Pictured: Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, Grid Poem (Where) (left) & Carol Shaw Sutton, Heart Open (right)

Free artist talk presented as part of the Creative Community Gatherings series.

Two exceptional artists with diverse practices in conversation regarding their work and the unusual methods they utilize to make art. Carol Shaw Sutton is a fiber sculpture artist and Susan Stinemuehlen-Amend a glass artist, both have internationally reputations for their creative vision and mastery of diverse materials. Carol gathers natural materials to transform into sculptural work, she weaves and composes with fiber, wood, feathers and other natural forms while Susan utilizes glass to reveal and make invisible the compositions that she creates with light and ink.

Carol Shaw Sutton‘s work often consists of poetically narrative objects and installations utilizing both ancient and modern processes that require a labor-intensive commitment with the goal of simultaneously valuing and transcending the concept of time. These address the deep human concern for harmony and release through our bodies into nature and the mysterious beyond.

“I’ve been working with fiber since the age of five in a family where there was very little textile tradition, therefore no oversight or rules. This gave me immense freedom to find my own way, as I learned from everything I saw, including our gardener as he, magically tied the loose cut vines with nothing but themselves! Since art school where I learned the usual array of mediums, I greedily took every course in what was then pejoratively called primitive or non-western art history. I saw indigenous cultures from all over the world use EVERYTHING growing around them to make wildly beautiful, mythic and evocative works. To this day, fiber with all its processes, materials and history has filled me with a deeply humble respect and has provided me a language to embody a coherent self as part of nature. My current work, shown here, is loosely titled Staying Alive, referring to my own personal and our collective challenges during this time in America, in the world and in our aging bodies. I’ve found solace and meaning in the simple act of stitching, wrapping, looping, or weaving with materials that have a life span, as do we. While doing this work, I watch my brain struggle, investigate, negotiate and then loosen while working towards moments of discovery and joy.”   – Carol Shaw Sutton

Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend was trained as a painter, she approach glass through that lens. Conceptually, she think as a surrealist, combining unlikely images to create a new narrative.

No matter how many permutations her work has taken, there are still elements of the 12th Century techniques of stained glass. After completing countless commissions she pulled away from “good design” and let the wash of the unconscious lead her choices of glass and imagery.