Gale Stryker: RavenzWould: Whispered the Passerby…

January 3-31, 2020
Gale Stryker: RavenzWould: Whispered the Passerby…
Opening reception: Friday, January 3, 5:00-9:00 PM
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Please note, the Emporium will be closed Monday, January 20, for the holiday.

Artist statement: Early on a January morning in 2018, I called my friend Carol whose husband had passed away some months before. It seemed right that we should collaborate: she having a sudden large and empty house, and I suddenly losing my studio. We created a very energetic symbiotic liaison, each working on their own healing processes. This exhibition is the end result of my personal healing, growth and choices.

Ravens, according to folk lore, are the harbingers of change, so it therefore seemed like an appropriate title to a celebration of personal change as well as an exploration of my artistic barometer. Returning to the canvas after a long hiatus proved to be satisfying and a little surprising. I decided to abandon the brush, in large part relying on a potter’s best tool: the hands. There is very little brush work here, relying on instinct, color saturation, mass, texture and a creative energy born of turbulence… a rather large body of work sprung into being. I hope the viewer finds within these works a bit of themselves, a memory, a feeling, a chuckle; there is no wrong answer.

Gale Stryker was born and raised in a small town in Connecticut. In the summers, she swam in the crossing of the rivers where Lake Zoar and the Housatonic collide; in the winters, it was a frozen playground for skating and bonfires. As a young child, a book with Van Gogh’s self-portrait beckoned the slumbering artist in her. She attended a Community College where she majored in Fine Art and discovered clay, however painting proved to be her most dominant interest at that juncture. She also attended ETSU, earning a BFA with a concentration in ceramics.