Join to book signing of Sketches From Siberia. Jacob D. Sudermann, a teacher and artist from a Russian Mennonite community, who like so many others, fell victim to the bloodthirsty paranoia of the Stalinist purges and died in a Siberian gulag in 1937. Suffering from the difficulties of living conditions, he extracted only positive from the outside world and carried it to the sketches and paintings of landscapes, animals, and architecture on scraps of paper he found.
“His artistic spirit was not to be denied. Art to Sudermann was more than a hobby. It was a God-given gift to create meaningfully, to document, a gift in which to place his hope and to pass along hope to others, those who received and cherished his artworks with notes written on the reverse. The will, the need to create even under the most dire of circumstances stands even beyond his talent as the reason Sudermann’s art ultimately is so important.”
- Quote from foreword by Ray Dirks, curator at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery
The event is free of charge.