Besl family shares art heritage at SUNY Oswego Metro Center
Published
June 3, 2016
Creating and teaching art runs in the Besl family, and parents and daughter display that vividly in the free public “Shared Heritage: A Collaborative Exhibition” through Aug. 19 at SUNY Oswego Metro Center’s branch of Tyler Art Gallery on Clinton Square.
All SUNY Oswego degree holders, retired Canastota School District teachers Thomas and Patricia Besl and their daughter Amanda, a teacher at Buffalo’s Nichols School, will display their work side by side in SUNY Oswego Metro Center’s exhibition space in the Atrium building.
Thomas’ assemblages and photographs evoke secrets of a time long past, according to Amy Bartell, assistant director of Tyler Art Gallery. Pat’s heirloom botanicals in graphite on distressed papers suggest the passage of time and the fragility of ecosystems. Amanda’s oils and graphite drawings with swirling locks, opulent flowers and Baroque objects create a mysterious foreboding, Bartell said.
Thomas and Patricia Besl each received a bachelor’s degree in art education at SUNY College at Buffalo, completing their graduate work at SUNY Oswego. They retired after 34 years of teaching, and now create artwork in their home studios on the north shore of Oneida Lake.
Amanda Besl received a bachelor of fine arts degree at SUNY Oswego and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Represented by Buffalo’s BT&C Gallery, she lives in Buffalo with husband Kurt Besl-Treeby.
SUNY Oswego Metro Center is open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Evening and weekend hours vary; call 315-399-4100 for times. Patrons with disabilities needing assistance to attend are asked to call in advance. For more information on this and other Tyler Art Gallery exhibitions, call the college’s art department at 315-312-2112.
PHOTO CAPTION 1: Shared heritage—Artist Amanda Besl, a teacher at Nichols School in Buffalo, created the oil-on-wood “Souvenir de la malmaison,” among works she is displaying along with those of her art teacher parents through Aug. 19 at SUNY Oswego Metro Center in the Atrium building on Syracuse’s Clinton Square.
PHOTO CAPTION 2: Mother’s art—Patricia Besl’s artwork includes the mixed media “Euphorbia Splendins,” which joins the “Shared Heritage: A Collaborative Exhibition” through Aug. 19 at SUNY Oswego Metro Center’s branch of Tyler Art Gallery in the Atrium building on Clinton Square, along with works of her artist husband, Thomas, and daughter, Amanda Besl.
PHOTO CAPTION 3: Father’s art—“Almanac,” a mixed-media work by retired art teacher Thomas Besl, joins creations of his wife and daughter, both also art teachers by training, in “Shared Heritage: A Collaborative Exhibition” through Aug. 19 at SUNY Oswego Metro Center in the Atrium building on Syracuse’s Clinton Square.