Artists
#1 Eric Carle
#2 David Gloman
#3 Laurie Goddard
#4 Michael Kuch
#5 Edward Maeder
#6 Robert Markey
#7 Barry Moser
#8 Lynn Peterfreund
#9 Marcia Reed
#10 Pietro Spica
#11 Jozan Treston
#12 Nanny Vonnegut
(click on violin for larger image)

Eric Carle is acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children. His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten its way into the hearts of literally millions of children all over the world and has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold over seventeen million copies. Since the Caterpillar was published in 1969, Eric Carle has illustrated more than seventy books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote. The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art opened to the public on November 22, 2002. Founded by Eric Carle and his wife Barbara, the Museum is for visitors of all ages: children and families, teachers and librarians, scholars, and everyone interested in the art of the picture book. The 44,000 sq. ft. contemporary museum is situated in a 7.5 acre apple orchard next to Hampshire College campus in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts.

Eric Carle’s art is distinctive and instantly recognizable. His art work is created in collage technique, using hand-painted papers, which he cuts and layers to form bright and cheerful images. Many of his books have an added dimension - die-cut pages, twinkling lights as in The Very Lonely Firefly, even the lifelike sound of a cricket’s song as in The Very Quiet Cricket - giving them a playful quality: a toy that can be read, a book that can be touched. Children also enjoy working in collage and many send him pictures they have made themselves, inspired by his illustrations. He receives hundreds of letters each week from his young admirers. 

Eric Carle:
www.eric-carle.com

Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art:
www.picturebookart.org

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David Gloman holds at master’s of fine arts degree from Yale University, and a bachleor’s degree of fine arts from Indiana University. He has won awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Competition. His work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the United States including Wm. Baczek in Northampton, R. B. Stevenson Gallery in San Diego, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design in New York, the Rolly-Michaux Gallery in Boston, and the Vermont Studio Center. Recent exhibits include Landscapes: David Gloman/ Richard Raeselis at the Wright State University Art Galleries and Changing Prospects: a View from Mount Holyoke at the Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art. Mr. Gloman has taught and lectured on the art of painting since 1985. He currently is a lecturer at Amherst College. He lives in Northampton, MA with his wife, the painter Katy Schneider and their three children.

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"I combine the art of traditional gilding with exploration into contemporary patination on both flat and curved objects and panels. Trained as a printmaker at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, I developed a love for the process of art, the freedom within boundaries that medium allows and demands. I am influenced by both the overt power of the abstract expressionists and the subtle gestures of Japanese Edo masters. All of my work originates from the gesture of a line, or a particular color or texture I want to evoke. The basic process involves sanding, underpainting, the complex precision of gilding with various types of metal leaf and powders, then the patination, culminating with at least 15 coats of varnish. The patinas are based on recipes from the ateliers of sculptors such as Henry Moore, modified after years of experimentation to produce the rich tones on the fragile leaf. The finished pieces are elegant examples of fine contemporary craft. All of my designs are original and copyrighted. All of my work is individually produced in my studio in Shelburne Falls, MA, a thriving arts community in the beautiful foothills of the Berkshires."

http://www.lauriegoddard.com/

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Drawing from his imagination, Michael Kuch portrays a world both fantastic and familiar. Whimsical juxtapositions of human figure and natural form fuse into personal metaphor. A head sprouts flowers, evocative of inner growth; another face hides under a sea shell hat, seeking protection. A distinctive, patient tenderness suffuses his imagery. Anthropomorphic frogs, wearing no more than frowns, satire our naked, vulnerable condition. Unceremonious portraits of biblical and mythological characters comment gently on iconoclastic times. A Sisyphus, toiling behind a giant snail, does not strain his muscles; his sad, soft posture conveys a mental rather than physical burden. Kuch's art does not focus on verisimilitude, nor does it dwell in aesthetic interpretation; rather these qualities attend human experience as revealed from the inside: a world of psychological reflection.

Complete collections of Michael Kuch’s Double Elephant Press are housed in the rare-book libraries of many notable institutions, including the Library of Congress, Yale University, The University of Delaware, and Smith College. Kuch studied with Leonard Baskin at Hampshire College and printed etchings for Baskin’s Gehenna Press for over ten years. Working in a variety of media, including painting and sculpture, Michael divides his time between Northampton and New York City.

http://www.rmichelson.com/
Michael_Kuch_Gallery.html

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Edward Maeder grew up in a village of 130 people in the "wilds" of northern Wisconsin. After attending a one-room grade school and a four year high school with less than 200 students he did his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Although his bachelors degree is in art he studied Art History, Music (built a pipe organ in his senior year), Reformation History and Theater. His training in theater led him to create the Patterns of History, full scale patterns from original 19th century dresses in modern sizes from the collection at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. After re-creating all of the costumes for the Abraham Lincoln Wax Museum in Springfield, IL, and building a group of costumes for a Broadway play, he was accepted at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London to pursue the two year course of study in History of Dress.

After graduation Mr. Maeder spent a year and a half at the Abegg Foundation outside of Bern, Switzerland, where he restored a 16th century Swiss Mercenary Soldier's Uniform. Other projects included restoration of a tomb garment from 100 B.C at the Central Institute of Restoration in Rome Museum and restoration of a 6th century Coptic tunica in Belgium

Upon returning to the States, he was appointed Associate Curator of Costume at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. In January of 1979 he became the Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum. In 1994 he became Director of the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1999 he accepted the position of Chair, Curatorial Department and Curator of Textiles at Historic Deerfield, Inc., Deerfield, Massachusetts. He has opened his first exhibition called THE SHAPE OF MAN: Men’s Fashions 1760-1860 on September 15, 2001. Mr. Maeder enjoys playing the piano, collecting original figurative and costume related works of art from the 16th century through the early 20th, traveling (he has led many 'study trips' to Europe) and both cooking and eating a variety of international cuisines. For the past two and a half years he has been actively involved as a member of the board of directors for the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. He delivers lectures both locally and internationally on a wide range of subjects and is usually involved in the writing of some esoteric scholarly article related to the subject of historic costume from the 13th century through the Renaissance period.

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Robert Markey was born in New York in 1947. He earned his B.S. in physics from M.I.T in 1969 and his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts in 1982. Until 1980 his main focus was music, performing on classical guitar and eventually on the sitar. He traveled extensively, working, studying and teaching in Japan, India, Europe and Central America.

In 1981, he began to work in the visual arts and also began his study of Tai Kwon Do. For the past twenty years those two disciplines have been at the center of his life.

Robert works in several media including painting, sculpture, installation and video. He has done public art projects in New York and Boston, his first video was aired on PBS and he received national media coverage for his public performance work on domestic violence. He is represented by the Serafina Gallery in Somerville MA and the A3 Gallery in Amherst.

He currently works out of his studio in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

http://rmarkey.blue-fox.com

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Barry Moser is the consummate artist with experience as a designer, printmaker, painter, illustrator, printer, author, teacher and lecturer. Born in Tennessee, he was schooled at Auburn University, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and then did graduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His works are represented in many prestigious collections including the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, Harvard, Princeton and the Library of Congress. Mr. Moser's body of work includes almost 200 titles which he has illustrated or designed, including Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland which won the National Book Award for Design and Illustration in 1983. In 1991 he won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for his collaboration with Cynthia Rylant – Appalachia, the Voices of Sleeping Birds. Other authors with whom he has worked include Patricia MacLachlan and Virginia Hamilton.

In 1999 a four-year labor of love culminated in Barry Moser’s magnum opus, the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, the first Bible fully illustrated by one individual since Gustave Doré's La Sainte Bible of 1865. Barry Moser composed 236 engravings in a material called Resingrave as illustrations for the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible. Resingrave is a synthetic medium invented by Richard Woodman in Redwood City, California that approximates the qualities of boxwood for engraving. Modeled on everyday people, the illustrations were described by Newsweek as "engravings with the brooding power of magical realism."

Barry Moser frequently lectures and acts as a visiting artist at universities and institutions across the country. He lives in a contemporary house he designed and built that overlooks the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts.

http://www.rmichelson.com/
Barry_Moser_gallery.html

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Lynn Peterfreund has been working as a professional artist since receiving her MFA from Pratt Institute in New York in 1980. She works primarily as a printmaker and has also worked as a painter, muralist, and video artist. Her paintings, covering a variety of subjects, have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her murals and public art can been seen in Williamstown, Springfield, Amherst, Holyoke, the JFK Middle School in Northampton, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Baystate Medical Center, and most recently, in Thompson Hall at University of Massachusetts. She has taught video production at Hunter College in NY and painting and drawing at Smith College, UMass, Greenfield Community College, Hampshire College, the Guild Studio School in Northampton and in her studio in Amherst.

Ms. Peterfreund lives in Leverett, MA, with her husband, Nicholas Xenos. They have two college-aged sons. "I really enjoy and need to work with people," she says. "You have to spend a lot of time alone with your art and I feel fortunate that I have found ways to make strong connections with people in my community through teaching, public art projects, and by doing portraits. I have moved toward making this fascination with human nature the subject of my art."

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Marcia Reed has taught and lectured at private schools and art colleges throughout New England for many years. Since 1978 she has taught Painting and design at the Williston Northampton School. She exhibits expressionistic landscapes in oils, watercolors, and acrylics in her studio–formerly a railroad station–in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Her work is represented in numerous corporations and galleries throughout the United States and in Korea, Macedonia, and the Caribbean Islands. Since 1995 she has organized adult watercolor and acrylic workshops on the Island of St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands. She was the artist in residence during the summer months at the Rockefeller resort Caneel Bay in the U. S. Virgin Islands.

Marcia Reed is inspired by land and water motifs, whether painted on location or from "memory experience" in the studio. Her personal experience with nature is ultimately more important than factual information. She wants to pull the observer into the view to feel the vitality and exchange of nature. "People may not realize it, but some painters labor to remove the ever-increasing evidence of man’s presence." These painterly land/waterscapes are loaded with feelings, vivid color, light, movement, an forms of the external world.

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Pietro Spica is a contemporary Italian surrealist artist. He was born in the small Venetian town of Dolo in 1953. Spica has traveled much in Central and South America, and his biomorphic forms take inspiration from the pre-Columbian rainforest of his imagination. The visual emotions displayed on Pietro Spica's canvases are rich and engaging, and subject to change according to the viewer's fancy.

Pietro Spica has dedicated over twenty years to the development of his virtuoso watercolor technique. Here, friendly objects and beings can be recognized, although they do not follow any of reality's rules. Pietro has illustrated books for children, notably by Italo Calvino, and Bruno Munari. For the past ten years he has held seminars in watercolor technique, whose scope was to encourage his student to give vent to their imaginations by learning how to see rather than merely draw.

Pietro Spica moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1999. He is represented by R. Michelson Galleries.

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Jozan Treston attended the Fleischer Art Memorial School and the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in Philadelphia. From 1992 through 1994 he was a member of the Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York. In 1999 he studied at the Scuola Grafica in Venice, Italy. His work has been shown throughout the Pioneer Valley and in galleries in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. He is a member of the Amherst Arts Alliance–A3. Relying upon his training in Zen Buddhism, Jozan Treston has developed an approach to his painting that encourages subconscious imagery to take form, rather than producing a pre-conceived image. Working with Venetian plaster, powdered pigment and wax, he creates highly textured works which evoke different images for different audiences.

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Nanny Vonnegut graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1978 with a BFA in Printmaking. For the past 20 years, she has exhibited her work locally and most recently at The Forum Gallery in New York City. Her work has been featured in national publications such as The New Yorker, American Educator, Pakn Treger and The Massachusetts Review.

She lives in Northampton with her husband, Scott Prior, and her three children, Max, Ezra and Nellie. When not trying to be as famous as her father, she is working really hard at keeping her sons out of jail and her daughter out of spandex.

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