Collages & Rockheads

Kerry Schuss Gallery presents Collages & Rockheads, a new exhibition of works by Birdie Lusch (1903–1988). A self-taught artist from Columbus, Ohio, Lusch's collages and sculptures exude a timeless inventiveness. A factory worker for much of her life, Lusch embarked on making art as a teenager, creating albums filled with drawings, collages, and verse, often hearkening back to the rural imagery of her childhood. Over the years, the collaged albums featured infinite variations on her signature motif—a vase of flowers—and examples from an album from May - June 1973 are on view in this exhibition. Constructed from printed images, mostly sourced from the Sunday magazine section of the Columbus Dispatch, Lusch reimagined humble materials as vivid arrangements. A lesser-known facet of Lusch’s oeuvre are her idiosyncratic "Rockhead" sculptures, anthropomorphic forms arranged from special rocks and fossils exhibited here for the first time. These works, made by a serious rock collector, are equally playful and monumental in their rudimentary forms. Kerry Schuss first became acquainted with Birdie Lusch in the mid 1970’s. Together with Mark Davis, Schuss began to organize exhibitions for her work, including bringing her to New York City in 1981 for a solo presentation. Since founding his gallery in 1998, Schuss has staged five solo exhibitions of Lusch’s work. In 2014, Karma published a facsimile of Lusch’s album of 1973 collages. Birdie Lusch is in the permanent collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art and her archive resides at Ohio State University. In 2022, the Paris Review published a portfolio of fourteen of her collages in their spring issue. Years after her passing, Birdie Lusch's work remains captivating, distinctly poised between domestic craft, modernist experimentation, and idiosyncratic surrealism.

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73 Leonard St, New York, NY 10013

New York, NY