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William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) is considered one of the most prolific American Impressionists of the late nineteenth century. Born in Nineveh, Indiana, as the son of an aspiring entrepreneur, Chase experienced a very nomadic childhood. Upon his family’s move to Indianapolis, he began to experiment with painting and drawing and developed a love for the artistic practice. After apprenticing with local artists Barton S. Hays (1826-1914) and Jacob Cox (1810-1892), Chase moved to New York City, and in 1869, enrolled at the New York Academy of Design. Read More

Ruth Hunie Randall (1896-1983) was born in Dayton, Ohio and grew up just outside of Cleveland. She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1919 with a degree in design and completed a certificate in Art Education in 1921. Randall moved to Syracuse in the early 1920s and began taking classes at Syracuse University’s School of Art, where she studied ceramics in depth for the first time. She also took courses at Alfred University and, in 1932, Randall traveled to study ceramics in Vienna, Austria, at the urging of her friend Thelma Frazier Winter. Read More

Thelma Frazier Winter (1903-1977) began exploring art at a young age and, in her own words, “did hardly anything else so that an art career seemed to be inevitable.” In 1929, she graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art, where Julius Mihalik, an artist and teacher who traveled and taught in Vienna before arriving in Cleveland, first introduced her to ceramics. While a student, Winter also worked as a designer at Cowan Pottery alongside several important Cleveland-based ceramists, including Waylande Gregory, Viktor Schreckengost, Edris Eckhardt, and Edward Winter (who she married in 1939). Read More

Dorothy Riester (1916-2017) was born in Emsworth, Pennsylvania and attended the College of William and Mary as well as Carnegie Mellon University as an undergraduate, and completed some graduate work in ceramics at the University of Pittsburgh before obtaining her Masters of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University in Sculpture and Design. Riester married her husband Robert in 1938, after they both graduated from college, and the couple moved to Syracuse not long after. Read More

On November 30, 1932, the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts (which merged with the Everson Museum of Art in 1959) opened its first barter exhibition, Art for Bart’s Sake, in an effort to demonstrate a commitment to local artists. Titled using a play on the famous French slogan “l’art pour l’art,” or “art for art’s sake,” which emerged as a response to debates about the role and value of art in daily life, the exhibition featured artwork by members of the Associated Artists of Syracuse that museum visitors could acquire by bartering household items. Read More