Robert Sowers
Robert Sowers was an American painter, photographer, stained glass artist, and seminal figure in the re-emergence of stained glass as an architectural art in the United States. His architectural glass commissions cover some 20 years from St George's Episcopal Church, Durham, New Hampshire to Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, New York and the blue cross window for Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception . In November 1953 he participated in the New Talent Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He designed the vast American Airlines terminal glass facade at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1958–59. It was demolished in 2008 to allow for an reorganization and expansion of their terminal.
In addition to his glass commissions he wrote multiple magazine articles and published four books on stained glass, art, and architecture. He was an exceptional photographer documenting his own as well as other artist's glass work and spent many hours walking the streets and parks of Manhattan and Brooklyn with camera in hand. A posthumous volume of his B/W photographs was published in 1990. In 1979 he began a series of black and white paintings that eventually transitioned into color. These were based on his 35mm slides of derelict industrial landscapes, city parks, and botanical gardens of New York City and Tanglewood in the Berkshires. He sold his first painting through OK Harris Gallery, and reviewed the first printing of his fourth book almost simultaneously with his untimely death in March 1990. His archives are located at the Rakow Research Library, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.
Biography
Early life
Robert Sowers was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1923. His family moved to Florida in 1932 because his father Ray Sowers, a respected educator, was offered a position in the state. His high school art teacher, Max Bernd-Cohen, encouraged his creativity, was a profound influence, and became a lifelong friend.While serving in the Army at the end of World War II, Sowers was able to study art at Biarritz American University, Biarritz, France. On returning to the US he enrolled at the New School for Social Research, studied with the painter Stuart Davis, encountered the theories of Rudolf Arnheim, and graduated with a BA in 1948. In 1949 he received his MA from Columbia University. A Fulbright Award for the study of Medieval Stained Glass in the United Kingdom enabled him to attend the Central School of Arts & Crafts in London from 1950 to 1953. William Johnstone was the Principal and it was here that he completed special studies in stained glass with John Baker. Returning to Manhattan he and his wife, Terry Obermayr, at first lived in a large loft on the Lower East Side and subsequently moved to a corner brownstone on Congress Street, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, NY.
Career
Sowers began to pursue stained glass commissions though it was an uphill battle to get the attention of Modernist architects of that time. Architects whose buildings he did work on included Percival Goodman, Fritz Nathan, Eero Saarinen, Kahn & Jacobs, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Roger Ranuio, W. Brooke Fleck, Carter & Woodruff, Stanley Prowler, Henry Dreyfuss, Chloetheil Smith, William Garwood, and Philip Ives. In the execution of projects he utilized traditional painted and leaded glass as well as more experimental processes of lamination with epoxy resins and Dalle de verre. This period of commissioned work as an independent artist consisted of inevitable ups and downs and it was during one of these bleak periods that he decided to reconsider autonomous stained glass panels independent of an architectural setting. In 1971 he was Artist-in-Residence at Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. This marked the beginning of a period of small panel making including the incorporation of various cast glass shapes salvaged from the closing sale of Leo Popper's glass warehouse in lower Manhattan, and culminating in a series of panels exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts of the American Craft Council in 1975. For this panel series the design / cartoon was executed as a "painting" showing the details of the glass in full color. The panel and the cartoon make a pair. A number of these design/paintings are now located in the Rakow Research Library. In addition to the Fulbright Award, he also received the Silver Medal from the Architectural League in 1955 and 1962, a Tiffany Award in 1956, and a Certificate of Merit from the Municipal Art Society in 1961.The destruction in post-war Germany created opportunities for stained glass installations in the reconstruction of religious and secular buildings and the emergence of such very different glass artists as Georg Meistermann, Maria Katsgrau, Ludwig Schaffrath, Johannes Schreiter, Wilhelm Buschulte, Jochem Poensgen, and Joachim Klos. Sowers developed personal relationships and enduring friendships with a number of them and, most importantly, brought awareness of their work to a younger generation of glass artists and designers around the world. In America these included David Wilson, Kenneth von Roenn, Peter Mollica, Ed Carpenter, and Robert Kehlmann. Sowers also stressed that artists in Germany operated as independent designers associating with the established studios as fabricators. He was antithetical to the prevalent system in the United States where the studios retained their own in-house designers to produce essentially commercial stained glass windows. His dissemination of this departure from the norm and his encouragement of younger individual artists was one of his great contributions. It was a stimulating period for the reemergence of stained glass in the 1960s and 1970s as a truly architectural art while simultaneously opening up experimentation in other forms of glass art.
Work
American Airlines Terminal
The American Airlines project was Sowers' most important commission. Completed in 1960, it was an iconic glass mural 317' long by 23' high covering the entire facade of the building designed by Kahn & Jacobs for what was then Idlewild Airport in Queens, New York - renamed after the Kennedy assassination to John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was composed partially of a German opaque glass that was quite unusual, consisting of both transparent blues and reds on a solid white base. The design was also unusual in that it was seen in its entirety from the exterior as a form of mosaic. Traditionally architectural stained glass was viewed, and therefore designed the other way around, from the inside looking out. Additionally, once inside the terminal it would never be experienced as a whole. Historically early church and cathedral stained glass walls read as dark surfaces, thus the need to utilize dense opaque glass. Additionally, the system was single glazed which meant that the colors were seen to maximum effect as travelers approached the terminal. The idea of developing a reversible image was picked up and pursued by the architect, Percival Goodman, whose projects included many Synagogues. He felt that as a number of services were conducted at nighttime any stained glass should work in some way under reverse conditions. Sowers completed several Synagogue projects for Goodman.The terminal project was fabricated and installed by the Rambusch Decorating Company in New York, a long established commercial studio where he executed a considerable number of commissions. In the early 1980s, because of frame and moisture issues together with heating and cooling problems inside the building, Rohlf's Stained & Leaded Glass Studio, Mount Vernon, New York was retained to superimpose aluminum framing and tempered glass on the exterior of the existing frame. This resolved those problems but did not improve the outside appearance due to increased surface reflection coming off the new layer of glass. By 2006 when American Airlines was expanding and rebuilding their terminal it was determined that the mural was too big to save. Notice was given for dismantling, removal, and possible destruction. Initial reuse suggestions included making key chains for airline employees but not carried out. This generated a futile movement to preserve it. A group, Save America's Window, was formed to try to retain it as a whole, a daunting and hugely expensive proposition. A hasty email exchange between glass artists who were influenced and indebted to Sowers, glass studios and enthusiasts, Judi Jordan his second wife, and Eileen Vaquilar Clifford a flight attendant for American who had great affection for the artwork, explored all possibilities. These included acquisition by various Museums and Institutions but ultimately there were no viable options, with one minor exception whereby the Airline donated 8 sections to the Madison Museum of Fine Art, Madison, Wisconsin. It was dismantled as salvage by Good Olde Things / Good Olde Glass with individual sections to be sold as mementos.