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STEVE LAPIN
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to the Jewish News
ive Jewish artists, each with a very different
approach, represent the diversity that visitors will
,
find this summer at the three art fairs about to
line the streets of Ann Arbor.
Barbara Sucherman's jewelry, Steve Lapin's sculptural wall
hangings, Susan Levi-Goerlich's scenes on fabric, Elizabeth
Lurie's porcelain forms and Al Lachman's prints are among
the work offered by a variety of Jewish artists.
The 40th annual Ann Arbor Art Fairs transform 26
city blocks July 21-24 and will welcome 1,100
artists and 500,000 visitors. Street perform-
ers provide entertainment, and children
and adults may participate in demon-
strations and free art activities.
The Ann Arbor Street Art Fair is
the smallest and most selective with
200 artists. The State Street Area
Art Fair features the work of 300
contemporary artisans. The Ann
Arbor Summer Art Fair, organized
by the Michigan Guild of Artists
and Artisans, showcases 600 artists
and is the most diverse.
Hours for the fairs are 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
Wednesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Saturday. The Ann Arbor Area Convention &
Visitors Bureau will extend its operating hours to
8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday-Friday and 9 a.m.-noon
Saturday to help visitors: The bureau, located on the north-
east corner of Huron and Ashley, will supply fair-goers with
maps and visitors guides.
For more information, call (800) 888-9487 or visit
www.annarbor.org .
In the meantime, meet five of the talented people whose
work soon will be shown and available for purchase.
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7/16
1999
82 Detroit Jewish News
Although Steve Lapin is coming to Michigan for the first time, he seems to
always have connected with the area. He loves cars, a passion reflected in his sculp-
tural wall hangings, which depict storytelling scenes.
One scene has a 1963 Corvette coming off the surface as if flying in the air. A
series on Cadillacs has the luxury models moving our of swimming pools and
going into rooms.
Not to be caught along a straight-and-narrow road, his narratives also have
taken him into the world of mythology and the domain of animals.
"I started out doing functional ware," explains the California-based artist. " n
1984, I was included in a Los Angeles show, 'Revolution, Evolution,
Continuation,' and decided to do something surreal and sculptural. I made a
house with people jumpina out, sold it and started doing more scenes."
Lapin, who works with ° high-fire porcelain, has a home studio. He studied at
the Arts and Crafts College in California and earned his master's degree at the
University of California at Los Angeles.
"I do commissions, have work at galleries and travel to shows,"
says Lapin, 50, who makes all his own dinnerware and has
done special projects for his family.
He made a political photo collage for his older son,
an attorney with strong political interests, and is
planning a similar project based on ancestral pho-
tos recently found and forwarded by a cousin.
"I had a huge family in Lithuania, and there
were some rabbis among them, Lapin says.
BARBARA SUCHERMAN
Barbara Sucherman has been featured at
the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair for the
past 20 years, and each time, she tries to
come up with a new jewelry concept. This
season the spotlight is on "The Treasures,"
a series that introduces small acrylic boxes
filled with colorful beads.
"I make earrings, pins, pendants and
bracelets," says Sucherman, who works out of
a studio in Illinois. "The Spertus Museum in
Chicago carries my jewelry and has suggested
that I take this concept and use it to design
mezuzahs, and that's a possibility."
When Sucherman was a student at Carnegie-Mellon
University and later at the Art Institute of Chicago, her inter-
est was in painting, drawing and printmaking. After graduation,
when she was thinking about making a living, she switched her atten-
tion to jewelry and essentially taught herself the skills. As business grew, she devel-
oped unconventional designs and added assistants to help craft them.
"I started out with very simple shapes — circles, squares and triangles — and
gradually my work became more complicated," says Sucherman, 49, whose jewel-
ry sells throughout the year at the Selo-Shevel Gallery in Ann Arbor, Zyzyk in
West Bloomfield and Emery's in Farmington Hills.
Sucherman, who takes her designs to about 15 art shows a year, likes color and
has added that to sterling silver by using fused glass and semi-precious stones.
"I like meeting the customers at the fair," says Sucherman, who is assisted at
her booth by a cousin. "Their comments have led me to make new designs. For
instance, someone's asking for red stones encouraged me to use them."