Wendy Snyder, director, curator, and archivist of the Sam Glankoff Estate, is the creative force behind the SGW Collections. With a background in art and weaving, she first created the Materials Library for 3DI International Architects in Houston, TX. After that, she moved to New York and worked as the East Coast Textile Representative for Knoll Furniture. Later on, Wendy transitioned to fashion and became an accessories designer, fashion stylist, and contributing editor for German Vogue Magazine. It was during this time that she met Sam Glankoff. Find out more about Wendy Snyder and her work in this week’s Maker Monday.
Andrew Joseph: If you weren’t a designer, you’d be a…?
Wendy Snyder: If I weren’t a designer, I’d be an actor. If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a costume designer. If I wasn’t a costume designer I’d be a film producer. If I wasn’t a film producer I’d be a documentary filmmaker. If I wasn’t a doc filmmaker, I’d be a reiki master, and if I wasn’t a healer, I’d be a doula…for those ready to pass-over, and for the families who need care in the process. Then of course, there was the studying of piano, where I was told I could have been one of the greats…but that’s another story. If I throw in the chapters of being a weaver, a fashion stylist and an art advisor…That about covers the trajectory of all I’ve passed through to be here now.
AJ: What was your first job?
WS: My actual first job was at 15, sewing for a Couturier in Southfield, Michigan, who wanted to write a letter to the head of Parsons, the school he graduated from in New York, so that I could attend, and fulfill my dream of being in fashion. But that didn’t happen, so during the summer, at 18, I was a “Good Humor Girl” driving a Good Humor ice cream truck, saving up to go to Europe for the first time. To go to Paris. I was traumatized and wanted to duck down, every time I had to ring the bell. Along my route, I met one of my “oldest” clients, a bit younger than me, who played in a band. I would go with him into his basement where he had a keyboard. He taught me that with all of my improvising on the piano, I actually was on to something.
AJ: Are you a good cook? If so, what is your specialty?
WS: I’m a really good cook…but I don’t like to cook. I like to present. I learned from my Mother, the art of preparing a meal in 5 minutes. I like to whip things up really fast. My apartment kitchen was renovated 5 years ago, beautifully designed by Francis Rick Gillette, and I have never once used the oven. I have perfected the art of “toaster oven cooking”! But my specialty is salmon smothered in sautéed asparagus and mushrooms. Perfection.
AJ: If you had one more hour in the day what would you do with it?
WS: If I had one more hour, I wish it to manifest in the morning. Then I would make a point to wake up one hour earlier just to have an extra two hour time slot to begin to read, one by one, all of the books and plays, novels and biographies, art books and monographs that fill all the many shelves throughout my house!
AJ: Favorite Tea to decompress and in what mug.
WS: To drink one of my most favorite teas, I put in a thermos, a few sticks of Ceylon Cinnamon, a small handful of Vietnamese Cinnamon bark, and freshly made hot water from my electric teapot…and I let it steep. And then I choose between either a white, or chartreuse, large fluted mug from Jonathan Adler…the ones that I bought decades ago at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, in the beginning days of what has become the Jonathan Adler empire.
AJ: What are you daydreaming about most these days?
WS: A year before Sam Glankoff died, he added my initial W to his SG signature when he finished a new work. And so, when I thought it was time to consider creating reproductions of selected works from his estate, calling the company, the SGW Collections seemed to be an integrated choice to make. Now that the SGW Collections has taken shape, with the Sam Glankoff SGW Collection Edition Prints, the “Art of Glankoff” Carpets with Perennials, and the SGW Collection Wallpapers and Wall Murals for the Newlon Collection, now at the David Sutherland Showrooms in Dallas and Chicago, and perhaps more importantly, that Sam Glankoff’s original works will be exhibited again next year…I am daydreaming about stepping away to finish my 1982 documentary film on Sam, that I had recently digitized from the Super 16 Master. And I think about what it would take for me to commit to writing a memoir of the most extraordinary life I had in my twenties, with these two Glankoff brothers. That would be a dream to complete. And a life fulfilled.
Being so intimately familiar with each print-painting, during the long process of color-correcting test prints against the originals, Snyder spontaneously started to photograph details of Glankoff’s painterly surfaces. Exploring the hand of the artist, this excavation soon produced hundreds and hundreds of “gestural abstraction” compositions. Given her background as a weaver, she envisioned these gestural abstractions as luxurious carpets. In 2018, Perennials initiated the first collection of “Art of Glankoff” Tibetan hand-knotted rugs, bringing both Sam Glankoff’s and Wendy Snyder’s visual-worlds together. Today, the SGW Collections embody Snyder’s gestural abstractions for both Perennials rugs as well as wall murals and wallpaper patterns for the Newlon Collection. SGW Collection Gesture Prints, tiles and textile fabrics will one day be realized soon, too.
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