PechaKucha Night At The Parrish

The Parrish Art Museum is hosting PechaKucha Night Hamptons, Vol. 33, on Friday, June 18, at 6 p.m. PechaKucha features speakers giving rapid-fire presentations about living creatively on the East End and the program will be presented live-streamed as well as in person to a limited audience at the museum. The speakers, who will show 20 images for 20 seconds in compelling 6-minute and 40-second long presentations, include artists Michael De Feo, Steven Molina Contreras, Joyce Raimondo, Mark Van Wagner, and Susan Vecsey; and photographers Jaime Lopez and Matt Raynor. Registration is required at parrishart.org.

“I’m thrilled that the Parrish Art Museum continues to provide this great public platform for creative people on the East End to share their passions,” said Jennifer Duque, head of museum experiences at the Parrish.

Michael De Feo is an American artist based in New York City. He is widely known for his floral paintings — which earned him the nickname “The Flower Guy” — and street art for over 25 years in more than 60 cities including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Cabo San Lucas, Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and others. His work deals with themes of ephemerality, growth, and the cycle of life.

Jaime Lopez was born in Peru, where the breathtaking landscapes became an aesthetic foundation for his lifelong career as a photographer and artist. In 1980, Lopez moved to New York to study graphic design at Parsons School of Design and relocated to Sagaponack in 2000. His most recent project — the book “Hamptons Artists, The Current Wave: 48 Artists Making Their Mark on the East End” — features local artists and their studios.

In his work Steven Molina Contreras, born in San Salvador, El Salvador, addresses how immigrant families reclaim the land and images in which they are portrayed. By employing aesthetics of both documentary and staged photography, Molina Contreras re-contextualizes narratives that exist within his images and creates relationships between them, thus revealing an evocative truth to himself and his collaborators — his family.

Joyce Raimondo is author of seven children’s art books, including The Museum of Modern Art’s popular Art Safari series and the award-winning Art Explorers books. A painter and sculptor, her illustrations have been published in the The New York Times, Boston Globe, and numerous publications.

Matthew Raynor is an avid traveler, commercial fisherman and photographer who suffered a severe spinal injury in 2019 that left him paralyzed below his collarbone with no hand movement and limited arm mobility. Prior to the accident Raynor chronicled his time at sea through photography. Despite being bound to a power chair, he continues to capture the beauty of nature as a testament to the powerful healing effect of art by using a drone as a certified remote drone pilot.

Painter and sculptor Mark Van Wagner was born in New York, graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago, and lived throughout the U.S. before settling on Long Island in Bellport, where he is the owner of the gallery Marquee Projects. One his most recent sculptures was included in the 2020 Long Island Biennial at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington.

Susan Vecsey earned her bachelor of arts degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her master of fine arts from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, studying under Graham Nickson. In 2012, Vecsey was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Tickets for PechaKucha Night Hamptons, Vol. 33 are $15 ($5 Parrish members). Seating in the theater is limited with socially distanced seating and registration is required. Live-stream is free with donations welcome. The Parrish Art Museum is at 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill.