Artist Profile: Susie Monday

Susie Monday
Pipe Creek, Texas

1. What kind of challenges did this theme present to you?  For a change, this theme presented little challenge as an idea but technical challenges to my hand.  Because I immediately saw how I could cut up an earlier piece that appeared in a Dinner @ Eight exhibit I had to figure out the best way to reassemble it. I ended up using my own version of a Boro running stitch to both re-quilt the piece by hand and to reassemble the different elements including new patches.

2. Describe your studio space?  I work in the studio of my dreams: a converted two car garage with a giant design table in the middle. I walk to work across the driveway and look out at the beautiful Texas Hill Country through the windows in the front. My wife retired this spring, so we have a lot of travel on the  calendar this year. Some of my studio time is spent with traveling art, small sections of hand stitch.

3. Where can people see your work in the next six months?  I hope to have a piece in the local Fiber Artists of San Antonio exhibit, I currently have a piece in Form, not Function and, of course, with all of you at the international festival! This is been a half year of experimentation and exploration, working more abstractly than I have in the past, so I'm just now getting some pieces finished to submit to exhibits.

4. Do you ever work in a series?  If so, what benefits or challenges does this present to you as an artist? I tend to work in a number of series all at once. Go figure. Some of the work I do refers back to series of work that I completed three or four or even five years ago. 

5. What other activities do you engage in that “feed” your creative energy? We just added a little river cabin to our (small) collection of Airbnb properties, so it seems I'm spending a lot of time, creatively, with chopping Prickly Pear cactus, stalking the thrift stores for furnishings, and a paint roller in the hand. but the kayak early in the morning makes it all worthwhile.