Vineyard Playhouse artistic director M.J. Bruder Munafo kicks off the theater’s popular summer series of new work — the Monday Night Special — with Expatriate, a new play by Bill C. Davis and starring Tony award-winning actress Frances Sternhagen.

The staged reading of Expatriate, directed by Mr. Davis, will be held on Monday, June 30 at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Playhouse, 24 Church street in downtown Vineyard Haven.

Perhaps everyone with an overflowing inbox needs a basket. Kari Lønning, the nationally recognized and collected artist who makes contemporary baskets, explains: “Though many contemporary baskets still suggest a vessel form, often these forms no longer have openings or bottoms — they suggest use rather offer one. As we no longer feel the need to fill baskets with something physical, the contained space becomes as important as the container giving it form.”

East Meets West: Recent Work by Peg Thayer opens at the Pebble Gallery at Featherstone Center for the Arts tomorrow, Saturday, June 28, with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Influenced by her studies in East-West psychology, Peg Thayer’s practice of painting reveals her spiritual connection with nature.

This show brings images from the Southwest, California, and Hawaii together with those from the Vineyard.

The show runs daily 1 to 4 p.m. through Saturday, July 5, at the gallery on Barnes Road near the blinker in Oak Bluffs.

“Art is a way of life in many ways for the family,” Michele Ortlip says. “My generation, the generation before me, the generation before them my grandfather’s father was an artist, my great uncle, my two aunts everybody.” It goes without saying that, included in the generation before her is Michele’s father, Paul Ortlip, the shining star of the family’s serious crop of artistic talent. The fourth generation of Ortlips, under custody of their father, grew up in a Fort Lee, N.J., home overlooking the Manhattan skyline.