Joe Zucker 'Orb Weaver' Retrospect On View At Parrish

Joe Zucker stood in the spine of the Parrish Art Museum last month, considering his circa-1991 piece “Spider Chronicles.”

He had put the subject of his retrospective, “Joe Zucker: Life and Times of an Orb Weaver,” through a series of precarious paces—lynching, and tar and feathers, to name a couple—and laced each scene with sarcasm, narrative and foul language. But it wasn’t a person he was torturing with pen and paper, per se. It was a political, or social, ideology—depicted by spiders, or “objects of our derision,” he said.

At this time, he was recalling the work he did in the 1960s, when commentary had no place in the art world. And Mr. Zucker couldn’t have cared less.

“Back in the day, ideas about political notions were in a separate body of work for most artists, because painting was more serious than making political statements,” he smirked. “You’re usually born, as an artist, because you’re edgy. You might be a cuddly baby, but when you’re a young artist, you’re edgy.”

At just 5 years old, Mr. Zucker started taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, and eventually earned a bachelor’s degree from the school in 1964, followed by a master’s degree two years later. He chose art over his second passion, basketball, though he is now the assistant coach for the Bridgehampton Killer Bees.

It was just recently that the Parrish Art Museum was gifted nine drawings by Mr. Zucker, all studies for a 1992 print project with Riverhouse Editions in Colorado. When Chief Curator Alicia Longwell saw them, she said she immediately called the artist.

“When the gift came, I said, ‘Joe, you have to come over,’” she recalled. “I knew the paintings, of course, but then the whole story unfolded.”

They were nine drawings of approximately 60 studies that Mr. Zucker took to Colorado with him more than two decades ago. For the first time, a portion of them will be shown alongside the six resulting abstract prints, as well as a series of abstract paintings—sash-cord strung in a lattice-like grid—all inspired by the spider, and representative of a journey spanning half a century.

“When you get older, one of the advantages of having a long career is that you can dip into the past,” Mr. Zucker said. “A lot of times, I don’t think much about seeing paintings from the past. I’m using a system, whether it’s going from the mundane to the sublime. I wanted a range, from drawings to seriously constructed paintings, to something like this”—he pointed to a drawing—“sad, wounded spiders clipped during the Civil War.”

He chuckled to himself. “I enjoy the fact that, at that moment in my life, I made something like that.”

He exited the gallery and rounded the corner, nearly bumping into Parrish Director Terrie Sultan.

“Hey there, Mr. Zucker!” she said. “The show looks so good. I hope you’re excited.”

“I am,” he smiled modestly.

“We are,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said.

Joe Zucker and Alicia Longwell will lead a guided tour of “Joe Zucker: Life and Times of an Orb Weaver” on Friday, April 3, at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. Admission is $10, or free for members. The exhibition will remain on view through Thursday, April 26, along with work by Jules Feiffer and Robert Dash. For more information, call (631) 283-2118, or visit parrishart.org.