Art Garage Spring Exhibition Opens- ‘Color. Immersion. Explosion.’

Cooperstown NY- Color. Immersion. Explosion launches the Art Garage Spring season with a two-person show that features brightly-painted sculptures and drawings on wood by self-taught artist, Louis Sherry (Greene NY), who enjoys exclusive representation at the Art Garage. And small drawings in a forest of life-size glass figures by professional artist and Hartwick College professor of art emeritus, Terry L. H. Slade (Schenevus), known for his large-scale installations in glass and other materials. The exhibition will run through Saturday May 20, 11-2.

The Art Garage is open Saturdays 11-2 and always daily with a text or call: 315-941-9607. See FB and Instagram, @ArtGarageCooperstown, for representative art from the show.

LOUIS SHERRY’s work is featured in the main gallery. His first show in 2015 sold out, and exploded with evocative, richly figured and wildly colorful ‘birdhouses.’ In the summer of 2017 he exhibited his work further down Beaver Meadow Road in an Art Garage / Origins Café collaboration. Now in his late-eighties, he is experimenting with a new approach: brilliant small paintings on wood, their stylistically decorated frames of-a-piece with the art and infused throughout with his signature vivid colors. He will also be offering a menage of small animal-like sculptures: a duck, a rooster and mythical creatures, all suspended in the gallery space. While somewhat slowed down due to health issues, this Korean war ‘flyboy’ nevertheless rises each day to make art in his workshop by his log cabin. “When I work,” he noted, “ I have peace of mind — I am following my heart.” He creates with joy and passion. The workshop, like his shed and basement, are chock-full of sculptures and paintings. It is all “out of this world! ” he noted. “No one has seen such a thing before — you are stepping into the envelope of another world that I have imagined….when I work, I open a door to my imagination and step into it.” And he is delighted to share his visionary work. Sherry was raised on the family farm on Long Island. He went into the family’s milk distribution business after “big ag put the small dairy farms out of business,” he reflected. He thinks he might have delivered milk to Jackson Pollock and other to-become-famous NY artists in his area who had moved to Long Island for low rents and more space. Later he did landscaping until he suffered an injury while working. Sherry fought in the Korean war—“it was hell,” he said. After he and his wife Brenda retired and moved Upstate, he began to make art for pure joy of it, with no thought to exhibit or sell it. Then one day a former Cooperstown area artist, Michael Stiles, saw the work at a church fair near Ithaca, and immediately contacted Sydney Waller at the Art Garage — he knew the Art Garage periodically exhibited self-taught artists. His first one-man show was a sell-out. Because of his attachment to The Art Garage, a casual gallery space was created for him in the Third Bay, where visitors periodically discovered his art above the MG — and among actual garage items.

TERRY LEE HARMON SLADE will be exhibiting recent work in the adjacent Middle Bay: a series of vivid small drawings on paper as well as life-size glass panels and other glass sculptures. He regularly works with cast, blown and fused glass. The installation will involve a range of colors within some overarching themes. The use of color can be intense even apocalyptic. Much of the art in the installation addresses Slade’s reaction to and visual riffs on the recent Pandemic times. The work relates to current projects, Things to Worry About, based on his fascination with microscopic images of germs. However, whereas his earlier work was quite playful, during the Pandemic the tone changed. He noted that he faced “the reality of living in a world threatened by a frightening disease, and a disease that is even more worrying due to our inability to live in harmony with nature. “ The works at the Art Garage –drawings and ethereal, life-size glass figures–represent that confrontation. Referring to some of the distressed work on view, he noted, “Bodies nestled in the landscape once signified humans living together with nature, but now the body is pierced by inexplicable shards revealing how little we as people have respected and lived in a symbiotic relationship with the earth. ” Other figures are ghost-like, “as though shattered by the much larger things that human beings now have to worry about.” Slade is a retired Hartwick College Professor of Art and Sculptor in Residence. He grew up in Nebraska: its vastness and vulnerability of the land has influenced his thinking about Earth. His work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world. For over 20 years, he has also researched ancient monuments, stone circles and burial chambers in the British Isles and Brittany, and has produced many drawings, cast bronze sculptures and installations in wood and mixed media. Slade exhibits frequently, including at the Albany Airport (2019 ) where he exhibited Orbit, an installation of glass and drawings. In 2016 he created a commissioned piece, Dreams and Apparitions, for the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (Utica), subtitled, A Mantra for the Survival of the Earth. He has also exhibited at CANO, Oneonta, Stone Quarry Art Park, Cazenovia and the Smithy, where he will be showcasing a large body of work this summer in an evolving solo exhibition in the Third Floor Gallery. His work is in many public and private collections in the US, Europe and Japan. Slade will be giving an Artist’s Talk in front of the Middle Bay Gallery, Thursday May 11 at 5PM, for which reservations will be requested. A rain day will be established, weather-dependent.

For further information please contact the Art Garage at leartgarage@gmail.com, text 315-941-9607 or call 607-547-5327.