Arts

   James Katsipis of Montauk had the idea to join Kickstarter, an online site that raises money for individual creative projects, on a whim and a Hail Mary, he said. He had no idea it would go off the way it did. The photographer wanted to raise enough money to avoid exhibiting his work within traditional borders and frames.

    Bay Street Theatre has announced its second annual Honors Benefit, set for April 27 at East Hampton Point. This year the honorees include David Bray, Ana R. Daniel, Michael Grim, and James Osburn. All of the honorees support Bay Street, as well as many other local businesses and nonprofits.

    The Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill will host a series of musical “blind dates” beginning next Thursday with Dalton Portella and Ryan Messina from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Mr. Portella is a Montauk artist and guitarist and Mr. Messina, who is from Dix Hills and is a teacher, plays the trumpet. They have never performed together or even met previously.

    Maria D’Amato, a soprano and former lead singer with St. Luke’s Choir, will make a return engagement to East Hampton when she pairs with her fiancé, Dimitrie Lazich, a baritone, for a concert at the church’s Hoie Hall on Saturday at 4 p.m.

    The couple will sing duets of Italian arias, familiar American songs, Broadway tunes, and a special set selected from the works of Sheldon Harnick, an East End resident and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist. Bill McNally, the artistic director of the Music at St. Luke’s series, will accompany the singers on piano.

    From almost the moment that Gina Abatemarco conceived the idea six years ago for a film about a tiny island in Alaska that appears destined to be one of North America’s first victims of climate change, she has been raising money to bring that project to fruition.

    Now, with some 500 hours of original footage, plus archival stills and home videos, she is in post-production on a feature-length documentary, “Kivalina People.”

    Guild Hall, in partnership with the Naked Stage, will present the Naked Stage Radio Hour, a staged reading, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Joshua Perl will be the lead artist at this free performance.

   The spring program presented Sunday by the Choral Society of the Hamptons at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church was an engaging and enjoyable study in intimacy and nuance. What at first appeared as a strange collection of repertoire proved very effective in reminding the listener of how beautiful even the simplest parts of life can be under the proper lens.

    Shattered Glass, a conductor-less string ensemble dedicated to reimagining the concert experience, will perform as part of the Music for Montauk series on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Montauk School. The performers, who met while attending the Manhattan School of Music, are a collection of talent from around the world, with members representing Russia, Venezuela, Korea, China, Taiwan, and cities across the United States.

Rolph Scarlett’s Geometrics

    Beginning next Thursday, Law­rence Fine Art in East Hampton will present a retrospective of the work of the American modernist painter Rolph Scarlett through May.

    Scarlett was a geometric abstractionist who shared affinities with Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Joseph Stella. His varied stylistic career explored Cubism, Biomorphism, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism. According to the gallery, the artist worked with Jackson Pollock and also produced drip paintings.

Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy

On February 17th of that year

(1945, it was a Saturday)

I was wearing my birthday watch and I

ran like hell between the raindrops

unaware that even a secret wish is in a way

a contract. That afternoon

I was sporting a

huge red cap which seen from afar

gave me the appearance

of a ladybug riding an ant

to an all-cartoon matinee.

Upstairs over the theatre was

a beauty parlor, Madeleine’s, where

ladies sat under the driers like popes

perusing Cosmopolitan and McCall’s, my mom

    Mick Hargreaves and Pete Mancini will embark on a tour of mid-Atlantic states on Wednesday. The musicians will perform material from their respective catalogs in an acoustic duet format. The tour, lasting through April 27, will take the duo to venues in New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, as well as across Long Island.

  Barbara Hellering will give an illustrated talk on “Jane Austen: Her Writing, Her World” at the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Ms. Hellering will discuss the author’s life and work, breaking down the locations and historical events in her writing to place her characters more fully in their world.

    Ms. Hellering, a resident of Riverhead who is a member of the Jane Austen Society of America, believes Austen’s popularity can be attributed to the enduring nature of her subjects, from love and marriage to economic well-being.

    The Southampton Cultural Center will present two concerts this weekend.  Tomorrow at 7 p.m., “An Evening of Latin Flair” will showcase Stony Brook University doctoral candidates. Jay Sorce on guitar, Andrea Lodge on piano, Elizabeth York on violin, Josh Schwalbach on bass, and Scott Litroff on saxophone will perform works by Piazzolla, Milhaud, and Rodrigo.

    On Saturday, the Rising Stars piano series returns at 7 p.m. with Michelle and Kimberly Cann, a Caribbean-American two-piano duo who will play works by Lutoslawski, Ravel, Dolores White, and Rachmaninoff.

    On Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Watermill Center, Marc Robinson will trace the many variations and meanings of the small hand gestures that make up most of the action in the opera “Einstein on the Beach.” He will follow the opera from its 1976 premiere to its 2012 restaging, drawing on research from the Einstein archives at the Columbia University Library and the Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation.

    From 6 to 9 tonight there will be no-charge swing dancing to the Max Feldschuh Quintet, as well as free lessons in the basics, at a bandstand night at 230 Down, the bottom level of 230 Elm Street in Southampton.

    A cash bar and a $10 buffet will also be offered, along with a raffle to benefit a June production by Our Fabulous Variety Show. A contest will be held to choose a beneficiary for the group’s upcoming performance at Guild Hall, both on their Facebook page and via a “penny war” at the event, votes to be cast with spare change.

Putting It on Paper

    Arlene Bujese has returned to the Southampton Cultural Center to present “Paperwork” through April 22. A reception will take place on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

    The exhibition, for which Ms. Bujese served as curator, will include collage, drawing, painting, and photography. The artists include Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Margery Harnick, Anne Sag­er, Roseann Schwab, Walter Schwab, Gail Miro, Mary Stubelek, Greg­ory Thorpe, E.E. Tucker, and Hans Van de Bovenkamp.

A Polaroid image of Little Edie taken by Andy Warhol in 1976, a souvenir of the early post-film time, will be up for auction at Christie’s tomorrow. It is expected to sell for $5,000 to $7,000.

   Spring is literally springing through the air for the Springs Community Theater, as its actors soar above the stage during rehearsal at Guild Hall for a new production of the ever-popular 1954 musical version of the J.M. Barrie classic, “Peter Pan.”

    “It was a dream of hers. She always wanted to do it,” Barbara Mattson, the producer, said of her long-time friend, and co-driving force behind the company, Jayne Freedman.

After a career that took him to such far-off places as Japan, Singapore, and the Dominican Republic, Allen Merrill, who lives in East Hampton, is now letting the world come to him.

    A young girl glides through a museum that has some of the greatest works of art on display. In verse she finds herself reacting to the surroundings. Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” makes her “twirly-whirly, twinkly, sparkly, super swirly.” Edvard Munch’s “Scream” makes her gasp, and a Degas dancer has her up on her tippy toes.

    Rich harmonies and jazz rhythms will combine with moving texts and jazz interpretations of standards from the American songbook in “Frost, Love, and Jazz,” a program by the Choral Society of the Hamptons, on April 7 at 5 p.m. at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.

    Jennifer Scott Miceli, head of the music department at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University, will serve as guest conductor. Ms. Miceli directs the Long Island Sound Vocal Jazz Ensemble, among other groups.

    “As the Eye Is Formed,” a survey of recent developments in moving-image art, will be screened at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow at 6 p.m. Peter Campus, a practitioner of video art, selected the 14 artists in the exhibition, which is co-presented with the Hamptons International Film Festival. Mr. Campus will introduce the screening.

    The Claque, an arts and performance conglomerate based in New York City, will present a reading and workshop for its third annual play series, “The Quick and the Dirties: Pump Up the Play,” tomorrow from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.

    The workshop production is designed to turn good plays into great ones, according to the Claque, and focuses on plays that are beyond the point of developmental readings but not yet ready for full production. The “Quick and Dirties” allow for experimentation and discovery to help a play realize its full potential.

   Waving an arm toward the historic Sylvester Manor House on Shelter Island last week, Dr. Stephen Mrozowski, a professor of archaeology, spoke of the charred corncobs he’d found buried there alongside clamshells, the remains of 17th-century Indian clambakes — just an appetizer in the banquet of his findings during excavations from 1998 through 2006.

To Fool the Eye

    Todd Norsten will be featured in the solo show “This Isn’t How It Looks” at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in East Hampton beginning Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

    According to the gallery, Mr. Norsten expends a lot of energy making it look like he didn’t in his minimalist and text-based paintings. The gallery will show 25 works from 2010 to 2013, many of which feature “meticulous trompe l’oeil depictions of mundane materials like Scotch and blue painter’s tape . . . with bits of dust, fingerprints, and ragged edges.”

   Medicine Show Theatre Company will present two plays by John Jonas Gruen, a longtime resident of Water Mill, on April 9 and 10 at 7:30 p.m. at its theater at 549 West 52nd Street in Manhattan.

    “Ballbreaker” is about an impossibly irritating woman whose sole interest in the man who cares for her seems to be his sexual prowess, according to the company. When he decides to withhold his sexual favors, all hell breaks loose.

    The Bay Street Theatre has announced its 2013 Mainstage season and a local audition date for the productions of “Lend Me a Tenor,” “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” The theater has also announced a local audition date for Literature Live’s fall production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

   From a Nassau County suburb to Ankara to Okinawa to Amagansett, the path of life for Michael Jeffrey Griffith has been anything but dull, and now his story has become the inspiration for a new television series, with Michael S. Chernuchin, part of the creative team of the long-running “Law and Order” series, in charge.

     “Who’d have thunk it?” Mr. Griffith asked on Saturday, sitting in his living room overlooking the Atlantic.

   A furniture store, a trip to Cuba, a legend regarding four wolves — how does one tell and preserve the stories and history of a family aside from the oral tradition? For decades and even centuries, the answer for many households was through the assemblage of quilts.

    The Bennett family has donated two uniquely well-preserved examples of the medium to the East Hampton Historical Society, and they will be included in an exhibition of recent acquisitions planned for late spring and early summer of next year.

Docents Have Their Say

    Visitors to the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center may know them as interpreters and keepers of the legacy of two of the most influential artists of the 20th century who worked in our backyard. But those who know docents outside of that role, know they also like to express themselves in other ways. This weekend, for the first time, all of their creative endeavors will be brought together in a show at Ashawagh Hall that will demonstrate how much their artistic output is shaped by what they do in their day job.