Susie Monday is an artist/teacher working from her home studio in San Antonio, Texas. Her stitched collage art quilts evoke the culture, stories and landscapes of the Borderlands — and the inner life of the artist. She works and teaches in person and online, using both high-tech and high-touch tools and techniques. A studio art graduate from Trinity University, Susie has written many articles, co-authored a book on creativity for parents, and teaches and lectures about creative process, sensory perception, digital and surface design. She shares her home (across from Woodlawn Lake) with Linda Cuellar, her wife, and Penny, the dachshund and ZeeZee, the mean cat. To see more about her work and life, see www.susiemonday.com.
Statement
Artist Statement, 2021
What grabs me are conversations between color and texture, and the drama of pattern in everything I see around me: the wind in the cedar trees below my windows, the Guatemalan and Mexican textiles in my studio drawers, the angels who come to me as I work, whether with my iPad or on a big white piece of sheeting. I make quilts and art cloth, stacking up short stashes of the latter in order to make the former.
My textiles tell the spiritual and metaphysical stories that are unfolding in my life and the lives I observe of other women around me. And the pragmatic stories we live, too: dishes to wash, clothes to fold, gardens to tend, a pandemic to endure. My designs start with hopes, dreams, frustrations, foundations and the resources we call upon in the secret spaces of the heart.
I have come to this work after decades of artwork and other work. Like most women, I don't have a linear path though life or career. As a young art student, I sewed paper bags into installations. As an arts educator, I made banners, flags and costumes with children as my audience, collaborators and inspiration. As a newspaper journalist I practiced the art of storytelling and listening, in words rather than images. As an exhibit designer, I filled space with layers of meaning and experience. Throughout all these incarnations, I've had to be a maker-- putting my hands on "stuff" and turning it into something new. I hope the work I do now puts all those years to good use.
At this point in my artist's life, I want what I create to have consistency of style, to share a personal vision, and to find a home on someone else's wall. I like working within the world of fiber arts because that world allows me the use of more of my interests and acquired skills: digital design, painting, printmaking, embroidering, building, layering, embellishment and collage. Rather than take a purist's approach, I will cut up and use anything that comes to eye -- recycled skirts from the thrift store share space with Indian silks, damask tablecloths, pieces of Oaxacan hiupils, baby clothes and designer scarves. Nothing is sacred and everything is.
Working in fabric and working with sacred women images, natural landscapes and urban stories bind me to generations of other women, literally and figuratively. These are the connections I honor and celebrate in both content and form.
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