis Leri has been showing his work — mixed-media wall pieces blending metal and canvas and paint, and large works of abstract sculpture — for more than 20 years on the East End.

    He started by studying figurative sculpture at the Art Students League and the Sculpture Center, but his love of art began before that — at home.

    “I lived in a house full of art,” Mr. Leri said of his upbringing in Brooklyn. “It was a typical Italian-American family with several generations living together. My uncle John Nappi was an artist and had his studio in the house.”

Frank Wimberley And East End Artists

    Beginning today, Spanierman Modern is showing both new work by Frank Wimberley and “Artists of the East End II,” which highlights works created from the mid-20th century to the present.

    Mr. Wimberley’s paintings are thick impastos of palette-applied, high-keyed colorful acrylic paint. Sometimes monochromatic and sometimes with sections or stripes, they all have a dynamic feel and a rich depth to them.

    It’s the fourth year that the East Hampton Historical Society has mounted a family-oriented exhibit, “A Children’s World,” which features antique toys from the 1790s to the 1960s, but Richard Barons, the executive director of the society, seems as excited about the items on display as if it were the first time.

    The exhibit, which runs through the end of the year, “seemed logical when we started out — to do something for the whole family that’s free at this time of year,” Mr. Barons said.

New Show at Firestone

    Beginning Saturday, the Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton will present “Vincent Longo: Selected Works, 1960s and 1970.” Mr. Longo is a painter and printmaker who has been making art for almost six decades.

    The exhibit will include early paintings and works on paper influenced by Wassily Kandinsky and Abstract Expressionism and grid works inspired by Piet Mondrian.

Its glossy, heavy stock and appealing, even sexy, Hollywood set-worthy pictures may have some mistaking the Main Street Historic District Guide for a more commercial endeavor.

    Some community choruses would appear to perform “The Messiah” practically every Christmas. It is a linchpin of the choral repertoire, it’s in English, and it tells the story of Christmas in a compelling way. Yet performing it so frequently turns the piece into something of a ritual for singers and audiences alike, and we should be grateful that our local Choral Society of the Hamptons sponsors more diverse programming. How much better to pull “The Messiah” out only occasionally, so that in hearing it again we are actually surprised by its greatness.

    “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots,” the cinematic journey Kenny Mann will offer viewers on Sunday at the Bay Street Theatre, is not strictly a memoir, although it is about her past. “It’s a story of identity,” she said, adding that others will be able to relate to the documentary. “So many people today are misplaced, it’s very relevant in today’s political climate.”

    Cynthia Daniels has a voice meant for radio. Low in timbre, rich and melodic, it soothes the ears like warm buttered rum. Her radio shows, “MonkMusic Radio” and “On the Air at Crossroads,” showcase East End musicians playing and talking about their music.

    Tomorrow, those musicians will join her and her co-host Bonnie Grice at Guild Hall at a fund-raising event for it and WPPB 88.3FM, the Southampton public radio station that broadcasts her shows.

    The photographs in the Spanierman catalogue say it all. There she is with Hans Hofmann in his Provincetown, Mass., studio, then with Willem de Kooning in Springs, in a photo shoot with Ad Reinhardt, arm in arm with Lee Krasner, or standing confidently with her hand on her hip on an East Hampton beach with some of the greatest artists of the period in a 1962 Hans Namuth photograph.

Holiday Show

    The Romany Kramoris Gallery has a holiday exhibit on view that includes the work of Shey Wolvek, Isabel Pavao, Jude Amsel, Christopher Engel, George Wazenegger, Laura Rozenberg, and Maria Orlova. It focuses on small works of art, and there will be special pricing on artists of the week. The show is up through Jan. 8 at the Sag Harbor gallery.

“Painter of Long Island”