Even though making art is often an experience that happens in the solitude of one’s studio, it rarely occurs in a vacuum. Artists rely on each other for support, reinforcement, inspiration, and challenge, forming communities to avoid feeling like fish out of water in this world. Tim Gowan was one of those artists who cherished being part of a community and played a role in its formation.
Remembrance
Louise H. McCagg (1936-2020)
Louise McCagg, a member of the A.I.R. gallery, exhibited widely, both in the United States and internationally. She also collaborated with a new generation of Hungarians on many projects, one of them being part of the Hungarian Pavilion of the 2009 Venice Biennale.
In memory of Susanna Heller (1956 – 2021)
Contributed by Medrie MacPhee / Susanna Heller and I have been friends going all the way back to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design [NASCAD] in Halifax from which I graduated in 1976, and Susanna in 1977. Our first studios in New York were our first apartments, mine on 3rd St. in the East Village and hers on 5th. Our lives consisted largely of many a night of visiting each other’s studios, museum and gallery visits, and talking painting, painting, painting.
In Memoriam: Paul Vexler, 1947 – 2022
By the time Paul Vexler chose to pursue his art full time in 2006, he already had decades of experience and a unique command over his favored material. Observing nature and the movement of trees, Paul understood the flexible properties of wood and created sculpture of remarkable elegance and beauty with seemingly impossible arrays of loops and knots.
Conrad Vogel (1951 – 2022)
Conrad Vogel grew up in Briarcliff Manor, New York, graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1977, traveled in Italy, and then moved to New York City where he lived as an artist for more than forty years.
Fred Gutzeit: An energetic matrix
Contributed by John Mendelsohn / Fred Gutzeit died on January 3, 2022 at the age of 81, leaving a legacy of inventive paintings, watercolors, prints, and installations. Over six decades, his art embodied a love for the visible world, and a spirit of inspired enquiry into the invisible energies that lie beneath it. This notion of exploring “deep nature” and the discoveries of modern physics were animating forces throughout his career. He spent his life as an artist in Lower Manhattan, living and working in a loft on the Bowery, and was a vital part of the downtown art scene from the 1960s until his passing.
2020’s grim atmosphere of loss: Shari Uquhart and others
Contributed by John Fritsch and Jen Pepper / Shari Urquhart, artist and educator, died on November 21, 2020. She was born in Racine, Wisconsin and grew up in Kenosha, just a few miles south. Although her first media were painting and printmaking, she ultimately found her true medium in fiber to express her take on popular culture and art history.
Remembering DC artist Robert Novel
Throughout the last decade, Robert completed over one hundred and fifty paintings in a limited palette ranging from white to soft gray to black, often incorporating raw canvas or linen as a compositional element of the work.
Worlds beyonds words: Lynn Kotula
Contributed by Carol Diamond / Admired and respected by her artistic community, beloved by friends and family, Lynn Kotula passed away in February 2021, after living with stage IV cancer for more than six years. The following is a 2022 catalogue essay written by John Goodrich on the occasion of “Lynn Kotula: A Life in Painting 1984–2020,” her final exhibition at Bowery Gallery.