Festival mixes art with music

Somebody knew Marna Schoenwald was back in town. Rich Rivkin knew. Somehow. But Schoenwald didn't even know Rivkin before she answered his out-of-the-blue email inviting her to something called Live Fusion. A painter, Schoenwald had never thought of painting at a bar before. With a live band. With 10 or 12 other artists.

On Sunday, at Rivkin's inaugural Long Island Sound & Art Festival at Centerport's Vanderbilt Museum, she will be painting outdoors in front of a live audience and five live bands -- one at a time, of course -- with nearly 100 other artists.

"I'd been away for quite some time," she says. "And I get this email saying, 'Come on down and paint.' It's an amazing scene. You just feel so energized by the music" -- it's usually jazz fusion with lots of percussion -- "and the other artists. I never thought I could paint something in an hour and a half, but the energy drives the speed at which you paint. Sometimes I do two in one night," says Schoenwald. Through Live Fusion, which happens every Wednesday night at 841 East Lounge, just east of Huntington, she's sold one painting and made a connection with the Art League of Long Island.

Describing her painting -- usually acrylic -- as spiritually influenced abstracts, Schoenwald says she's influenced by the music and the painters working next to her. In her show at David Ryan Salon in Hell's Kitchen (429 W. 46th St.), she says, "You can tell the ones I did at Live Fusion from the ones I painted at home. The flow is different -- freer, bolder, braver."

"It's my gift to the community," says Rivkin, who lives and works in Greenlawn. But Rivkin admits to getting something out of throwing a festival. It's his chance to play conga in front of a big crowd. "Hopefully, we'll have 500 or 600 people," he says.