Artists at Library Share Unusual Eye

The photos of Ray Germann and Janet Glazer are an unusual coupling. Germann has produced a series of black and white photos showing old cars or trucks literally abandoned and neglected, like the car he shot in Brodie, Calif.: a rusting but perhaps still dignified ruin in a field.

The North Shore Public Library will hold a reception Sunday, Feb. 6 for Germann and Glazer and potter C.C. Bookout.

Germann, who lives in Huntington Station and is part of the Art Forum that meets monthly at the library, describes himself as "a documentarian. I've made about 50 trips upstate to photograph small towns. I've walked around New York City photographing what's there, whatever moves me.

"I just happened to come upon each of them," Germann said of his abondoned car series. "While on my way to photographing other things. I see each of these vehicles as a distinct personality, a reminder of another era."

Manhattanite Janet Glazer's own series of cars is perhaps the flip side of Germann's work. A former dancer who said she brings "the movement of the lines of the body" into her photographs, had been commissioned to take photos of cars for an automotive dealer, but she found herself stymied, artistically.

That changed when she went to a show in Connecticut and saw a collection of Packards, a luxury car from the Gatsby era.

"When I saw those cars I connected them to works of art," she said. "To me they're like sculpture."

Glazer has been shown at many New York galleries and has won the St. Gaudins Medal for her drawings. Germann's work is owned by the Museum of the City of New York and the Bibliotheque Nationale of France.

Riverhead's C.C. Bookout had originally studied psychology, intending to go into social work beforevshe took up pottery in New York City. Her and her husband moved to Islip, then Riverhead, where, in 1971 she set up a studio, first in a shed, then an old barn, and bought a kiln.

She fired her works in the 36-cubic foot kiln. She finds special satisfaction in "markings created by the flow of the flames on her pottery."

She had to put aside her kiln after it caused a small fire and the fire department advised her not to use it again.

"Now I take my pottery to the Clay Art Guild in Water Mill to be fired," she said.
"Everything in this exhibit is wood fired. The pieces have to be fired for four days and cooled for two weeks. So it's a long process."

Bookout's work is also currently on display at the Winter Harbor Gallery in Greenport.  She had been widely exhibited, such as at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, Suffolk Community College and Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, where she earned a Masters in Sculpture.

The library's reception is from 2:30 p.m.-4 p.m.