James Garvey, Forging and Welding Instructor

James Garvey fulfilled his BFA at Colorado State University, working closely with Kenneth Hendry and Sherri Smith.  His concentration was pottery. For ten years, he became immersed in Rochester Folk Art Guild, receiving the attention of Mrs. Louise March and creating hand-forged craft.

James later joined the New York City Ironworkers Union and began working on replicating the Statue of Liberty’s armature bars. For several months, James would observe the personal effects of the visitors who watched the artisans at Liberty Island. This setting is what inspired James to search for and bring meaningful street furniture to the public, creating functional works of art.

James moved on to open a Tribeca studio/gallery where he designed and created the innovative and functional forms of round bars, JG bends, and tapers.  These forms can be seen in all his designs of hardware, furniture and street fixtures residing in and around New York City, including the settees and tables at the NYPD substation on Washington Street, the Lariat Rail in Central Park (West 97th Street), the “School of Spirits Gate” at the Dwight School (89th Street and Columbus Avenue), and the fourteen Lariat Seat Loops at the 33rd Street station of the IRT subway line.

Currently, James is working on a variety of private and public projects in the tri-state area, in addition to teaching at the League’s Vytlacil Campus.  To learn more about James and his art, please see the video, Objects For Personal Ceremony by Fred Gilbert at www.JamesGarvey.net.

Grace Knowlton

"I began as a painter, and at a certain point I started to make my paintings three-dimensional. In the process, I discovered form and space--in short, I began making sculpture, but still with a strong interest in surface--line, color and texture.

"The elements we will deal with are form, space and surface; we will experiment with interplay and balance, using various materials of our choosing."

Grace Knowlton has traveled freely through various art forms, methods and materials. Her work includes photographs, drawings, paintings and sculpture made from both natural and synthetic materials. She was graduated from Smith College with an MA and BA in Art, and received an MA in Art and Education from Columbia University Teachers College. She has exhibited in numerous exhibitions, and her work is represented in many public collections including the Smith College Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Newark Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and others.

Ms. Knowlton is also a League instructor at the school's 57th Street location.

Mark Safan

"Abstraction can still tell us much about the world, ourselves, and painting itself. As one of many painterly idioms it has been the one of choice for many painters of the last century and remains so for many today. Through various approaches that participants will bring to the project, we will examine how and why abstraction best suits our expressive needs with a focus on the question of meaning itself. 

If we understand the language of abstraction we can be more precise in its usage."

Mark Safan studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the San Francisco Art Institute; and the Vancouver School of Art, Vancouver, British Columbia. 

G. L. Sussman

G. L. Sussman studied at the John Herron Art School; the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France; the Academy, Florence, Italy; and the Art Students League of New York, where he was awarded an Edward G. McDowell Travel Grant in 1973, as well as served as an apprentice to José de Creeft. At the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Mr. Sussman became sculptural technician in 1976, and later, dean of students.

In 1979, he became director of the Sculpture Center School in New York City. Under his guidance, the center became one of the most comprehensive sculpture facilities, establishing scholarship and intern fellowship programs for sculptors. From 1982 to 1984, he taught both undergraduate and graduate students at City College. He is currently president of Fog Hill and Company, a fine arts service organization.

Mr. Sussman has had many commissions and is included in many prominent collections, notably Yale University Scroll & Key; Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall; the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles; the Museum of the Bank of New York, Sunnyside Park, Irvington, N.Y.; Proctor & Gamble, Cincinnati, Ohio; GTG Group East; and USA Today Show, Washington, D.C.

He has exhibited widely at such venues as Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park, N.H.; Bethune Gallery SUNY at Buffalo; Colby Museum at Colby College, Maine; the Museum Rochefort-en-Terre, Brittany, France; the Sculpture Center Gallery, New York City; and Southern Vermont Art Center. He has been an artist-in-residence at Rochefort-en-Terre, Brittany, France, 1991; International School of Art, Umbria, Italy, 1993; and North College, Elgin, Scotland, 1999.

Mr. Sussman is a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society; a member of New York Artists Equity Association, Artists’ Fellowship, and Audubon Artists; and a life member of the Art Students League. He is listed in Who’s Who In American Art, and Who’s Who in the East. Mr. Sussman is the Director of the League’s Vytlacil Campus.

Hans Witschi

"I integrate ugliness, to make the world more beautiful."

 Painting has not only the potential of representing things around us we know. It opens doors to unknown worlds and to the visual thinking process itself. We work mostly from imagination and use certain methodes to evoke it, but we will train our eyes relentlessly on observation of the real world, because you can't see an elephant in a cloud, when you never saw one in reality.

Hans Witschi, born 1954, is a visual artist who studied painting in Zurich under Gustav Guldener in the 1970s. He moved to New York City in 1989 when he received the Studio Grant by the City of Zurich. Witschi”s works have been shown at the Shedhalle (Zurich), Kunsthalle Palazzo (Basel), Ursus Books (New York), Kunsthistorisches Museum Schloss Ambras (Innsbruck).

His work is in numerous collections including the Rockefeller University, the Graphic Collection of the National Library in Bern and the Mus"e d'art et d'histoire de la Ville de Neuchatel. He is the recipient of the Federal Visual Art Fellowship of Switzerland (1992).

The documentary "Witschi geht" from Paolo Poloni was shown at the Locarno Filmfestival 1992, the Filmfestival Montreal 1993 and diverse television stations throughout Europe and depicts besides the life of the artist Witschi's emigration to the US.

"Hans Witschi's paintings of human beings are incompatible with the familiar images which persecute us day and night. He presents no idyl, no mythical scenes, nor utopias; neither does he depict sexual obsessions, nor irruptions that veer off into Surrealism. Just those people twisted in space.

He paints nightmares, that which has been collectively repressed, left in the dark; that which had better not appear in the wealth of images of a brilliantly simulated world."