First in Four, by local artist Anyahlee Suderman, is the art exhibit on display at Sherman Café from now until mid-April with an Artist Reception on Saturday March 3 at 5 p.m., 257 Washington St, Somerville.

A native to the area, Suderman has been working with community groups to create large scale public art and teach in a variety of studio settings throughout Greater Boston. She has been an active freelancer for over a decade accepting commissions by private buyers and working in partnership with cities, local nonprofits, property owners and their communities to navigate through the planning and implementation of large scale public art.

The work on view at Sherman Café is a collection of 20 mixed media prints and paintings; new, old (and renewed) work spanning the past decade. Suderman’s sense of humor about love is seen in Queen of Hearts and Atomic Valentine and she is obsessed with line and shape as it applies to natural scenes and the figure.

Ride into the Sun (6’x 4’) is the largest work on canvas, depicting a group of figures clinging to a rocket soaring above an urban landscape. It was adapted from an image of a U.S. military bomber found on the cover of an old Time magazine combined with a design on a vintage sewing needle collection which showed a couple sitting on a rocket riding into the moon. “I find humor in things that puzzle or upset me. My art explores the reaction I have to things I find socially astonishing. It is also a visual dialogue about line, layers and the accumulation of things,” says Suderman.

The artist’s professional work began in Washington DC where she graduated from the Corcoran School of Art and Design and promptly jumpstarted her own non-profit organization, Urban Artists Coalition (UAC), making studio and public art with underserved youth, while creating jobs for local teaching artists.

In 2004, Suderman moved back to the Boston area with her son, Napoleon, whose work entitled Volcano is also featured in the café this month. Suderman quickly dove into the public art scene with a program Art builds Community which she led for four years, employing youth through public art projects throughout Boston. She is currently working as an art consultant for Walnut Street Center; a Union Square based Day and Residential Program for adults with developmental disabilities and manages the volunteer cooperative gallery Creative Union. Together, artists from Outside the Lines Studio and WSC have the opportunity to engage with the community and sell their art. Creative Union is located directly behind Sherman Café. Volunteers are also awarded the opportunity to sell their redesigned fashions, handmade goods and fine art on consignment.

Suderman has a knack for revitalizing underused spaces and inviting the community to reclaim them. This is apparent in her mural work, by reclaiming city walls, and with a number of abandoned spaces she turned into community art spaces both in DC and here in Greater Boston. You may contact the artist at: Anyahlee.arts@gmail.com.

~Video by Harry Kane