'Flyway: Birds in the Art of Suzanne Stryk' on display at Perspective Gallery
Flyway: Birds in the Art of Suzanne Stryk will be exhibited at the Virginia Tech Perspective Gallery Friday, Feb. 12 through Saturday, March 13.
This exhibit traces the artist Suzanne Stryk’s bird imagery in her conceptual nature paintings from 2000 through 2010. An opening reception will be held Friday, Feb. 12 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the gallery. The event and exhibit are free and open to the public.
The Perspective Gallery is located on the second floor Squires Student Center on the Virginia Tech campus. Perspective Gallery hours are: Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 5 p.m.; Friday, noon to 7 p.m.; and Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. The gallery is closed Sunday and Monday.
In her essay on the exhibit, Martha Allison, adjunct professor of art history in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech, wrote:
“An array of multi-colored feathers bursts from what is at once a cracked globe and an egg in Suzanne Stryk’s painting “Flyway.” Likewise, her artistic world abounds with a diversity of avian images. From detailed studies of a single egg to the evolutionary wonder of migration via the stars, this exhibition surveys the artist’s wide spectrum of bird imagery created over the last decade. … For an artist to excel in both the sciences and arts is a commendable rarity. This is certainly the case with Stryk, whose art imaginatively invokes the life and science underlying nature.”
In works that often include imagery such as chromosomes and double helixes, Stryk merges an old artist-naturalist's sensibility with a contemporary awareness of genetics. “My hope is that the work suggests questions, such as: How has our knowledge of genetics altered the perception of the natural world?; How do we reconcile personal reverence for life with scientific information?; and Does the mapping of the genome unravel mysteries or actually create more?” Stryk wrote. “Order, wildness, potential, reality, out there, in here -- all in my thoughts as the living world passes through eye, mind, and hand to make an image.”
Born in Chicago and currently residing in Southwest Virginia, Stryk has exhibited her work throughout the country, including at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Ga. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian and the Taubman Museum of Art. She is a 2007 recipient of a George Sugarman Foundation grant.
