Join us Tuesday, 3 September at 10:30AM EDT for a conversation with:
Dr. Geoffrey Dunn, Pucker Gallery Artist
Samuel Bak, Pucker Gallery Artist
Mara Williams, Brattleboro Museum Curator Emerita
Caroline Staller, Gallery Associate
Bernard Pucker, Gallery Director
This event will be an opportunity to explore Dunn's personal journey into the world around him and to better understand his relationship to nature. His plein air works retain the freshness and vitality of having just discovered each scene as it exists in the world.
The exhibition A World to Itself will be on view at Pucker Gallery from 7 September through 13 October 2024.
About our panelists:
Geoffrey Dunn MD, FACS, is an Emeritus member of the Department of Surgery of UPMC Hamot, former Medical Director of the Palliative Care Consultation Service there, and has been a visiting professor in India, Great Britain, Canada, China, and Norway. Painting has been an important activity in Dunn’s life ever since it was recommended it to him at age 13 by his mother when he was confined to quarters for misbehavior at school. Upon graduation from high school, he had a one person show of his work, earning him the school prize in fine arts. He also received the school’s prize for best historical essay in which he chronicled the development of American landscape painting during the nineteenth century. In college, Dunn majored in religion and minored in fine arts, studying with the Dutch painter Charles Stegeman. Professor Stegeman first suggested to Dunn a career in medicine: “you are a very competent painter and do fabulous work, but I believe your heart is elsewhere. I think you should be a doctor.” Dunn continued to study privately with Andrew Sanders, then after a long hiatus resumed painting during trips to the Georgian Bay region of Ontario, where he was strongly influenced by the Canadian school The Group of Seven. During the late 1990s Dunn recognized a deeper and more spiritual purpose to painting through the inspiration and counsel of Brother Thomas Bezanson. At that time plein air painting had increasingly become the counterpoint and catharsis for Dunn’s career in hospice and palliative care and the substance of much of his professional writing and lecturing. Dunn has had solo exhibitions at Glass Growers Gallery and the Erie Insurance Group’s gallery and exhibited at the Mercyhurst faculty exhibit and the Erie Art Museum Spring Show. Dr. Dunn is a member of the Northwest Pennsylvania Artists Association and in 2012, he was accepted as a non-resident artist member of the Salmagundi Art Club in New York.
Samuel Bak was born on August 12, 1933 in Vilna, Poland at a crucial moment in modern history. From 1940 to 1944, Vilna was under Soviet, then German occupation. While he and his mother survived, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis. At the end of the war, he fled with his mother to the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp, where he enrolled in painting lessons at the Blocherer School in Munich. In 1948, they immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem and completed his mandatory service in the Israeli army. In 1956, he went to Paris to continue his education at the École des Beaux Arts. In 1959, he moved to Rome where his first exhibition of abstract paintings was met with considerable success. In 1961, he was invited to exhibit at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, followed by solo exhibitions at the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Museums in 1963. It was after these exhibitions that a major change in his art occurred. There was a distinct shift from abstraction to a metaphysical figurative means of expression. Ultimately, this transformation crystallized into his present pictorial language. Bak has exhibited extensively in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. He has been the subject of articles, scholarly works, and over twenty books, most notably a 400-page monograph entitled Between Worlds. This year his biography entitled Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak was published. A 2020 exhibition at University of Nebraska Omaha led to the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, which opened Phase One at UNO earlier this year. Phase Two envisions a brand new, state-of-the-art, free-standing facility to house over 500 works donated by Bak.
Mara Williams assumed Emerita status in 2021, after curating exhibits at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center for thirty-three years. Her area of expertise is modern and contemporary art. As a partner in Arts Bridge LLC, Williams leads exhibition teams for institutions developing new large-scale museum projects. She holds an A.B. in theatre from Boston College; an MFA in museology from Syracuse University and has completed doctoral course work and passed comprehensives in comparative arts at New York University. She is Chair of the Wolf Kahn Foundation. She has served as chair of the Vermont Arts Council and as a board member of the New England Museum Association, as well as three terms on the Senate Curatorial Advisory Committee for the U.S. Capitol.
Caroline Staller is a ceramic sculptor and educator. She attended New Mexico State University in 2011 and graduated in 2015 with degrees in Fine Art and Biology with a Biochemistry minor. She completed her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Missouri in 2021 where she studied under ceramicists Bede Clarke and Joseph Pintz. Her small-scale tableaus and carvings of horses are peaceful and reflective with a focus on the beauty she sees in ‘simple’ objects both made by hand and found, which is reminiscent of her childhood exploring the desert on horse-back and finding unique objects aged by the harsh elements. She has taught ceramic sculpture at Harvard Ceramics where she encouraged students to focus on a close conversation with clay through color, texture, and form. Caroline currently works at her home studio as well as Pucker Gallery.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinARTs,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.