Wood stitched with wire does not sound like an ideal way to structure an outdoor shed, but that’s what Steven Ladd and his brother William Ladd used to create one of the masterful works showcased at this year’s Longhouse Benefit. As Steven guided visitors through this piece, open on both ends, he explained how he learned to sew using his grandmother’s sewing machine, and in fact, the upstate New York resident wore slacks and a shirt that he had made himself. It defied the imagination to think how that textile practice might be translated to their sculpture titled “Right Here, Right Now.” Similarly, Taiwanese artist Cheng Tsung Feng invited celebrants into an airy bamboo pavilion, “Fish Trap VI.” The spirit of Longhouse founder Jack Lenor Larsen could be felt in these works on this annual occasion with Robert Wilson, Nathan Lane, Alice Aycock, and many others celebrating his legacy at the best art party of the summer.

Newer art venues in Montauk flourish: The Ranch, the site of the famed Deep Hollow Ranch, where for years a summer concert would bring hoards to the East End, to be seated on haystacks and hear, for example, Paul Simon one year, The Eagles the next, and James Brown. Repurposed barns featured Frank Stella’s sculpture at the early part of summer. His larger pieces were spread out on the immense, now grassy field. Currently, in The West Barn, hangs, Jo Messer’s “Whale Tail,” a presentation of nine new paintings of women emphasizing limbs and gesture in incongruous position saturated in monochromatic palettes. The exhibition title comes from “a resurgent trend of hiking a g-string thong above the waistline as overt provocation.” Yes, provoke it does.

Guild Hall: Offsite presents “Now Here” at the Amagansett U.S. Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station Museum, just off the Atlantic Avenue beach. Dating back to the 1900’s, this landmark coast guard station houses equipment used to rescue sailors stranded at sea. Of course, the exhibition theme would be nautical, more of a conversation by the No W here Collective: Alice Hope, Toni Ross, and Bastienne Schmidt, using the museum as muse. Particularly “The Faking Box,” a device for coiling a rope used for rescue inspired the work, inspired weavings by Toni Ross, a bedspread, a flag, a nesting buoy; Schmidt fashioned pillows with bold words to encourage wakefulness; Hope recycled lids of beer cans to create forms that look like crop circles. The ocean, as always, provides the perfect backdrop.