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Taking a minor respite from the local gallery scene for a moment, for this week’s collection of reflections I ventured to New York City, where two East End notables, Stephen Longmire and Dan Rizzie, currently are featured in two separate exhibitions.

Of the two, the more entertainingly anachronistic is Stephen Longmire’s exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum, titled “Keeping Time in Sag Harbor—the Other Port of New York.” I say “anachronistic” to reference the relative irony present in an exhibition that allows visitors to view images of historic houses in Sag Harbor that ended up being preserved more through neglect than intent, much like the South Street Seaport itself, with its re-created facades and cobblestone streets, elements of old New York spared the wrecking ball of urban renewal back when that was in vogue among city planners.

Further, the exhibition, drawn from Mr. Longmire’s book, “Keeping Time in Sag Harbor,” strives to create more than superficial connections, pointing out, for example, that both New York and Sag Harbor were declared ports of entry in the same year, 1789. And, stimulating a sense memory of Sag Harbor’s history as a whaling town, the residual olfactory signature of the old Fulton Fish Market just up the street seems to linger in the air still, three years after the market relocated to Hunts Point.

Mr. Longmire’s photographs are not merely head-on architectural depictions offering real estate snapshots, but rather are framed in such a manner as to offer a measure of visual spontaneity absent any inference of structured formality. As a result, they avoid any reference to portraiture, substituting a more unprompted vision that imparts the sense of personal involvement in the images themselves.

It’s as if the viewers were catching a glimpse of a Captains Row widow’s walk through the trees, or seeing the elegant decay of the old Maycroft mansion, its unkempt lawns and overgrown shrubbery offering more of a narrative than any caption could provide.

The exhibition of photographs by Stephen Longmire continues at the South Street Seaport Museum through January 4.

At Spanierman Modern, meanwhile, Dan Rizzie’s recent mixed media pieces offer both further explorations of his current work, expressing through gentle abstractions the harmonies and cadences of the natural world, and small works that are highly reminiscent of his earlier influences from the Bauhaus and artists of the Russian avant-garde.

In regard to his recent works, Mr. Rizzie seems to be moving toward a looser and more elemental approach to both color and line, both of which conjure rather playful atmospheres. At the same time, control over composition and juxtaposition of imagery remain powerful components in his manipulation of space.

In “The Manor” (2008), for example, the echoing placement of white and black floral images superimposed over each other creates powerful rhythms that orchestrate movement within the work while also forcefully establishing a powerful sense of depth. At the same time, the artist doesn’t let the viewer’s eye drift too deeply into the distance by using an assertive red ground to create a backdrop over which his whimsical representations of nature seem to float effortlessly.

This use of space is apparent in “Esplanade” (2008), while in works such as “Hawthorne (Progeny)” (2008) Mr. Rizzie not only creates a more dense foreground of twisting vines and organic shapes, but also uses sweeping brush strokes in the background to offer the sensation of hints of light glowing through some deep and impenetrable forest of shrubs and bushes.

In other, smaller works, such as “Chalice” (2008), “Bell” (2008), and “Mill Garth (for R.L.)” (2008), his compositions become both more immediately spontaneous and also more overtly abstract. Calling to mind his earlier investigations into more pure geometric abstractions, these works are significantly more simple than his larger compositions, yet their sense of pictorial sophistication is nevertheless quite profound.

The exhibition of recent works by Dan Rizzie continues at Spanierman Modern on 58th Street through November 15.