Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Gallery Representation for Susan



(Entrance to the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC. Click to enlarge)

As most of you know, Susan left for Austria last Wednesday to attend an embroidery workshop with her Swedish friends at Sara Lechner's farmhouse north of Vienna. Details of her adventures will be posted on her blogs when she returns on Sept. 28. Approximately 30 minutes before I took her to the airport, she received a phone call from Karen Kennedy at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC. Susan had been trying to obtain gallery representation with this prestigious fine craft art gallery adjacent to the Grove Park Inn for some time. She had sent up two pieces (a small In Box and an Elements of Architecture example) several weeks ago and was hoping to receive favorable reviews of her work. A promise of serious consideration and representation around November was mentioned. These pieces were not hung in the gallery but were evidently placed outside Ms. Kennedy's office and stirred quite a lot of interest. Needless to say that when she called and asked for more work, Susan was beyond excited! However, they did not want to wait until October, the earliest time Susan could personally deliver pieces to the gallery, so therefore, I delivered a car-load of wonderful images to the gallery on Friday for their perusal. I had not been to this area since our Easter, 1997 visit to the Grove Park Inn with Henry, Linda, Aunt Janet, and the boys. The gallery is visually stunning with fine furniture, glassware, pottery, textiles, etc. Ms Kennedy took 3 large In Box pieces, 6 Elements of Architecture, and 4 smaller In Box pieces. A large In Box sold while I was there to a couple from Oregon who came back after learning that more pieces were being delivered. Mary and Gordon Langston, our friends and long-time framing customers (they own a large piece of Susan's work) were staying at the Inn on Saturday. Mary had no idea that Susan had pieces in the gallery and called me with great excitement when she saw their hanging location. So Susan now has proper gallery representation and is not allowed to show her work anywhere else in the Asheville area!! Yea!! Susan doesn't know this, but we will be going up in Mid Oct. during the Southern Highlands Craft show so she can meet everyone associated with the gallery. Below are some pictures of the gallery.



A view of the Upstairs portion of the gallery with fine hand-crafted furniture (click to enlarge)



Another view of the upstairs with beautiful quilts and furniture. Susan's pieces will probably hand in this upstairs area. (click to enlarge)



A view of a small portion of the downstairs area of the gallery. I purchased a new coffee mug created by Robert Crystal and a cool glass ornament for our wrought-iron Christmas tree. (click to enlarge)

3 comments:

Wanda said...

Hi Steve! Great post! And great news! The gallery is awesome. Reinhard said that the entranceway looked like it came right from his "dream home"...if we ever have one. This is a step in an exciting way forward. Susan will be thrilled I'm sure to go! I'm meeting her tomorrow at the airport. I'm very excited!

Susan Lenz said...

Hi!
This is EXCITING! I've returned to Birmingham early because the flight to Munich was cancelled. The airline was able to get me back more quickly on a Swiss Air flight through Zurick. The later flight to Munich was already full...so, unfortunately, I didn't get to visit Wanda at the airport as planned! This blog post and images are great! I'm super excited about the trip to Asheville in October!
Love
Susan

Linda of the Lake said...

Love your pictures, Steve.