Alumni Reunion Weekend Exhibition & Artist Reception
The Shipley School is pleased to welcome back three talented members of the Class of 1980—Jennifer Gorman-Strawbridge, Meredith Haab, and Susan Crawford Stevens—for this year’s Alumni Artist Exhibition, on view in the Speer Gallery from Tuesday, April 29 through Sunday, May 4, 2025. The exhibit features a dynamic collection of oil paintings, pastels, and hand-hooked rugs, each offering a deeply personal reflection of the artists’ creative journeys.
All members of the Shipley community are invited to attend the Alumni Artist Reception on Friday, May 2, from 5:00–6:00 p.m., as part of this year's Alumni Reunion Weekend festivities. Guests will have the opportunity to meet the artists, view their work, and hear about the inspirations behind their craft.
Read more about each artist's work in the artist statements below...
Jennifer Gorman-Strawbridge ’80
I earned my BA in fine arts and philosophy from Hamilton College and have pursued numerous art workshops and courses studying under various accomplished and award-winning artists, throughout my adult life. Having recently retired from a career in marketing, communications, and event planning, I am now enthusiastically and gratefully embracing painting full-time. My style is loose and impressionistic; I paint with oils because I love their vibrancy, malleability, and durability.
I moved to New Hope in Bucks County, PA in 2017, and am captivated by the lush farmlands and alluring river scenes that surround me. I work either from my New Hope studio or en plein air where I am able to marry my desire to be out in nature with my passion for capturing the beauty and wonder I find in the natural world. Painting is my attempt to translate my impression of this beauty into art. My work is evolving and is a reflection of my interests, travels, and life experiences. My goal is to consistently produce original art that expresses my vision of beauty as well as my love of, and respect for, nature.
Meredith Haab ’80
In 2021, the isolation of COVID drove me to seek out some sort of hobby that I could do at home and learn by watching YouTube videos. As luck would have it, I landed on a rug hooking class taught by Deanne Fitzpatrick from Nova Scotia, Canada. I ordered a kit online and have been rug hooking ever since.
My hooking has evolved from “doing a kit “to “planning a pattern.” I use 100% wool and much of it is hand-dyed. My wool strips are self-cut and vary in width to create the texture I want from 3/16” to 9/32”. My patterns are on 100% linen, and I hook using a lap frame. I particularly like color planning patterns myself. My next step is to create my own design on linen, color plan it, and hook it.
I’ve since learned that I enjoy the primitive style of rug hooking based on the folk art of early American rug makers. Designs are simple, colors vary widely but are mostly traditional and color-blocked, and wool and cotton strips are the predominant medium.
Now retired from 37 years of teaching, I’m able to attend rug hooking seminars on the East Coast. Best of all, I attend a weekly "hook-in” of friends at The Bee and The Bear shop in Hereford, Pennsylvania. We sit and talk, hook, have a cookie or two, and naturally keep the tradition of a women’s craft circle alive. The healing power of craft-making has carried me through the isolation of COVID to joyous belonging with a group of friends practicing the centuries-old craft of early American rug makers.
Susan Crawford Stevens ’80
Although I have studied art all of my life, I still consider myself to be self-taught. It wasn’t until well into my adult life that I pursued the practice of art making, having fallen into the role of an elementary art teacher at my children’s school which ignited, and made a reality of, my artistic journey. I consider that time as an art teacher the greatest gift.
Most recently I have been drawn to the work of George Innes and continue to be influenced by his handling of edges and the atmospheric mystery he communicates to the viewer. It stirs an emotion in me which I hope achieves the same mystery in my own paintings.
I feel a strong spiritual pull towards the natural world and the relation between earth and sky. These places are my sanctuary where I feel comfort, freedom, and connection. They are connections to my past and satisfy my hunger for the places that have meaning to me. I am part of them.
I find that I will paint a certain “place” repeatedly to get to know it better and eventually find those elemental simplicities that are the heart. They are no longer about a specific place but rather an emotion. What is it about a place that is so compelling? Is it the light? Is it the space? Is it all the living things? I break it down to the most basic; shifting towards intimacy.
My love for the natural world comes from a strong lineage of land and wildlife conservation. I am an advocate for open space and the use of public lands, and I am grateful for having spent most of my life being able to witness and enjoy wild places that are now under threat of extinction. I cannot imagine a world without it and my hope is that I can, at the very least, preserve these places through my painting.
My influences stem from a variety of painters; from my earliest with NC and Andrew Wyeth, and later with the work of Russell Chatham, Wolf Kahn, George Inness, and many others.
I was born in 1961 in southeastern Pennsylvania and lived there my entire childhood. In 1986, I received a BA in Art History from Montana State University. That same year I married and moved south to Hattiesburg, Mississippi where we lived for 38 years and raised our two children. From 2004-2013, I taught elementary art at the school our children attended. I am an active member of the Women’s Art Collective, in Hattiesburg, the Mississippi Art Colony, a state-wide organization, The Degas Pastel Society, the Philadelphia Pastel Society, and the Pastel Society of America. My husband and I now reside in Bozeman, Montana.