Regional arts and entertainment events

Sunday

Medium is the message Painter Mavis Smith creates luminous portraits with a narrative bent using egg tempera - pigment mixed with yolks and applied in as many as 100 layers. The result is serene and slightly surreal. Hidden Realities, an exhibition of her work, is at the Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, to May 20. Admission is $12.50; $11.50 for seniors; $9.50 for students; $6 for ages 6 to 18; under 6, free. Call 215-340-9800.

Chamber music With guest Ida Kavafian, viola, the Orion Quartet plays works by Mozart, Brahms, and Mendelssohn at 3 p.m. at the Independence Seaport Museum, 211 S. Columbus Blvd. Tickets are $23; $10 for students. Call 215-569-8080. . . . The Elysian Camerata, with guest cellist Deborah Davis, plays works by Schubert and Martinu at 3 p.m. at the Church of St. Asaph, 27 Conshohocken State Rd., Bala Cynwyd. Tickets are $15. Call 610-664-0966.

Monday

Guitar hero With his former band Grandy, vocalist and guitarist Matt Courchain managed to couch an emo aesthetic within a punk attitude wrapped in arena-rock power chords. Find out what he's been doing lately when he shares a double bill with the Hell Yes at 8 p.m. at the North Star, 2639 Poplar St. Admission is free. Call 215-787-0488.

Tuesday

The maddest man For those of a certain age (which would be everybody, by now) Mad magazine was the pinnacle of a particular kind of subversive humor that undermined authority, rebellion, materialism, altruism, and even the magazine itself. As such, it was also a jumping-off place into critical thinking. Oh, yeah, and it was sidesplittingly funny in a way that made you want to imitate it, even though it seemed impossible to ever top the "Usual Gang of Idiots" who produced it. Of all of them, no one has appeared as often as 91-year-old Al Jaffee, esteemed creator of the Fold-In. Mad Life, a new biography of Jaffee by Mary-Lou Weisman, tells the story of his childhood (replete with kidnappings, Nazis, and cartoons). The artist and his biographer discuss the work at 7 p.m. at the Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St. Tickets are $22 (including book) and $8 (without book). Call 215-545-4400.