Biography

I was born in March 1940 in New York City. I went to Monsignor Scanlon High School in the Bronx and afterward to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where I studied art. I graduated in 1963. During this time, extending back to grade school and continuing through art school and after, I performed puppet shows throughout the city and suburbs.

Upon graduation I traveled and lived in Europe, worked at General Drafting, a map making company in Convent Station, New Jersey, and worked two and a half years as assistant art director on a weekly magazine with McGraw-Hill in New York. I took courses at Columbia University in preparation for a master's degree in Art History. I was in the Army Reserve and in 1968, in the heat of the Viet-Nam War, immigrated to Canada. In 1969 I lived in Vienna studying German and returned to Canada where I earned an M.A. in Art History at the University of Toronto.

In 1971 I returned to the U.S. and settled in Boston. I taught art and art history at Holliston High School from 1971 to 1980. With my first wife, Deborah Costine, I co-founded The Gerwick Puppets in 1974. This became a full time commitment by 1980 and performing has continued, though abated since 2001, throughout New England. In 1982 I married my second wife, Irene Boyle Mazmanian, and we had a daughter, Emily, the following year. With the collapse of this marriage in 1990 I moved to my own house and devoted my time to parenting, puppetry and painting. Since 2001, with the retrenchment of school and public performances, my daughter in college, painting assumed the largest place in my life. It is now paramount.

I have drawn all my life and can remember creating series of pictures at the age of four. Drawing and later painting are a source of deep solace, intense expression and a creation of order. I have drawn the human figure continually all my life. Painting, though I went to art school, has been a skill I had to build and patch together. The liberation of art today, in the early 21st Century, is exhilarating. It is the viewer, as it has really always been the viewer, who makes art. But after all the explosive painting of the 20th Century, the fare today is a watery soup. I want something to chew.

Exhibitions

One person show at Mazmanian Gallery, Framingham State College, Framingham, Mass, June 15 – August 15, 2007

One-person show at FScott Gallery, Sudbury, Mass, December 1 – December 30, 2006

Group show at Fuller Crafts Museum, Brockton, Mass, March 4 – June 18, 2006

Two-person show at A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, Mass, February 3 – 28, 2006

One-person show at the Student Union Gallery, University of Mass, Amherst, Mass, March 21 – April 1, 2005

Four-person show at Upstairs at Johnson Paint, Boston, Mass, November 8 – 24, 2003

Group show at Evos Art, Lowell, Mass, July 24 – 27, 2003

Two-person show at the Southborough Center for the Arts, Southborough, Mass, April 19 – May 17, 2003

Media

MetroWest Daily News' coverage of Len Gerwick's open studio, May 3-4, 2008