You are invited! 

Artists’ Talk with Linda Suskind, Marcie Schwartzman, and David Wilson (speaking on behalf of the estate of Robert Sowers). 

SATURDAY JUNE 24, 4PM

Artists Linda Suskind (Fly Creek) and Marcie Schwartzman (Cooperstown) will briefly discuss their unusual ceramic work on view in The Colors of Green exhibit 4PM on Friday, June 24 at the Art Garage. David Wilson will also present on featured artist and luminary, Robert Sowers (1923-1990) in a Friday afternoon program. The gallery will open at 3:30PM. Space is limited, and reservations are recommended for this two-gallery overview of the artists’ worlds. Email leartgarage@gmail.com, call 607-547-5327, text 315-941-9607, or respond to our Google Form. Seating and light refreshment provided.

The Colors of Green is defined by a selection of Sowers’ large verdant paintings of summer days in New York City during the 1980s. His photorealistic figures luxuriate in sunshine and lounge across luscious park fields. Subtler, earthy green tones emerge from the ceramics exhibited across the gallery floors. Alongside Ms. Suskind and Ms. Schwartzman, ceramic artists Michael Jones (Ohio) with Gary Bower (Charlottesville, NY) and Christ Pettingill with Peggi Sue Peters (Afton) also have work on display. The Middle Bay showcases detailed drawings by self-taught farmer artist Lavern Kelley (Oneonta) documenting rural life in the 1940s. A national treasure of Americana, Kelley’s work is in The Smithsonian and locally at Fenimore Art Museum.

The gallery will be open Saturdays 11-3, Sundays 12-3, and as always, seven days a week by appointment made through call: 607-547-5327 or text: 315-941-960. The Colors of Green show will be on view through Saturday, July 9. For more info, find us on Facebook at ArtGarageCooperstown or Instagram at theArtGarageCooperstown.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Robert Sowers (1923-1990) is best known for his trail-blazing architectural stained glass, his publications on glass, and now, his paintings. (See Robert Sowers, Wikipedia). He realized commissions coast-to-coast, from NYC to Palo Alto, and points in between, such as a Missouri project with the preeminent architect, Eero Saarinen. Thousands enjoyed his vast wall of glass at the American Airlines terminal at JFK created in 1958/59 demolished in 2008 for new construction. The Rakow Research Library-Corning Museum of Glass is the repository for his materials.

In the last decade of his life, he created a body of remarkable paintings, including those on display in The Colors of Green. (A slideshow at the desk provides a more comprehensive look into Sowers’ work in the 1980s, illuminating the gritty urban counterparts of the summer idylls featured in the gallery.) Light and color, critical in his glass work, took on exciting new qualities with paint. New York provided an inexhaustible source of things to observe, and Sowers was a superlative photographer. He captured hundreds of scenes that spoke to him. A few became paintings built on the many relationships between form and color. Sowers believed form must be beautiful and exact — subject matter was secondary. OK Harris South represented his work in 1987/1988. His estate of paintings belongs to his widow and is managed by David Wilson.

ABOUT THE CERAMIC ARTISTS:

Marcie Schwartzman (Cooperstown NY) works with clay and fabric. She studied with the co-founders of Baltimore Clayworks and at Virginia Museum of the Arts. Later she apprenticed with Sara Baker, long-time ceramicist in Bloomsburg PA. “ I see how fabric and fiber can collaborate with clay and glaze,” she noted. She is drawn to vessels and their symbolism: inside and outside, containment, openness. According to her, her fibrous “wraps” for vessels “hold it all together.” Her sensual piece, Tomeishi, is inspired by Japanese ‘stopping stones.’ These stones, tied with rope and secured with a woven top knot, are placed on the ground to indicate a path not to be traveled, similar to the Western STOP signs. As Schwartzman says, “It is silent and polite.”

Linda Suskind (Fly Creek) is a mixed media artist who works in paint, collage, and ceramic, uniting portraits, patterns, and landscape elements with her abstract, surreal style. Suskind received her BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia and studied at the Tyler School of Art in Rome. Her work has been included most recently in group shows at the Flatfile Gallery, the Carter Burden Gallery (NYC), and the Ethan Cohen Gallery (Beacon, NY). Locally, her work has been featured at CANO (Oneonta) and the Cooperstown Art Association’s 2020 National Juried Show, where she was awarded the Proctor Prize. Suskind was further awarded a residency at Millay Arts (formerly the Millay Colony, Austerlitz, NY) and at the Chateau Orquevaux in France.

—

The Art Garage

T.: 607-547-5327

Text: 315-941-9607