Joyce Beckenstein

COURTESY PHOTO | Marianne Weil's glass, copper, bronze 'Bullseye'.

Mention Art Sites to artists, collectors and critics who know the Riverhead gallery and they’ll likely say, “Glynis — she has some eye.” They’re talking about Art Sites director Glynis Berry. The current group show, featuring four well-known veteran artists — Debbie Ma, Mel Pekarsky, Marianne Weil and Ellen Wiener — eloquently reflects her skill at finding artists with something to say and arranging their works in ways that say still more.

A practicing architect in partnership with her husband, Hideaki Ariizumi, who helps her run the gallery, Ms. Berry spots unique, often quirky, talent that she exhibits with an architect’s flair for form and space. Rather than taking familiar shortcuts by assigning broad themes to connect the works featured in group shows, she instead seeks more variegated threads that relate works by one artist to those of another.

About the current exhibition, which has been extended through Nov. 13, she says, “It brings together works by accomplished, mature artists who are comfortable with their medium. I wanted to explore how each of them expands and finds new forms for what they do.”

To eliminate the possibility that strong works by strong artists would fight one another on the walls, Ms. Berry chose art with muted palettes. The various works she selected, linked together through neutral tones of black, white, gray and soft amber, all bow to the dramatic subtleties of texture and line. Ms. Berry’s quiet choices allow Debbie Ma’s vigorous paintings to court Marianne Weil’s elegant new sculptures.

Ms. Ma, of Calverton, is an accomplished graphic artist who designs the packaging for well-known cosmetic companies and began her parallel fine art career 10 years ago. Her graphic background taught her how signs and symbols convey a powerful message, her study of Chinese calligraphy how they cast mystical spells.

“Ancient writing was the earliest form of abstract art,” she said. “Each Chinese letter is open to interpretation — the sign for water can be three squiggly lines that suggest rain or tap water … so many meanings.”

She is simultaneously alluding to pictographs of her own devising, such as those in “Oracle Bones,” a work densely textured with marble dust and layers of gray, black and white pigment incised with pictograms that suggest undecipherable graffiti on ancient peeling walls.

Ms. Ma’s paintings are soul mates to Marianne Weil’s sculpture, which also reinvents the signs and symbols of antiquity. Ms. Weil, of Orient, is assistant professor of art at CUNY College of Staten Island. She has for many years exhibited her work at Art Sites and Kouros Gallery in New York City. This year she was the United States representative to the 2011 International Sculpture Symposium in Frostrup, Denmark.

The Neolithic cairns, steles and slabs she studied in Brittany and Spain inspired Ms. Weil’s early bronze figures. Now she has extracted the spirals, grids and punctured outlined shapes embedded in those haunting pieces and placed them in organically shaped vessels of golden-hued blown glass. “Bullseye,” for example, holds a piece of industrial copper bent into a spiral, a primordial symbol of nature and a repeated motif in Ms. Weil’s sculpture. Here the human-made detritus of contemporary life is effectively suspended like an embryo in light, much as amber seals prehistoric remains. The viewer’s reflection in glass completes the metaphor.

The Weil sculpture and Ma paintings share primal histories through abstraction. But they also resonate with the literal stories and representational styles common to the art of Mel Pekarsky and Ellen Wiener. And as Ms. Berry said, “These works are also linked by the artists’ use of line.”

Mel Pekarsky of Stony Brook, former chair of the art department at SUNY/Stony Brook, evolved from a figurative painter to one involved with environmental issues. He designed the first Earth Day poster in 1968, and then went into the desert with army accommodations at Fort Hood, Texas.

“Elvis was there and so were snakes,” he quipped. “I found the desert to be symbolic of all that is precarious. … The desert has strong enough icons to make people think about the earth.”

Ellen Wiener's 'Four Manilas'

Mr. Pekarsky has traversed American deserts from high country to the badlands of the Anza Borrego Desert in Southern California. His “pencil painting” perspectives were drawn from airplanes, horseback and ground level. “High Sierras” is a sparse rendering of naked desert punctuated by thirsty sticks of brush conveyed through delicate but nervous lines. In contrast, “High Desert,” a broad expanse of receding planes stretching toward distant mountains, is so intricately rendered that it reads as pure abstraction when you stand up close to it.

Ms. Berry set aside a separate gallery space as an intimate reading room for works by Southold artist Ellen Wiener. Here one finds a scroll-format painting, limited-edition prints of the artist’s original accordion books and paintings on manila envelopes. Ms. Wiener, who taught at Princeton University and Dartmouth College, is renowned for her artist books inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts. Her works are in numerous national libraries and in the Arts of the Book Collection at Yale University Library.

Though Ms. Wiener’s paintings and folding books are representational, they have no fixed narratives. They are “about” the passage of time and reading them requires the viewer to take time perusing them. Unrushed.

“Numinous Woods” unfurls like an epic poem about monuments — astronomy domes, grave decorations, the tower of Babel, crumbling medieval ruins, skyscrapers. Using a complex process that involves drawing, print transfers and oil painting, the work deals with nostalgia for times past and for the book as a container of memories.

“Four Manilas” uses manila envelopes — a new canvas for Ms. Wiener, who drew across them a sheet of yellow legal paper scribbled with images of crumbling ruins, a reminder that in a digital age of “you’ve got mail,” you no longer have the kind of mail that affords the tactile pleasures of opening an old-fashioned envelope.

Glass, ancient scrolls, imaginary calligraphy, desert drawings, books, paintings, sculpture, representational art, abstraction and narratives without stories. How do they all work together?

It’s Glynis. She has some eye.

Art Sites Gallery
West Main Street, Riverhead
Work by veteran artists Debbie Ma, Mel Pekarsky, Marianne Weil and Ellen Wiener, on view through Nov. 13.

KATHARINE SCHROEDER PHOTO | Studio East Gallery owner Terry Falquero, right, with customer Dennis Scamardella of Staten Island during the Gallery Walk in Greenport last weekend.

In the art world, when the going gets tough, the tough get creative. Art dealers, the first to be affected during an economic downturn, know that now is the time to show resilience. During this particularly difficult recession, they’ve reinvented how they do business, hoping that art buyers will return in full force when jobs do.

“We’ve considered changing our way of operating,” says Hector deCordova, who runs deCordova Studio and Gallery in Greenport with his wife, Joyce. “We usually get a good mix of people — older folks and the 30- to 40-somethings. But this year they seem intimidated about walking into a large show, because they don’t intend to buy. Some act apologetically, as if walking in is an intrusion.”

The deCordovas are experimenting with more intimate shows — smaller exhibitions of works by single artists viewed in the unique setting of their gorgeous old Victorian home/gallery on Main Street. “It’s a way for viewers to get a sense of scale and imagine how a particular artist’s work might look in their own homes,” says Mr. deCordova, who hopes this welcoming setting will attract visitors, many of whom for now just wish to enjoy looking at art.

Because large themed shows are expensive propositions, Amy Worth, director of the South Street Gallery in Greenport, will launch fewer of them. She will instead offer an assortment of new works by familiar gallery artists. Caroline Waloski of The Sirens’ Song will spend more time creating and showing her own etchings, and Glynis Berry, director of Art Sites in Riverhead, is thinking about more exhibitions of artist-driven themes related to community and environment. These shows will benefit her newly formed not-for-profit, Peconic Green Growth. Going forward she plans fundraising events to support the organization’s many environmental causes, including alternative septic systems and the creation of sustainable sites within communities.

Art-based fundraising events, especially auctions, are popular win-win situations for artists, dealers and organizations, all of whom share in the profits. Bidding has benefits: It’s great fun — an adrenaline rush excited by the steal of a deal; it’s competitive and social — everyone gets to be seen; and it’s an affirmation of personal taste — look how many others want what you do. Last but not least, it’s an opportunity to support a worthwhile not-for-profit and walk away with a work of art you love.

Mr. deCordova reports that his recent benefit for 88.3 Peconic Broadcasting was a huge success and he’s planning others for next year because, he says “It’s surprising how many people visit us after they’ve seen works by the artists we represent at auction.”

Ms. Worth, who puts a different spin on the benefit sale, concurs. Her 10×10=100 exhibition and sale has people lined up in the street for hours for an opportunity to purchase a small work for just $100. “We are delighted to be offering one 10” x 10” board per artist,” she says. On the eve of the sale, buyers are allowed to make their purchases of the art-filled boards on a first-come, first-served basis. This December, the benefit event will support the North Fork Environmental Council.

Though these events barely fill gallery coffers, they do draw people into the gallery. Ron Rothman, director of Art in Southold Gallery, uses live music performances related to his exhibitions to enhance attendance. He packs in crowds with concerts that this year included one by Caroline Doctorow. Some performances carry a small $10 charge, others are free.

Workshops and gallery talks also encourage people to participate in the art scene and while galleries have for years augmented art sales with classes in a variety of media, they have made those offerings ever more alluring this year. This summer, Ms. Worth hosted a workshop with Naomi Campbell, an internationally known artist who teaches at New York’s Art Students League. From Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, award-winning impressionist painter Peggi Kroll-Roberts will hold court during classes that include a plein-air session focused on interpretations of light and dark using the draped figure.

Terrence Joyce’s summer potpourri of enticements resulted in good sales for his Greenport gallery. For an opening in May, featuring Hawaiian artists Jack and AJ Ferrel, Mr. Joyce provided lively music and a sushi chef. The artists stayed on for two additional days to demonstrate their use of 15th century French painting techniques. In an outreach to artists, Mr. Joyce also held an upbeat, free 12-week workshop, titled “The Artists’ Way,” led by Isabell Haren Leonardi. Painters, printmakers, sculptors, writers and musicians gathered to discuss how to follow their hearts and talents at a time when, says Mr. Joyce, “the culture often sees only superstars as having something to offer mankind.” All these ventures take an enormous amount of time and effort, sighs Mr. Joyce, who keeps his gallery open seven days a week and frequently works past 11 p.m.

The collateral benefits of programs that nurture a general interest in the arts are paying dividends. Audiences are comfortable in these “no strings attached” settings. They ask questions freely and become part of the art dialogue. Many participating gallerists report that increased traffic and sales follow such events. This is especially evident with the new series sponsored by East End Arts and Peconic Landing. Every third Thursday, July through November, local gallery directors host free arts-related programs at Brecknock Hall, the magnificently restored 19th-century mansion that serves as venue for this collaborative program.

A standing-room-only crowd attended Amy Worth’s session, “About the Sea,” the theme of her gallery exhibition. Her discussion with artists and writers who draw inspiration from the sea featured author Michael Tougias, a sea-disaster survivor, who spoke about his book, “Overboard,” which chronicles his ordeal. Storm paintings by Orient artist Annie Wildley, were displayed as backdrop.

On Thursday, Sept. 14, Caroline Waloski and Terry Falquero of Studio East will discuss art inspired by the epic 9/11 attacks. Ms. Waloski will show select prints from a 9/11 portfolio produced by 43 artists from the Manhattan Graphics Center. Five complete portfolios are in the permanent collections of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, The Library of Congress, The New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society. These prints will be exhibited at The Sirens’ Song Gallery, from Sept. 27 through December.

The stock market may rise and fall during a recession, but art is a quirky commodity that transcends its own market. It is what keeps our North Fork community the vibrant place it’s become.

BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Marion Jones of Southold 'Best in Show' 'Misty Morning" acrylic, graphite and crayon.

After the gloomy winter we’ve endured, “East End Light,” the current juried art exhibition at Riverhead’s East End Arts Council, celebrates the hope and promise that comes with spring. That we must, however, treat nature better than it’s been treating us these days is the message of “Vital Signs 2011,” an exhibition of works by eco-artist Janet Culbertson of Shelter Island, on view at South Street Gallery in Greenport. Taken together, these two art shows reflect both the agony and ecstasy that we confront in our natural environment.

The East End Arts Council exhibit dazzles with scenes we never tire of — stretches of farmland courting cosmic acres of sky; diamonds of light dancing on the bay; green and russet wetlands muted when glimpsed through misty fog. Evanescent and elusive, light — which both makes our world visible and renders it mysterious — is a particularly difficult element for artists to deal with. It is hard enough to render a tree fading into haze, tougher still to make that image into a metaphor for the transience of life.

Juror Glynis Berry, director of Art Sites Gallery in Riverhead and the nonprofit Peconic Green Growth, chose 56 works for the show from 275 entries. Her selections rewarded those who skillfully interpreted the effects of the especially beguiling light that has lured generations of plein air artists to the shores of eastern Long Island.

The resulting display reveals how different artists’ interpretations of the same subject can play with the viewer’s understanding of “reality.” For example, Marion Jones’ painting “Misty Morning” (best in show) and Steve Berger’s photograph “Snow Field” (second prize) both feature a calligraphic band of trees between the sky above and a color field below — the sea in the semi-abstract painting, snow in the photograph. But a sun that emerges bright in “Misty Morning” cedes in “Snow Field” to a surreal full moon, adrift in a moody gray sky. Oddly, the abstract painting seems almost truer to life than the crisp representational photograph.

Light defines texture in Toby Haynes’ pastel painting “Evening Light, Gerald Drive II” (third place). In it, a simple fence meandering along the shore serves as foil for a brushy technique that evokes the feel of grainy sand beneath one’s feet and the refreshing chill of an early morning swim.

Two honorable mention works, “Green Canoe” by Fred Vanderwerven and “October Grey” by Diane Martin, also explore the color and texture of nature as it’s revealed by light.

In Barbara Schneider’s  “New Life Awaits”  (honorable mention), the light from a waxing  moon boldly outlines a turtle as she gazes upward, beckoning the moon, it seems, to protect the eggs she’s deposited in the sand.

“There are surprises in every show,” says Jane Kirkwood, referring to “Long Island House and the People Who Live There” (first prize) by Lisa Petker-Mintz. This vibrant multimedia composition juxtaposes bright red people forms with cubist shapes representing windows, walls and the landscape of a suburban living space. Blue and red-to-orange accents enliven the surface, suggesting both natural and artificial light.

Janet Culbertson’s exhibition, “Vital Signs,” sheds a very different kind of light on things.

“The exhibition speaks to our troubled relationship with our environment,” said South Street Gallery director Amy Worth, who timed the show to recognize Earth Day.

What’s toxic dazzles in Ms. Culbertson’s large, seductive landscapes. Devoid of sun and humanity, they seethe in the afterglow of Armageddon and shine with metallic glitter generously worked into lavish, densely packed collages.

Ms. Culbertson nostalgically remembers her childhood, when she canoed and hiked in Pennsylvania’s lush Allegheny Valley. But the hills harbored nasty neighbors: corporations that mined for ore and coal. They seeped neon orange ooze into pristine streams and chewed clean whole sides of mountains. That ravaged landscape etched a deep impression on the young woman, who became one of America’s first environmental artists.

She came of age in the late ’60s. Fueled by the feminist movement, she began to make her first eco-political images when the general public was only vaguely aware of the consequences of environmental pollution. Today, her prescient paintings and drawings are in many important collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
In this current exhibition, Ms. Culbertson updates themes for which she is well known, particularly her iconic billboard paintings. Originally these “paintings within paintings” featured billboards — with advertisements for beautiful American destinations — stuck in the rocky remains of landscapes reduced to rubble. In “Vanishing Butterflies,” the billboard is dwarfed by a phosphorescent sky. Now only a butterfly remains, impaled and bleeding its color on the billboard’s surface.

The figurative elements of her early works at times give way to pure abstraction, as in “Sunburst,” a collage that is all luscious texture, aglow with iridescent pigment. But get close: The sunburst is in fact a burst universe reduced to shards of glass and detritus, a landscape that cannot be glued back into wholeness.

Other works riff on industrial “parks,” those oxymoronic sites that attempt to conceal greedy corporate motives beneath a thin cover of manicured grass. The highways that enable the masses to drive to work at these campuses are the subjects of another series, “Paving America.” “Car Pool” is among a group of related canvases that depict these tarry stretches as labyrinths, clotted and clogged with shiny metallic cars going nowhere.

Ms. Culbertson knows how to make beautiful surfaces people love to look at. But she does it to force a confrontation with truths most would rather not see.

“I cannot escape the mostly disastrous news events,” she says. “As an artist I try to deal with them in paint.”

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A second exhibition at South Street Gallery features works by a group of artists who have contributed environmentally related art for this show. They include Roz Dimon, Joseph Esser, Gina Gilmour, Anna Jurinich, Maureen Palmeri, Barbara Roux, David Slater and Lorena Salcedo-Watson.

East End Light/Vital Signs
‘East End Light’: juried art show at East End Arts Council, Riverhead, through June 3. Guest juror Glynis Berry or Art Sites Gallery. 727-0900.
‘Vital Signs 2011’: landscapes by Janet Culbertson at The South Street Gallery, Greenport. On view through May 30. 477-0021.