The Posters of Paul Davis in Focus at Bay Street Theater

Paul Davis is a Sag Harbor resident and a legend in the theater.

But if his is a name you’re not familiar with, it may be because his particular talents aren’t the sort that grace the stage. Rather, Davis is an artist and illustrator whose long and storied career was built through the creation of iconic theater posters, primarily for Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in New York City.

Even if you haven’t seen any of the plays depicted in his posters, you’ve no doubt seen Davis’s artwork displayed in public spaces across the New York region and beyond. Beginning in the mid-1970s, his posters for shows like “Three Penny Opera,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “The Pirates of Penzance,” to name a few, were ubiquitous and they lined those endlessly long pedestrian subway tunnels, like the one linking the 7 train to the E train, for example, or could be found on the platforms of LIRR and Metro North stations on Long Island and in Westchester.

And over the years, the Paul Davis style became a trademark, of sorts, for The Public Theater, his work uniquely identifiable in a way that Joseph Papp understood helped to define his brand.

“Nobody else was doing these kind of posters and putting them on train platforms all the way from Boston to Washington, D.C.,” said Davis, who ended up creating 52 posters for Papp’s productions over the course of a 16 year collaboration that ended with Papp’s death in 1991. Davis also created many more print ads for plays that never received their own posters and from 1984 to 1982, was art director of Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival.

“After the first few posters, [Papp] supported the form in the same way he supported the playwrights,” added Myrna Davis, the artist’s wife. “The poster was for the people who didn’t get to see the play. Part of what made them so strong is they didn’t have any type in them, just the title and the theater.”

Davis has also created posters for the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. But it’s not just big city theaters that have been the beneficiaries of Davis’s talents. He has also created posters for a venue much closer to home — Bay Street Theater. He formed the Paul Davis Studio in 1963, working first in New York and later in Sag Harbor, where he and Myrna bought a home in 1966 (and where they still live). His illustrations have appeared in Life, Time, Playboy, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated and other publications. In the early 1990s, Sybil Christopher, Stephen Hamilton and Emma Walton Hamilton opened the Bay Street Theater on Long Wharf. Davis was happy to lend his artistic support to the cause in those early years by creating a series of annual posters to promote the fledgling theater.

Now, Bay Street Theater is returning the favor with a retrospective, of sorts. In conjunction with Keyes Art in Sag Harbor, currently on view in Bay Street’s lobby are a series of Paul Davis theater posters that he designed over the years. Open to the public free of charge, the exhibition will remain on view through September 30.

“We are thrilled to host this extraordinary exhibition by Paul Davis,” said Tracy Mitchell, the theater’s executive director, in a statement. “His artwork has a way of transcending the boundaries of paper and ink, effectively conveying the heart and soul of every production he touches.

“It is a true privilege to have his art grace our gallery walls and share his incredible talent with the Sag Harbor community.”

The suggestion for the show came from gallery owner Julie Keyes, who recently hosted “Inklings,” an exhibition of drawings by Davis, at her Main Street space. Myrna Davis liked the idea of highlighting her husband’s posters in an exhibition, including those created for Bay Street Theater, because many of the theater’s current staff members are fairly new to the organization and may be unaware of the history.

“When we first came to Sag Harbor, the lunar module was being built there,” said Myrna referring to the days when the Bay Street building housed a Grumman factory. “Then it was a roller disco, then a regular disco, then a group of people who lived here but had deep theater roots built Bay Street.”

It’s not just Davis’s older posters that are on view in the Bay Street Show. Also included is one created just last year for Theatre for a New Audience’s production of “The Merchant of Venice” starring John Douglas Thompson. At age 84, it’s evident that Davis has no plans to stop making art any time soon. On a recent visit to Paul and Myrna Davis’s Rector Street home, the artist came into the kitchen to share his newest work of art — a watercolor portrait of John Steinbeck as a young man. The image will grace the invitation of the upcoming Sag Harbor Partnership event, “The Fall of Our Contentment,” being held on September 9 to benefit the newly preserved Steinbeck House on Bluff Point Road.

“I was working from several pictures,” explained Davis as he showed the painting of Steinbeck. “They were two different views. I wanted him to be looking at you, but he was looking off toward your shoulder. I thought it would be a day to do it, but it took days.”

It’s somehow both ironic and fitting that Davis would create a portrait of John Steinbeck, not just because both he and the famed author called sag Harbor home. But it turns out that Davis is a native of Oklahoma, the state that figured so prominently in Steinbeck’s novel “Grapes of Wrath.”

It was in Tulsa where Davis, 84, was first taken with art as a student at Will Rogers High School, nurtured by his art teacher, Hortense Bateholts.

“I began to draw in Mrs. Bateholts’s class in high school,” said Davis. “She made a difference. I had been living in Antlers, Oklahoma and we moved to Tulsa in 8th grade, for better and worse. My dad was a Methodist minister, so we moved every year, especially in the dust bowl.”

Davis recalls that when he and Myrna bought their Sag Harbor home in 1966, he called his father and told him that he was living in the same town as John Steinbeck.

“My dad said, ‘They ought to make him come back and write a book about those of us who stayed here,’” noted Davis, who adds that many in the state suffered from the stigma of being labeled an “Okie,” the term made popular by Steinbeck in “Grapes of Wrath.”

After high school, Davis left Oklahoma for New York City when he got a scholarship to Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later renamed School of Visual Arts).

“It was my fourth choice in scholastic applications,” said Davis, who also applied to the Chicago Art Institute, Pratt Institute and the Philadelphia Museum School, but didn’t get into any of them.

So Davis, whose grandfather had crossed Kansas in a covered wagon, said goodbye to his family and headed east to start his professional life as an artist.

“When I got home from my first year of school, Dad made me join the Army Reserves for a year,” said Davis. “He was always trying to get me to change courses and come closer to home. It didn’t work, by the end of the year he couldn’t wait till I went back.”

The only person Davis knew in New York when he moved there was his cousin, who was in an amateur theater group at a Methodist Church in the city.

“They were doing a Chekhov play, I made an abstract collage for them,” said Davis. “I didn’t see the play either.”

Davis explained that in the beginning of his career, theaters typically hired two or three artists and paid them a couple hundred dollars each to produce several poster designs, ultimately giving the producer a choice of five or six designs to choose from.

“When I connected with Joe Papp and got to be the person doing everything and got the title of art director, I realized it was a very similar thing to being a son of a minister,” he said. “You show up for everything. We went to see everything, every after-theater party.

“It was like a family.”

The posters of Paul Davis are on view in the lobby at Bay Street Theater now through September 30. Admission is free and art enthusiasts, theater lovers and the general public are all invited to come see the show. Bay Street Theater is on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.

The Sag Harbor Partnership and Steinbeck House Local Advisory Committee’s Saturday, September 9, benefit, “The Fall of Our Contentment,” will take place at The Church, 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor. A 6 p.m. reception will be followed at 7 p.m. by a staged reading of John Steinbeck’s novel, “The Winter of Our Discontent.” Tickets are $125 at weblink.donorperfect.com/thefallofourcontentment.