BUZZ Arts Guide Summer 2007  BUZZ Cover Artist Summer 2007 JACK SAVITSKY Untitled (Woman Portrait), oil on masonite, 4"x 5", circa 1970's courtesy of the Outsider Folk Art Gallery In the early 60’s, Jack Savitsky, Jr, a Pocono journalist, met Sterling Strausser and introduced Strausser to his father, a retired coal miner who had turned to drawing and painting. At a 1962 art fair in Stroudsburg’s Courthouse Square, Dorothy and Sterling Strausser met Hazelton native Justin McCarthy. Of McCarthy paintings scattered helter skelter on the lawn, Sterling said, “I looked and looked and then it occurred to me – if I could see these paintings hanging in a gallery, framed and lighted, I would want to collect them.” The Straussers became staunch advocates of the work of Savitsky and McCarthy. McCarthy’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and McCarthy and Savitsky’s work is in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum. A testament to their lasting friendship is Savitsky’s 1976 group portrait of the three artists in the Allentown Art Museum Collection. McCarthy’s work has been compared to German Expressionism. Strausser called McCarthy a “Naive Expressionist” and remarked that people often found it difficult to believe that “he was a self-taught naïve, because…some of his things look like Emil Nolde, some look like Milton Avery – people that he was not aware of at all. They look like Ernst Kirchner. Some of his watercolors look like DeMuth. This is all purely accidental.” Strausser added, “He said he was painting for the ages. He didn’t know that his work was quirky. He thought he was painting straight.” The life story of Savitsky and McCarthy are as colorful, vivid and uniquely American as the subject of their paintings; landscapes, historical scenes, celebrities and friends. Discover the paintings of Justin McCarthy and Jack Savitsky this summer at the GoggleWorks in Reading. The “Coal Country” exhibition at the Outsider Folk Art Gallery features Savitsky and other untrained artists from Pennsylvania, and a comprehensive retrospective of McCarthy’s work will be held at the Cohen Gallery, with a McCarthy symposium at noon on July 8 at the GoggleWorks…Buzz On! Christine Griffin, publisher Buzz Arts Guide, June 2007 Sources: www.petulloartcollection.org/the_collection/about_the_artists www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa77.htm http://library.shu.edu/gallery/SavitskyJ-bio.htm www.allentownartmuseum.org/teachers/coll_relate_musketeers.html grifbuzz@ptd.net P.O.Box 407 Shawnee On Delaware, PA 18356 570-242-1952 http://www.outsiderfolkart.com/exhibitions/future.htmlhttp://www.petulloartcollection.org/the_collection/about_the_artistshttp://www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa77.htmhttp://library.shu.edu/gallery/SavitskyJ-bio.htmhttp://www.allentownartmuseum.org/teachers/coll_relate_musketeers.htmlmailto:grifbuzz@ptd.netshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4shapeimage_2_link_5