A studio jeweler who makes Vero Beach her home base, Susan Gancher was at her booth when this year’s Under the Oaks Fine Arts and Crafts Show at Riverside Park was prematurely shut down two Friday’s ago, the first day of what should have been a three-day event.
The show, a major fundraiser for the Vero Beach Art Club, was deemed unsafe for the spread of the coronavirus due to the popularity of the event, which has been packing the park with artists and art lovers from all over for almost seven decades.
Gancher, whose silver, gold and gemstone jewelry has been a fair favorite for 20 years, says she wasn’t surprised – nor was she particularly put out by the compulsory closure.
“The number of people that came that first day was about half of what I usually see. It was sparse. People were already self-isolating, not going out into crowds. Common sense told a lot of people something they didn’t need to hear twice,” she says.
Gancher’s loss of income was offset by a prize awarded by the fair’s three judges, out-of-town art professionals engaged by the club to award cash prizes to artists whose work the judges deem exceptional.
Gancher won the Ron Miller Award, a distinction set aside for an exhibitor who is also a Vero Beach Art Club member. It honors, in the words of the award, a “Friend, Artist, Volunteer” of the club, while also recognizing that member’s “Excellence in Art.”
“So we’re closing down, and Alicia Quinn (this year’s Under the Oaks co-chair) comes riding up in her golf cart. She says, ‘Susan, you won the Ron Miller Award.’”
The prize came with a $100 check, but for Gancher, it wasn’t about the money.
“The part that touched me most was being called a friend; that just touched me to the core,” she says.
As an artist who makes her living selling her work, Gancher admits to thinking about her finances in the wake of the show’s closure. Fortunately, she has otherwise had a good season for sales and doesn’t have to worry about money for the time being.
During her participation in 50 years’ worth of outdoor shows, Gancher has experienced other shutdowns.
“Weather is a big one. We’ve had shows canceled for weather at a moment’s notice, the same way this one was canceled. So it wasn’t a new experience for me.”
Gancher reckons that her very first show was in Sausalito, California, where her “booth” was a portable card table. It was the mid-1960s and Gancher was selling her work via retail shops as well as shows.
“In the shows you own more of your direction, you have more control. The shops would pick what they wanted from you and buy it for resale. I always went in with work premade and offered to sell it to them. I would repeat styles and designs that sold,” she explains.
The stores did not always purchase; some took work on consignment.
Says Gancher, “You can only buy my work through me now.”
That is, through a local show like Under the Oaks, or by appointment in Gancher’s studio, a room in her house that doubles as workspace and display area. Her bench, with materials and tools within easy reach, dominates the space.
“I’m home, I’m content. This is a lovely place for me,” says Gancher, who moved to Vero in 1998.
Her cozy house, tucked away in South Vero at the end of a cul de sac, features a yard full of decorative plants as well as a small vegetable garden. The backyard is a deck that overlooks a tree-lined pond.
Gancher was born in Connecticut, and while she still had family there, the state was her “return to” place. In addition to Florida and California, Gancher has lived in New York City, Boston, New Mexico and Hawaii.
It was in New York City’s Greenwich Village that she began learning her craft from an Austrian-born studio jeweler named Conrad Gersuny.
“I was going to NYU; I had an apartment in New York City at age 19. I spent so much time in Conrad’s shop that one day he said, ‘You’re not going to sit around here doing nothing. I’m putting you to work.’ He started me doing very, very simple soldering – over and over and over again,” says Gancher.
“Soldering, which I really am good at, allows you to produce art. There are definitely techniques to soldering that make you better. You get it, or you don’t get it, and I got good at it.”
Gancher explains that technique alone is not an end, but a means. “All the techniques you learn allow art to come through you.”
Gancher picks up one of her floral neckpieces as an example of her art. Crafted of silver with gold accents, the piece features linked floral sprigs designed to encircle the wearer’s neck like a garland. Each leafy stem sports one large flower with two smaller flowers on either side of it; no two of the sprays are exactly the same. The flowers’ centers sparkle with bezel-set blue topaz of different sizes and values; pale sky blue, Swiss blue, deep London blue. Small gold balls further accent the buds and a few of the smaller flowers.
“I try to keep the eye moving and delighted,” she says.
The box clasp at the back of the neckpiece reiterates the silver, blue and gold theme; the clasp’s flat top displays three tiny blue topaz cabochons with three gold balls set between them.
That touch hearkens back to her early apprenticeship with another Greenwich Village studio jeweler, Bill Tendler.
“Bill was a really good technician. He’s the one who said, ‘When you do your clasp, even if no one sees it, you follow through with your design, because that’s important.’ I took that to heart.”
Gancher says that throughout the years she has learned from many artists, and not just lessons about technique.
“Making connections with fellow artists helps your own work, absolutely. It doesn’t help your sales, but it helps you find your own direction. If you do your best work, sales will come. I don’t focus on sales, I focus on doing my best work.”
This, notes Gancher, has been key to her artistic journey. It has been a proud and self-sufficient one.
“I’m an American treasure – a woman who raised her children as a single mom with her art. And we lived comfortably and well, and dressed in decent clothing, and my cars ran.”
Gancher reiterates the importance of having a wide circle of artist friends.
“It doesn’t have to be a jeweler. Any artist – we all work the same way. If you start breaking it down, inspiration generally travels the same road. Our work time generally is the same, we understand each other’s lifestyle.”
That is especially true when the road gets bumpy, or when life throws you a left hook, says Gancher.
“You roll with the punches. If you don’t learn to roll with the punches in life, forget art!”
