Sussex gallery ablaze with the colors of Burmese art

Newton - When Julie McWilliams cajoled the administration of Sussex County Community College into creating gallery space in the old library building, she was envisioning a space for student and faculty shows or perhaps the work of local artists. She wasn’t thinking Burma. But now the gallery is awash in the ultra-saturated colors of a group of artists from Burma, or Mayanmar, that mysterious neighbor of far more open Thailand, courtesy of Richard Streiter, who came to Green Township via India. The opening reception is Friday, Jan. 26 from 6 to 8 and the exhibit will be up through March 9. The visitor is greeted by the bright pinks of the flowing robes of Buddhist nuns in an oil by Zaw Zaw Aung. More of the artist’s paintings of monks and nuns hang among paintings of sunflowers that remind one of Van Gogh and Impressionistic street scenes. One of the featured artists, Mg Aw, has work in numerous private collections in Asia, Europe and the U. S. and exhibits from Australia to New York.. Streiter, a retired vice president of Fashion Institute of Technology, was “wandering around Southeast Asia,” six years ago when he stumbled upon a gallery owner in Rangoon, Burma’s largest city and former capital, who introduced him to a fine arts college. “When I saw what they did with so little financial support, I set up a scholarship fund and financed field trips. I got them a TV-VCR and art history tapes, how-to tapes on acrylics, watercolors, an infusion of new material into a curriculum that hadn’t changed.” Because Burma is a closed society, only beginning to be opened to tourism seven or eight years ago, access to Western art and art books is limited. Ruled by a military junta “that tries to keep the outside world out,” Burma inspired Streiter to try to bring its art to the U. S. While he has mounted many small shows of his collection, Streiter hasn’t done anything on this scale before. And it happened by accident. He was at his gym, Fit Happens in Panther Valley listening to his Burmese language tapes while on the elliptical trainer when he noticed the woman on the machine next to him was reading a book on Burma. It turned out she owns the Grist Mill café in Andover which often mounts art shows. Streiter put up a show of his photographs and a faculty member from SCCC asked if he would show his Burma photos at the school’s diversity center. That led to him meeting McWilliams and discovering the gallery. McWilliams jumped at the opportunity to have her fine arts students see art from a country few of them knew anything about. “They learn from viewing,” she said during an interview at the gallery. Streiter explained Burma is as diverse as the art. A country of 52 million people it is 1,800 miles from north to south, from the Himalayas to the tropics. Although the population speaks Burmese, there are numerous local dialects spoken by the various ethnic groups. Paintings reflect the diversity. Some feature children on the shore, others farming on rolling hills, others urban markets, stalls covered with bright umbrellas. Many depict universal themes, such as the flowers, a woman dressing and a girl with her cat. Streiter said the main purpose is to introduce local people to the art, not to sell it, but the paintings are for sale, priced from roughly $800 to $3,000. A percentage of the sale price will go to the art school in Burma and a portion to SCCC, Streiter said. Streiter has the largest collection of Burmese art outside of Burma and displays it at his home in Green and his New York City apartment. Some, of course, is stored on his New Jersey property. He and his wife now live full-time in Green in what started as a weekend home. When he was in India, setting up a design school, he got used to having a garden and told his wife he didn’t want to return to a city apartment with no place else to go. He drew a circle around New York City beyond which he didn’t want to move and promptly rejected both Long Island and Westchester. When he found Sussex County, he drove around and stopped at the Green Village store and asked the proprietor if he knew of any real estate offices. The man pointed to the only other person in the store, a woman buying milk and said “she’s a real estate agent.” Through this agent, the Streiters found their “escape from the city.” Although Streiter has worked at FIT and Pratt Institute and for the city of New York, he has found much satisfaction in his new vocation: introducing the art of Burma to the people of the U. S.