Artist Susanne Slavick from the Pittsburgh recently gave a gallery talk at the sordoni Art Gallery, where her work and the work of three of her sisters is on display in an exhibit called ‘Family Tree.’ On the wall behind her is a series called “Elegy to the Underground,” in which her sister, Sarah Slavick, celebrates the intricate network of roots.
Mark Guydish | For Times Leader
Kids can make their own ‘Family Tree’ May 10
Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Madeleine Slavick’s photographs showcase trees and vines in various settings.
Mark Guydish | For Times Leader
Art aficionados Chris Lacy, Lillian Caffrey and Patricia Lacy take a closer look at the artwork on display in the ‘Family Tree’ exhibit following Susanne Slavick’s gallery talk. ‘I’ve got goosebumps,’ Patricia Lacy said, indicating that’s how good she considers the artwork to be.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Titled ‘Recuperation,’ this painting by Susanne Slavick shows Cedar of Lebanon trees from Lake Como, Italy, that were bandaged and wired in an attempt to rescue them after they were damaged in a windstorm. The artist also painted a nocturnal scene from the area, and both are on display at the Sordoni Art Gallery, along with pieces by the artist’s sisters Madeleine, Sarah and Elin.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Walk into Wilkes University’s Sordoni Art Gallery and look to your left. Your eyes will be drawn to Susanne Slavick’s larger-than-life painting of tree limbs wrapped in bandages.
What is going on?
The trees are Cedars of Lebanon that the artist saw in 2007. They were growing on an island in Lake Como, Italy, and, after a freak windstorm, workers were “frantically trying to keep them alive” with wires, sprinkler systems and bandages where branches had been damaged.
At the time, wars were being waged in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, Slavick told the audience who turned out to hear her recent gallery talk. And the Pittsburgh-based artist, retired after 39 years teaching at Carnegie-Mellon University, saw the trees as a metaphor for “the damage and violence we do to each other and to our environment, and the possibilities or impossibilities of recovery.”
Slavick, who told a reporter before her talk that she loves trees so much she gladly puts up with an uneven driveway rather than remove a tree that caused a bump, has three sisters who also are working artists.
Artwork by Madeleine Slavick of New Zealand, Sarah Slavick of Boston and Elin O’Hara Slavick of California also is on display at the Sordoni Art Gallery in downtown Wilkes-Barre, through June 1, in an exhibit titled “Family Tree.”
Madeleine’s photographs showcase trees in all sorts of settings — urban and rural, standing watch like a sentinel over a waterfall, or reaching heaven-ward toward the sunlight, in a crevice between two buildings.
Sarah’s works, meanwhile, celebrate the hidden, intricate networks of root systems in a series called “Elegy to the Underground.”
And in Elin’s work you’ll find an anti-war message.
To create some of her pieces, the artist used leaves and bark from trees that had survived the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Fukushima.
More recently, while serving a research fellowship at Cal Tech, she had access to an abandoned darkroom as well as “amazing archives with a lot of material related to the development of nuclear weapons.”
That inspired her to create a series called “There Have Been 528 Nuclear Test to Date,” in which she poured chemicals onto photographic paper to make 528 “chemical drawings” that resemble mushroom clouds — and also look like the outline of trees.
Compare those images to her other earlier works of an “A-Bombed Weeping Willow Tree in Hiroshima” and “Fukushima Persimmon Tree Heavy With Contaminated Fruit,” Susanne Slavick told the crowd, and “it seems to be a natural extension.”
More of Susanne Slavick’s own work is a “Tree of Life” series in which she hand-painted carpet designs from around the world over “scenes of environmental disaster from Nepal to Yellowstone National Park.” The scenes below the designs show the results of forest fires, logging “or other insults to the forest and the land.”
The artist said she and her sisters grew up in a family of six kids, with activist parents. Five of the children became involved in the arts as artists, curators, writers, poets, educators and community organizers. The four who remain artists “all make work about many things,” she said, “but trees were one of the themes that connect us for this show, each in our own way.”
As Susanne Slavick’s talk concluded, local art lovers meandered through the gallery at their own pace, examining works more closely.
“I’ve got goosebumps,” Patricia Lacy from the Wyoming Valley Art League said. “This is the best exhibit I’ve ever seen here.”
The exhibit will remain on display through June 1, with hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
In conjunction with the Family Tree exhibit, the Sordoni Art Gallery has scheduled a Second Saturday Family Hour for noon to 2 p.m. May 10.
Subtitled “Family Tree,” the family hour will offer kids a chance to learn what genealogy means and how families are connected across generations. Art supplies will be provided so children can make a collage, but feel free to bring your family photos if you would like to include them.