Spotlight on Heidi Caswell Zander
Picture a nine year old striding to catch up to a pack of adults through, for her, shoulder high meadow grass; going through the summer light to someplace unknown to paint, with adults. That was the first group workshop, in 1967, one of many to follow over the next few decades. Â Cobalt and cerulean, the smell of horse glue as water hit paper. Marathon sessions of being by the shore and watching dozens of versions of the same place manifest on easels as the sun arced across the horizon.
After learning from Teralak and Schlemm and at Rhode Island School of Design, months of exploring Italy and years of exploring Europe followed. A buffet of Museum collections developed Zander’s personal style: a pinch of Sargent, a cup of German Expressionism, a gallon of energy and brushstrokes.
Blue is the best color, rich, close and distant, peaceful and exciting at the same time. Almost every painting is majoritively blue, and pulsates with the rhythm of stroke. Â Jewelry employs the same palette and rhythm. Same combinations and signature, different mediums and functionality.
Zander recently discovered that her Cape Ann connection began decades before her birth with Aunt Gertrude. Gertrude Stuven Stanwood painted and etched from her home base in Lanesville with her contemporaries Teresa Bernstein and Myerwitz. The ladies sipped elderberry wine at her house with Woodrow Wilson’s relative, carrying on her fathers trade as a Rockport shopkeeper. Ironically, one of Gertrude’s paintings was painted from the base of Zander’s Wharf Road driveway decades earlier, with a second painting on the back of the same painting board of the church in which Zander was married. Stomping the same foot steps!
In 2005 Zander opened Tidal Edge Gallery carrying on her father’s occupation as a Rockport business owner. For all the world, Cape Ann is home.
You can see more of Heidi’s work at The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck, 6 Wonson Street, East Gloucester during the Rocky Neck Holiday Art & Fine Crafts Festival
Saturdays and Sundays, Noon-4 PM
November 30 – December 29
http://www.rockyneckartcolony.org/winter.php
E.J. Lefavour
Good Morning Gloucester 