Fleischmann’s Sets the Scene for “Painted Ladies” by Alan Powell and Mike Suchorsky

By Patricia Wadsley

FLEISCHMANNS — Starting October 31, after the sun sets  on Thursdays through Saturdays throughout the autumn, head to Main Street  in Fleischmann’s to see a large scale public video art installation called  “Painted Ladies” and created by artist Alan Powell in collaboration with musician Mike Suchorsky. 

    A longtime Fleischmann’s resident, Powell is well-known in the Catskills art scene. His career spans painting,  pioneering video art and nature and urban photography.    His work has been shown in the Philadelphia Museum of Art,  The Museum of the Moving Image in New York and the Musée D’Art Moderne in Paris and in Fleischmann’s   own Arts Inn.  

  Suchorsky, an Andes resident, is a highly sought jazz drummer and composer  whose credits include studio and live performance with Lou Reed, Don Cherry, and French jazz legend Jacques Higelin.   For “Painted Ladies,”  a fast moving assemblage of video imagery projected onto Powell’s own home, Powell and Suchorsky are  the  perfect collaborators.

    Powell’s video imagery takes you where few have gone:  through deep sea and local stream underwater environments paced and shaped by Suchorsky’s trancelike rhythms,  to brightly colored graffiti  gathered from around the world which  pulsates to Suchorsky’s beat.  Waterfalls rush from top floor windows. A female  fire dancer juggles flames three stories tall.  Super-sized  insects take over the facade of the building.  Abstract images dance across the surface morphing into different shapes and sizes, as brilliantly colored freight trains thunder past underneath.  The movement of the video imagery is propelled by Suchorsky’s compositions. 

   The two intend music to be a backdrop for the narrative piece, The making of Peace Bridge,”  featuring residents of Fleischmann’s.  This piece documents the creation of this well-loved structure- created from tiny mosaics upon which containing memories and memorabilia of Fleischmann’s life.  Other images are produced by Suchorsky’s  rhythms alone-  ranging from East Indian rhythms, American and European jazz to rock;  and translated into abstract imagery.  Suchorsky’s percussive sound is produced not only by traditional drum kits, but by home made instruments created from agricultural equipment such as chicken feeders. 

   “I named the installation  “Painted Ladies” to reference these grand old Victorian homes, many of which are in Fleischmann’s, which have traditionally been painted in vivid colors” says Powell.  Although Powell’s home is white, he breaks with tradition by painting his home with light, color and image.    

   If there is one overriding theme which Powell and Suchorsky return to it’s the dominance of nature.  Powell points to his supersized insects crawling up to the rafters, or  the  waterfalls in the Catskills flooding from the windows. “”First of all, I like to create illusions,” says Powell.  “But there is a bit of the message of nature winning out in the end.”  

     Powell’s connection to the natural world is part of his heritage.  “My great- grandfather  Frederick Meyer was first an artist, then a Baptist minister who taught at Yale Divinity School and believed it to be a religious duty to take care of the earth,” says Powell.   His grandfather planted  9000 trees in upstate New York and Powell grew up on his tree farm.“

    Powell himself  trained as a painter at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 70s Powell  but was soon drawn to videography to see how images function in space.  He was then also strongly drawn to videography’s  emphasis on collaboration.      

   “In the art world, there was —and still is  a focus on the one great man, the one great artist,” but it doesn’t really work that way.” Says Powell.  “Art is a collaboration,.  The art administrators do some of the heavy lifting. The studio workers are responsible for much of the production.  The idea of the solo artist is largely a myth,  On a political and artistic level I fought to debunk that myth.” 

    Part of that debunking is his collaboration with Suchorsky. 

    In 2011, after the death of his wife  and collaborator Connie Colemen, Powell took up residence in the Catskills.  “I had friends in Margaretville. “ he says. “I was looking for a new start.   In Fleischmann’s and the surrounding communities I saw nature and artistic communities.   It is what I needed.” 

    When Powell  arrived, Suchorsky had already been here for years.  He’d lived around the world and tired of life on the road.  “I came up to live here  36 years  ago.” He says.   “I found a peaceful piece  of property in Andes, and started planting and carving out trails, and creating my own world.”  Today— still a figure on the international  music scene,  Suchorsky  also writes about Catskills’ rural life for the Andes Gazette.  

    “For years, people told me I had to meet Mike.,” says Powell.   “But it was only four years ago that we  met at Fleischmann’s Arts Inn where Mike was playing.  When I finally saw Mike play and the way he  works I knew he would be a great collaborator.”  He is sensitive to the needs of the other musicians, and he is sensitive to the images.”  Soon after  that first meeting,  the two developed a working relationship.

    “It’s a true collaboration,” says Powell, “I could not do this without Mike’s music.”       

     They both feel that “Painted Ladies” is a way to give back to the community—a community that has welcomed and nourished them. 

    “It’s  art that’s accessible to all,” says Powell,.  “In an open art space, people are free to interpret it any way they want.  No restrictions.  Of course, I’d like to see what community reaction is, but anyone is  free to ignore it too.”

   “Painted ladies” will be hard to ignore.