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November 18, 1993 - Tasty Crop for Winter20 Perspectives 2 Shows Worth Seeing By Robert Long The Benton Gallery in Southampton and Suffolk Community College's Pe- conic Gallery in Riverhead are both cur- rently exhibiting a number of works that deserve attention. Al the Benton, Fay Lansner is show- ing six charcoal drawings, a charcoal, collage and pastel drawing, and two big paintings, "River Bathers I" and "River Bathers II." There's always been a Matisse -like flatness to many of Ms. Lansner's com- positions, and this flatness is evident, to varying degrees, in all of the works here. The drawings are quite beautiful: four portraits of Sarah Bernhardt (three of them patterned after a famous Na- dar photograph of the actress) are fas- cinating variations on gesture, contour, and the use of shadow to bring her face from perfectly one-dimensional and simply outlined (Portrait IV) to dra- matically three - dimensional —the artist's shadowing brings the strong planes of her subject's face into dra- matic life. Ms. Lansner's drawing is fluid, loose, masterly; the folds of the gown in which Bernhardt is draped are rendered in completely different ways from draw- ing to drawing; the artist captures the feeling of its folds and billows very economically —a long curving line here, a slash there, a sudden gulf of white space, a block of heavy shadow. Other drawings —still lifes —are more complex, compositionally, full of inter- Concert at College A concert featuring works composed by Robert Shaughnessy, professor of music at Long Island University's Southampton Campus, will be held on Thursday, November 18 at 8 p.m. in the Fin Arts Theatre at the college. The performers will include members of the North Shore Pro Musics as well as special guests Steven Fayette on string bass; Jacques Despres, piano; and Elisabeth Palmedo, soprano. The concert, sponsored by the Fine Arts Di- vision, is free and open to the public. The program will include Concertino for Solo, Bass and Strings, which Pro- fessor Shaughnessy composed on a re- cent sabbatical leave. The works for string trio were written by Professor Shaughnessy as projects supported by faculty grants. Manual & Sports EMEMEM Where old fashioned compassion & the knowledge of the nineties come together. Marge Sherwin P.T.• Peter Spagnoll, P.T. �� 214 North Sea Rd., Southampton :r NAILS eating objects (flowers, vases, a note- book, a postcard of Van Gogh sunflowers) that manage to look both "real" and as if they were all being pressed 1:p against a pane of glass from behind, so shallow is the space they in- habit. The two big paintings, each of two nude women who are nearly heroic in scale, are vibrantly colored and form- ally elegant. One presents the figures in a nearly naive fashion, bringing to mind both Picasso and Le Douanier Rous- seau; the other canvas presents us with a much more stylish looking pair. There are all sorts of formal balances struck in all of these vivid works. This is a show to see. Speaking of formal balances, Li -Lan is at it again, with a half -dozen oils on linen or canvas of postal covets rend- ered in her characteristically concise fa- shion. The pictures are often underpainted a brilliant white, which gives these quirkily composed arrange- ments of postage stamps, postmarks, and other franking marks a deadpan monumentality and elegant presence. It's the intense artifical light one sen- ses in these pictures —as if they were bathed in a million watts of fluorescence—that makes them jump at the viewer. Li -Lan's watercolors and pastels of the same subjects have, of course, a more hand -made look. They are delicately textured drawings, and the postmarks and stamps are far warmer than those in the paintings. Clare Roman's five acrylic paintings and 10 oil pastel studies are views of arches, passageways and bridges ab- stracted just enough to invoke Cubism. Forms tend to be hard -edged and sec- urely interlocked, but the warmth of the artist's palette (lots of earthy ochres, mauves, browns) and a certain amount of smudging and scumbling soften the pictures' purely analytic bent. The light here seeps across the surface of the im- age and seems to hang a bit in front of it. It's a slow, inner light. Wendy Sloan's five constructs involve a whole variety of media —ceramic, screenprint, some drawing, found ob- jects in the form of plumbing valves. Each of the constructs is made of a pair of objects —a screenprint hung on the wall before which stands a ceramic ves- sel that suggests a plinth or a dreamed skyscraper, or a building in a de Chir- ico painting, and that is surmounted by one of the valves. The works echo each other in inscrutable ways; each has a kind of mute surrealist presence. The exhibit remains on view through November 22. The Benton Gallery is open Friday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Peconic Gallery "Drawings" is a strong anthology show at Suffolk Community College's Peconic Gallery in Riverhead. Curator Dan Gilhooley, who is an assistant dean at the college and a rather extraordi- nary draftsman himself, has gathered 34 drawings by 16 artists in a show hung Open MondaySaturday 9:30.5:30 Late on Thursday til l PM 537 -3393 Corwith Ave., Bridgehampton "The best thing about London is Paris." —DV FULL GALLOP: An Evening with Diana Vreeland by Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson Starring Mary Louise Wilson Directed by Daniel Fish 3 PERFORMANCES ONLY November 26, 27, 28 BOX OFFICE: 725 -1108 12 NOON -4 PM, WED -SUN ('TIL 6 PM, SAT & SUN) JULIE ANDREWS DEC 4 8pm THE SOUTHAMPTON PRESS / NOVEMBER 18, 1993 Fay Lansner's "Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt 111" is one of the works on view in the current exhibition at the Benton Gallery in Southampton. —Nael Rowe Photo in the small room that constitutes the and pastel drawings are a virtuoso's stu- gallery proper and in the hallway out - dies of dense floral landscapes, very side it. Styles here range from the fre- loose and self- assured looking. Cyril Da- netically intense gestural work of vid is showing a photorealist graphite Jennifer Cross through the illustrative, drawing of a nude woman standing in a politically oriented mixed media works shadowy grape arbor, away from the of Janet Culbertson to the highly de- blast of brilliant sunlight we see on the tailed pen -and -ink views of landscape by lawn just beyond the arbor. The sugges- Joan Baren. tion of photographic overexposure here There's plenty of Ab- Ex- influenced underlines the extremity of the mode in work here, such as Renee Ritter's "Im- which Mr. David works. agining the Infinite" and Charles Ms. Culbertson's two works are from Meng's "Boots of Women," both of her series of nightmarish landscapes in which seem to owe at least a slight debt which monumental billboards that have to late Philip Guston pictures. In the the presence of prehistoric creatures ad- former work, a whole series of outlined vertise not cologne, Scotch, or Chevro- forms suggesting cartoonish people or lets but death and destruction. In some variety of biomorph are drawn "Canoeing in Kuwait," a collaged im- and painted in overlapping series; we age of two girls in a canoe floats on a sea can see image behind image in an over- of very gloomy petroleum; the billboard all organic grid. It's the way that the that rises from the oil bears a post - outlined forms are rendered and the Apocalyptic landscape of charred trees. comedy of their juxtaposition that sug- In Jennifer Cross's "Isla Muieres," gests Gaston to this viewer. shapes of houses and people appear in In Mr. Meng's drawing, a highly de- a dreamlike whirlwind of tightly ges- tailed female nude sits in a landscape tural swirls, scratches, explosions of such as child might draw; a rectangle deft scribble. like a slice of swiss cheese, a couple of Other area artists represented are clumsy boots, miscellaneous scrawls Helen Soreff, Diane Bouchieo, AI Feit and smudges, a cheery yellow orb with and Betty Holiday. One wishes that Mr. feet that one suddenly realizes is a six- Gilhooley had included some of his own yearold's vision of a baby chick. It's a work. very winning work, with a likably The Peconic Gallery is located in the wacky edge. college's library, on the second floor of Paton Miller's drawings have a Social the Shinnecock building. It is open from Realist flavor, and seem to nod slightly 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thurs- to George Grosz and the Ashcan School. day, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, and 9 "Ditto" is a fairly straightforward scen- a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. The exhibit ario of marginalized people; four men runs through November 24. of different shapes and sizes, one wear- ing a newspaper hat, who occupy a side- Samuels t0 Speak walk behind a sign that reads, ' `Crippled /Deaf /Almost Blind /very On Saturday, November 20 local gar - Poor /Unemployable /Low Self Es- den expert Ellen Samuels will present tm/Can Spell/Bad Teeth. " It's a cutting the final lecture in the East Hampton and funny and disturbing picture, and Historical Society's Garden Lecture is beautifully, seemingly casually Series. drawn. What appears to be a porcupine, Her program will be held at the Clin- rather than a dog, lies near the men. I ton Academy in East Hampton, on Main may not be reading this image properly, Street, from 10 a.m. to noon. Ms. Sa- but it sure looks like a porcupine. An- muels will speak about The Secret other Miller drawing is a more ambi- Garden, one of the masterpieces of Eng- guous portrait of "Children of lish children's literature, which was Maunaloa," who walk, crouch, crawl, or written by Frances Hodgeson Burnett in run in a fairly desolate stretch of land- a garden on the North Shore overlook - scape otherwise populated by the sil- ing Long Island Sound. houette of a lone palm tree. Admission is $8; reservations are sug- Helen Meyrowitz's pair of charcoal gested (324 - 0045). BMW • MERCEDES • AUDI • JEEP Collision Repairs 40 Willow Road, Water Mill Just East of Amoco Station 726 -2776 EASTERN TREE EXPERT CO. GET READY FOR WINTER SPECIAL! 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Call for your FREE consultation. 287.5346 39 Windmill Lane • Southampton, NY 2nd Floor Rock solid since 1875P Focus on Nature Tasty Crop for Winter By Paul Stoutenburgh I'm afraid I'm going to have to eat my words of a few weeks ago for I said snow geese were uncommon here on Long Is- land. Today as Barbara and I worked out in the garden, 150 of them flew di- rectly overhead. Add this to the 30I saw previously in a field nearby and I'm wondering what's going on. I'm sure most of you remember not too long ago when the sight of Canada geese was something to talk about. Now they are a common sight throughout our East End. Could it be the snow geese are following their cousins and are going to become feeders in our fields hereabout? One of the things we do this time of the year is to dig our Jerusalem artichokes. We had only a small patch of them this year, but they produced almost a bucket of the small potato -like tubers that we enjoy raw in salads. Boiled they seem a bit mushy to us, but stir fried with greens and bits of chicken they are great. The nice part about growing these artichokes is that there is nothing to it. They do like full sun and a fair amount of moisture but that's just about all. They are often used in Chinese cook- ing as a substitute for water chestnuts and there is a fair market for them. A local farmer tried them one year and made out well, but like many things in farming, the next year the market was flooded and he almost had to give them away. For the home gardener there is nothing like them. Keep the lit- tle ones for seed next year and dig them up just about any time you want them. We've been pestered with mice who seem to enjoy them also, so this year we've dug them all up in the fall. In past years, we harvested whenever we could get the shovel in the ground. There's so much to do in the fall that it is hard to sneak away and get a few hours of fishing in, but if you are clever enough you can usually manage it. So it was last week when I slipped away to try my hand at bluefishing just before sunset. That's the most perfect time to fish, particularly if you are alone as I was that night. A good friend of mine lets me park in his driveway to shorten the distance I have to walk, but that night it really didn't matter how far I had to go —I knew this was the night for fishing. I've got an old surf pole and reel I bought from a man who moved to Flor- ida and it has served me well through the years. Of course it doesn't always catch fish, but I can't blame the pole for that. To get to my favorite spot I'd have to walk through heavy sand in back of the dunes and then through a cut to the beach. The wind was offshore so I'd be able to cast a bit further. A new moon was on its way down even though the sun still had half an hour before setting. Rollers washed lazily up on the sand as I came out onto an empty beach. For a mile in either direction I could see no one. I wondered why, for in my book this was the ideal night for fishing. My chosen spot lay to the west but not wanting to miss any chance of a strike, I cast as I walked along —but no luck. My spot was just off a jetty that took on a dark and sinister look in the lingering hours of sunlight. I checked over my Hopkins, then the leader and pole and started to cast and retrieve, cast and re- trieve. A string of ducks caught my eye; they were heading east low on the wa- ter. They were too far out for me to tell what they were, but if I had to guess I'd say they were scoters —or as they are lo- cally known, coots. They'll be in our wa- ters through the winter, feeding on mussels and crustaceans of all kinds. My spot wasn't proving as productive as I'd have liked, so I thought of chang- ing my tactics: reel in fast, reel in slow, little jerks as I reeled in, long sweeps — nothing seemed to work. There was a deep eddy just around the end of the bulkhead. Perhaps in there where the current churned around I might change They're often used as a substitute for water chestnuts. my luck. More casting, more reeling in. Then it happened: Just as I was about to lift my lure out of the water after one retrieve, there was a swirl and a quick flash of a silvery body —a bluefish. Now I again tried every trick I could think of. Back and forth the lure went. I don't even know what position I was in when finally I got a strike. I set the hook ... zzzing, out went the line. The drag was too loose. I tightened it up. Still it went out. I tried to reel in but it was as if I was hooked to the bot- tom. I stood there, pole bent —the fish and I had met. Then slowly, ever so slowly I gained only to have the line once more taken out. My heart was beating faster. Would I lose the fish? Darkness was taking over. I could feel my arms getting tired. I was alone on the beach with my fish. Now it was swirling below me; I could see its silv- ery sides. I reached for the leader and with one motion tossed the blue ashore. It lay there exhausted. I had caught my fish. I walked up the beach under the new moon, filled with the joy of fishing. Jerusalem artichokes can beharvested from the fall right through the winter, whenever the ground is thawed enough to permit the use of a shovel. — Barbara Stoutenburgh Photo There are many ways to spread the word... But if you really want to make an impact, our classifieds will put your message in 18,000 area homes each week. The Southampton Press • 283 -4100 The Hampton Chronicle -News • 288 -1100 Get the largest paid circulation of any newspapers on the East End.