Deep Convection

This is the second of three interviews that Sumner, along with Rudolph Grey and Duncan Lindsay, conducted with abstract expressionist painter Milton Resnick. This one was recorded on January 20, 1980. Adam has also been writing about Sumner on substack. You can find out more about Milton Resnick at the web site of the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation.

This episode was not recorded by Adam. It was recorded by Sumner, on February 20, 1980, when he, along with Rudolph Grey and Duncan Lindsay, sat down for a conversation with abstract expressionist painter Milton Resnick. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Resnick taught at the New York Studio School, where he was Sumner’s most important teacher. Under Resnick’s tutelage, Sumner’s own painting switched from figurative to abstract, and remained abstract until he began doing figurative painting again in the post-Mars period, the end of the 1970s into the 1980s. During this same time he also made a practice of conducting interviews, with artists and others. He interviewed Resnick three times, of which this is the first. While Sumner published some of these interviews in Vacation magazine, these interviews with Resnick have never been released publicly in any form, to our knowledge. This one is a remarkable, wide-ranging conversation, covering many topics, but coming back repeatedly to questions around the value and meaning of art and the role of the artist in society. Adam is also now writing about Sumner on substack, approximately weekly. You can find out more about Milton Resnick at the web site of the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation.

In this episode, Adam talks to musician, archivist, and historian Weasel Walter. As a musician, Weasel’s work spans (quoting from his web page) “extreme rock forms and free jazz”. He was a key figure in what has been called the second no wave movement, in Chicago in the 1990s. His bands and collaborations include the Flying Luttenbachers and (with Lydia Lunch) Retrovirus, among too many others to list. But Weasel is also known as one of the most knowledgeable archivists and historians of the original no wave scene. He was too young to be there in downtown NYC in the 70s, but he can tell you more about who did what, where and when than just about anyone, including the people who were there. Weasel and Adam talk about what happened back then, how it influenced Weasel’s own life and career, and the broader issues around art, culture and commerce that are raised by all of it and that form the context in which we can try to understand Sumner. This interview was recorded in March 2025. Adam is also now writing about Sumner on substack, approximately weekly. You can find Weasel’s music on weaselwalter.com.

In this episode, Adam talks to Arto Lindsay for a second time. The first time (The Sumner Files, Episode Five) was remote, when Arto was in Brazil and Adam in NYC. This time, a few months later, Arto was in NYC and came by to look at Sumner’s archive and talk about it. Arto himself appears in the archive, in multiple ways — for example, the drawing shown above (8.5″x11″, ink on paper), one of many that Arto did as part of the Jack Texas collective with Sumner and Rudolph Grey. This interview was recorded in November 2024. Adam is also now writing about Sumner on substack, approximately weekly.

Adam talks about the crisis in U.S. science and higher education that is unfolding now, due to the multi-pronged assault on both by the second Trump administration. This episode was recorded on June 19, 2025. It’s a special one-off episode of Deep Convection, not part of The Sumner Files. Media articles mentioned in the episode include: New York Times article by James Glanz. Guardian op-ed by Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann and Brian Nosek on the “Gold Standard” executive order. After this episode was recorded but before it was released, the New York Times published this article that makes many of the same points about the damage being done to U.S. science, through the lens of Harvard.

Photo by Alon Koppel. Connie Burg, aka China Burg, Don Burg, and Lucy Hamilton, had never played the guitar before she joined Mars. But that didn’t stop her from developing a uniquely original style that became a defining feature of Mars’ sound, and that in turn influenced all the No Wave music that came afterwards. Connie went on to learn another brand new instrument, the bass clarinet, for Sumner’s opera, John Gavanti, and then she kept playing it in her later projects, including Don King (with Mark Cunningham and others), The Drowning of Lucy Hamilton (with Lydia Lunch), Gerry Miles (with Melissa Weaver and Alan Licht), and The Love Dogs (with Andy Salcius). Though Connie and Sumner didn’t play music together post-Gavanti, they stayed friends ever after, and her face is prominently featured in a number of his paintings. Connie recounts some great new stories to Adam, such as when Sumner got her and three other friends to form a bridge club, meeting weekly, so that he could paint them while they played the card game. Connie is a No Wave legend, an important person in Sumner’s life, and a critically important contributor to The Sumner Files. This interview was recorded in December 2024.

In Adam’s memory, Sumner’s life is divided into the pre-Sue and Sue eras, with Sue being Susan Lehman, aka Sue Crane, aka Aunt Sue to Adam and his sister. Sue came originally from California, moved around in her youth, wound up in New York by the mid-1980s, and met Sumner sometime around 1990, right when he moved up to the Catskills for a few months to take care of his dying father. Not too long after that, they moved in together to her place in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Sue worked as a middle school earth science teacher, Sumner painted apartments, and they lived happily ever after (in spite of being very broke at the beginning), until Sumner’s death in 2003. During this whole time, they worked together on Sumner’s research project about the painter Edward Simmons, and eventually published four co-authored articles about Simmons. Sue talks with Adam about meeting Sumner, his music, his art, his personality, and their life together. At the end, she tells a story about the talent show he made her whole family do on New Year’s Eve Y2K. This interview was mostly recorded in August 2024, except for the last bit which was recorded in May 2025 (and the musical interludes, which were recorded earlier, by Sumner). Photo by Sue’s sister Cathy McIntyre, taken at Sue & Sumner’s wedding, in 1995.

Cynthia Sobel, born Cynthia Schoenwetter, is Adam’s mother, and Sumner’s sister. So she knew Sumner from the very beginning of his life to the end, and there’s no one else alive who remembers the things about him that she does. She talks at length about their parents, Charles and Sylvia Schoenwetter, and their childhoods in Elmhurst, Queens — essential context for understanding Sumner’s life and art — as well as her memories and reflections about Sumner as an adult, and their relationship. One example: in 1963, Sumner took Cynthia and her husband (Adam’s dad, Gerry Sobel) to see Bob Dylan, whom they hadn’t heard of yet, perform in Carnegie Hall! Cynthia and Sumner both inherited artistic temperaments from their parents, and shared a passion particularly for the visual arts. (Their father, Charles, was a music teacher; Cynthia talks about how Charles didn’t succeed at teaching music to either Sumner or her, though Sumner learned it anyway, playing the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, to their father’s dismay.) Cynthia had a long career as a designer of women’s suits, with her own line (name on the label) at Herbert Grossman. When she retired, she took up painting, connecting her to Sumner even more. You can find some of her older paintings on cynthiasobel.com, and some more recent ones on instagram where she’s @cynthia.sobel.5. This interview was recorded in September 2024.

As the front man in DNA, Arto Lindsay was one of the core No Wave figures from the start, and he and Sumner were good friends from the mid-1970s, when Arto arrived in NYC (along with Mark Cunningham and Connie Burg, from Eckerd College in Florida), into the 1980s and beyond. Arto played on Sumner’s opera record John Gavanti, and in the early 1980s Arto, Sumner and Rudolph Grey formed a visual art trio, signing their separately-made works with the single name Jack Texas (with which Sumner continued to sign his own paintings for the rest of his life, long after the trio disbanded). Arto has had an amazing career since then, collaborating with a wide range of musicians and visual artists both. His projects have included the Golden Palominos, Lounge Lizards, Ambitious Lovers, and many solo records. He’s been a record producer for many other artists, especially (but not limited to) Brazilian ones. Arto himself grew up in Brazil and lives there currently, and his own music combines sounds from that country with no wave “skronk” — a term coined to describe his guitar playing — and many other diverse influences. Arto talks with Adam about Sumner, his art, their relationship, and how much he benefited from Sumner’s encouragement in those early days. This interview was recorded in July 2024.

In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with painter David Reed. David’s paintings have been shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe from the 1970s to the present, in venues including the Guggenheim, Gagosian New York and Basel, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Häusler Contemporary, Zurich, and most recently at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris. David’s work is abstract, and as critic John Yao wrote in 2020, ““At the core of Reed’s project is the brushstroke.” David got his start in 1960s and 1970s New York, and one can see the influence of graffiti, for example, in his work. During those early days, David and Sumner were friends and roommates for around ten years, starting when they were both students of Milton Resnick at the New York Studio School, in a loft apartment downstairs from Nancy Arlen. Adam learned about David through internet research on Resnick and the Studio School, contacted him, and that led to this amazing conversation. David’s memories fill many critical gaps in Sumner’s story during the decade, roughly Sumner’s 20s, leading up to and including the formation of Mars. Among them, David sheds light on Sumner’s relationship with Resnick, and also with composer Morton Feldman, who was Dean of the Studio School during Sumner and David’s time there. David’s account shows how Sumner’s art (and David’s own) grew out of their apprenticeship with a couple of the most important artists of the mid-20th century — Resnick and Feldman — and how the environment they were in blurred the lines between music and painting at a time when abstraction and “materiality” were important in both. You can learn more about David’s work and see his art at davidreedstudio.com. Photo by Pamela Reed.