Adria Schozer

Adria Schozer

The Gander Gallery represents a vibrant new addition to Manchester’s art scene and a new venture for owner Adria Schozer, but it’s really no accident that it opened its doors last July at 4716B Main St. The twin worlds of art and Vermont have exerted a gravitational pull on Schozer for so long the opening of The Gander Gallery starts looking a lot like destiny.

Schozer grew up in the world of art. Her father, Fred Faviano, is an abstract painter, and her parents owned The Bittersweet Gallery in Montauk, Long Island. During the 1970s and ‘80s, it was an important showcase for Faviano and other exciting and emerging artists.

“I worked in the gallery as a teenager. I always thought it was interesting,” said Schozer. “You’re actually making connections with the artists and the customers and the community.”
As for Vermont, well, that too is deeply intertwined in Schozer’s life. She attended Johnson State College, and she and her family are avid skiers who often came up to enjoy the slopes of Mount Snow and Stratton. Her daughter was a talented ski racer, good enough to attend the Stratton Mountain School. Her son flourished at the Long Trail School in Dorset. Life just gravitated toward Vermont, and Schozer and her family moved up full-time in 2007. As her parents came up to spend more time with her, Schozer thought she might open a small gallery to show and sell her father’s work.

It grew into something more, and now features the work of nearly two dozen artists in a wide range of styles and media — collage, encaustic, oil and pastel painting, sculpture, prints, hand-colored photographs, multi-media work, by artists such as Anna Dibble, Dale Sherman Blodget, Sabra Field, Pamela Anne Marron, Tim Allen, James G. Llewelyn, Judy Hawkins, Ken Rush and Helen Young.

“I have no scarcity of artists who want to show here,” said Schozer. “I did want only to have local, Vermont artists. I’m not competing with New York galleries or Boston galleries.”

She’s broken her Vermont-only rule a couple of times, including once for an out-of-state artist who came into the gallery and had a gut feeling that his work just had to be shown there. Schozer was moved by the conviction of his feeling, she took him.

Schozer relies a lot on her intuition to select artists.

“It’s just if I like it. I don’t have an art degree. I’m self-taught,” she said. There is, however, one element that links a lot of the artist she shows.

“Color. Everything is very colorful,” she said. “I’d like to be bold enough to just have abstracts.”

For now, a chief source of both color and abstraction is Schozer’s father, Fred Faviano, whose work remains a focal point at the gallery — and a top seller, too.

“My dad is artist number one,” she said.

He’s also responsible for the name of the gallery. The secret lies in the upper left corner of a painting Faviano did in 2010, and in an essay written by mythologist Joseph Campbell, who used the gander as a symbol for the powerful ways in which art can transcend the mundane. Shortly after reading the essay, Faviano created the painting, and the more he looked at it appears there’s a figure of a gander. He didn’t intend for it to be there, but it just came out in his work.

When he pointed it out to Schozer, she told him if she ever opened a gallery, it would be called the Gander Gallery.

Once she decided to open a gallery, the journey of bringing it to life is much like the long flight of the gander in Campbell’s story.

Casting about for just the right spot, Schozer purchased one building in Manchester, only to find that state permitting issues prevented her from making the renovations she felt were necessary. So she leased that space to a restaurant and found her present location to rent. Before she knew it, she was not only a gallery owner but also a landlord.

She said the support of local officials was good, and she values being part of the Manchester business community.

“Being an owner of a business in town, it’s brought me to a different level of bring part of a town. I feel like I’m more part of the town,” she said.

And like many of her fellow business owners, she’s had to tough out the last few months.

“It’s been a struggle. (Tropical Storm) Irene and the recession and the lack of snow have hit small towns like Manchester in a very hard way,” she said.

Still, Schozer has high hopes for The Gander Gallery in the years to come.

“I’m optimistic about Manchester. It’s long-term good,” she said.

And she’s equally convinced that people will continue to see the value in buying art.

“If you like it, and it makes you smile and you know the artist, then it’s not about the object. …I view art as not only being the object but the artist and the memory. …That’s what you get. You get the object for free,” she said.

The Gander Gallery is located at 4716B Main Street, in Manchester. Call 802-768-8396, e-mail gandergallery@gmail.com or visit http://www.gandergallery.net.