Richard Gessner
Title: Gessner’s Mother, 1936.
Size: 18” x 24”
Media: Colored Pencil.
Date: 2012
(NFS)
Jeffersonville, Vermont.
Title/Statement: “The Season Sardine Goddess breaks free of her brand name straitjacket, replenishing the
oceans with uncanned fish”
Size: 11” x 17”
Media: color pencil, sharpie, pilot pen
Date: 2012
Price: $ 75.00 or 50 hallowed cans of Season Sardines
Artist Statement
Left to right, Gessner’s Mother Patricia age 9. Half uncle Robert age 3 months, and Grandmother Alice age
24.
My mother was born into rural poverty, and grew up fatherless during The Great Depression. She lived without
plumbing or electricity, and worked in paper box factories as a girl. She never went to the dentist, or had a
medical checkup. Often she went hungry.
I remember the fear she instilled in me as a child, when she told me she didn’t have enough to eat, as my own
childhood was far more privileged compared to hers.
This portrait was done in sober remembrance of the hardship she endured, the unfortunate circumstances of her
birth, and her eventual transcendence of a New England mill town.
Richard Gessner 2012
Richard Gessner P.O. box 661 Montclair, N.J. 07042 862-202-6322 Morgessner@aol.com www.gessnersgallery.com
Publication credits
2012 Seinundwerden Unnatural World issue "The Conduit" "Arbitration, At Goo"
2011 " The CONDUIT & other Visionary Sardonic Tales of Morphing Ludic Whimsy" DVD recording
2011 Seinundwerden Wunderkammer issue "The Embezzler"
2011 Seinundwerden Metropolis issue -"The Ball"
2000
580 Split (story) "The Hermit"
1998
Happy - (story) "The Sleepwalker
1997
java snob review two drawings
The pannus index surrealist paradigm (stories) "The Zoo-brary" "The funeral service" &
"The parallel between the cake and the tail"
1996
Raw Vision - (drawing) "Man with Baby Mice"
1993
Air Fish - (stories) "The Zoo-brary " & "The olfactory inversion"
1991
Bomb shelter props (book of writings & drawings) "Excerpts from the diary of
a neanderthal dilettante & The man in the couch"
1991
Another Chicago magazine (story) "The hermit"
1988
Another chicago magazine (poem) "The battery song"
Lost and found times (story) "The pelican's tonsils" & drawing
The fiction review (story) "Caviar"
Rampike subterfuge issue (story & drawing) "The ink device"
Rampike phenomenology issue (story & collage) " The spam of vegas-roit"
1987
Coe Review (story) " Excerpts from the diary of a neanderthal dilettante"
1987
Lost and found times (story) "White fuzz"
Ice river (story) "The funeral service"
Furious fictions (story) "status"
1986
Rampike food issue (story & drawing) "The man in the couch"
1985
Rampike Propaganda issue (story & drawings) "The ball"
1979
Aieee 7/8 (story) "vanity"
Exhibits & performances
2012 Hamilton Street Gallery 'Sea Life' "Surf Goddess Ascending" "Morphing Strongmen" "Alpha Ducky"
"Squirrel Telepathy"
2012 Hamilton Street Gallery 'Get a Job' "Jersey Waitress" The Go Go Assassinettes "Rapid Fire Commerce"
"Expedite those tips Honey" "Wildlife Management"
2011 Illustrious show Guerilla Galleries- "Fabelwesenfruhstuck" & "Teething Trinity"
2010 Tranceformations exhibit Clifton Library "Blue Birth Brunette March" "10 of Hearts Surfer"
2010 Gallery U exhibits- "Morphing Strongmen" " Shark Breakers"
2008
Crybaby Gallery, Art@Large Juried show - "Back Bristle Elixir" drawing
2006
Pleiades Gallery 24th Annual Juried Show - "A Giraffe denied a carrot" painting & "Horseshoe Crab
Telson Quintuplets" painting
Studio Montclair "CONNECTIONS" The Court Gallery at William Paterson University
"Scorpion Umbilicus Limulus Twins" (painting)
2005
Studio Montclair Inc. - Makeready Press/Gallery 214 "TABOO"
"The Matador's Reprieve" (painting)
2000
Zabbazu Gallery/coffee house, Bound Brook, N.J. - "The soul of cancer" (painting)
1988
Tweed Gallery, Plainfield N.J. "Kinetic show" collaboration with artist
Brian McCormack & solo readings
1982
Collaboration with performance artist William Pope.L - "crawl pieces"
to 86
"The billy & dicky experience"
Collections
Randall J. Bass ESQ, NYC - "A Giraffe denied a Carrot" painting
Joan & Brian McCormack- Bound Brook NJ "Patsy's Pets Lunching" drawing