Portrait of an Artist: Sandy Shutter

Artist now runs art boutique and gallery inside historical Willard Memorial Chapel in Auburn

By Joe Sarnicola

Sandy Shutter developed a taste for art when she was very little.

“I have always had the need to create. I have always been interested in art, from the time I was very young,” said the owner of Artistic Impressions, a retail art boutique and gallery in Auburn. “One of my favorite memories was when my grandmother gave me a big box of crayons with a built-in sharpener.”

Shutter said she took as many art classes as she could at Auburn High School and then majored in art at Cayuga Community College. Although she was not sure what she could do with her art training, her first job after graduation was in the advertising department at The Citizen, Auburn’s local newspaper.

“We would design and create the art for the ads. We learned how to use Adobe Illustrator, which was very basic, then compared to what is available now, but it helped us create the ads,” she said.

After that she worked in the advertising department at JC Penney until she received a phone call that opened some new doors for her career.

“My aunt, Karen Kopec, saw an ad that said Sears was looking for a display manager. It was a staff position that involved managing the store as well,” she said.

She took the job, which was at the first Sears store in the Finger Lakes Mall, the current site of Bass Pro. She quickly learned it was a job with a lot of responsibility.

“It was more than just dressing mannequins. I laid floor tile, performed minor maintenance, I painted walls. I even had to learn how to solder wires together in order to fix the cash registers,” she said. “I would also get calls to handle customer complaints.”

The job often involved traveling, sometimes for weeks at a time.

The display managers from different cities would sometimes be sent to new stores that were being opened in places as far away from home as Massena or Pennsylvania.

“Sears was a wonderful company to work for. So we did whatever needed to be done,” she said.

As part of her traveling for the company, she served as the operations manager at its Johnson City store for 10 years. During that time, when she was a single parent with two young daughters, she faced a serious medical condition.

“I was at home alone, when I had some kind of medical episode where I was barely conscious,” she said. “Somehow, I was able to call emergency services. The paramedics took me to the hospital, but the doctors could not find anything wrong with me.”

Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be an isolated incident.

“I had another episode the day before Sept. 11, 2001. This time tests showed I had been having a series of heart attacks. The people from Sears helped me with my kids, they brought me meals. They even contacted my mother. I don’t know what would have happened without them,” she said.

Shutter worked at the Johnson City store for two more years, after which she transferred back to the Auburn store, where she worked until her retirement.

“By the time I retired both my daughters had graduated from college, so I rested,” she said. “I have always had art supplies around, but I have to be calm in order to really create art and that is hard to do when you’re raising two young children.”

She decided it was time after almost 25 years away from focusing on her art. She started selling her work at area craft shows, but the long days sitting or standing in cold, heat and other conditions were difficult. She still wanted to pursue art, but she knew there must be an easier way.

“About a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, I brainstormed with my partner, Bill, about having a shop. I wanted a place of my own, so I talked to the management at Willard Memorial Chapel. I knew the hospice thrift shop there had moved out and I wondered if that space might be available,” she said.

And it was.

Willard Memorial Chapel, 17 Nelson St. in Auburn, is the only remaining building of what used to be The Auburn Theological Seminary, which opened in 1821. Most of the other buildings were demolished in 1959. The chapel room itself has stained glass windows that were designed by Tiffany. In order to save the chapel from demolition The Community Preservation Committee formed and purchased the building and raised funds to preserve the structure; it is now listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.

Artistic Impressions is now part of the history of the building and Shutter said she created 90% of everything in the shop.

Her work focuses on women’s rights, empowerment and famous female figures of the past and present and their contributions to society.

Sections of the shop are dedicated to women’s suffrage, Auburn historical sites, Harriet Tubman and the many activists and thinkers that called Auburn home.

One of her most popular creations are her “Heroines of Her-story” peg dolls, miniature representations of Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Theresa, and many other women.

Her creativity and skill have not gone unnoticed.

She has shown her work at a gallery show at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park and at The Seward House Museum, plus she has been commissioned to design public art paintings, create logos and private commissions. Her list of awards includes the Award of Merit from the National League of American Pen Women, the Phyllis Goldman Encouragement Award for Women and, in 2023, the New York State Senate Empire Business Award.

She also painted a mural for the Women’s Rights Historical Park that was inspired by a newspaper sketch of the first Women’s Rights Convention that was held in Seneca Falls in 1848.

Most recently one of her custom designed Christmas ornaments was hung on the capital tree in Albany. “Every county can submit an ornament to be considered for the capital tree,” she explained. “I created one featuring Theodore Case and it was accepted. I embellished it with a steam punk theme and then I mounted it in a shadow box.”

Theodore Case, a former Auburn resident, is considered the father of sound on film, because he invented the technology to make that possible. The Case Research Laboratory in Auburn is now a museum open to the public that displays some of Case’s equipment and notebooks.

Shutter has not only been active creating her own artwork, but she also actively promotes the work of other artists and art venues as a founding member and current president of the Finger Lakes Art Council, a nonprofit organization established to promote the work of art and artists in the Finger Lakes region.