Artist Profile: Susan Fletcher King

Susan Fletcher King

Houston, Texas

1. What is sitting on the edges of your work table?  Lots of art papers and cutting tools and paints and rulers.

2. If someone looked beneath the surface, what could be revealed that we might not know about you?  I think I come across as flippant and irreverent, but that is a mask hiding a boatload of anxiety, insecurity and stress.

3. What occupies the space between your sewing machine and your cutting table?  It’s all one table and many things overlap from one area to the next including art cloth, threads, paints, scissors, Xacto knives and art papers.  There are no boundaries, much like my work.

4. What is the most exquisite moment in your artistic life?  The day I walked into a quilt shop approximately 15 years ago and saw the rows of batik fabrics and fell down the rabbit hole.  That was the moment I began this journey and I have never looked back.

5. Do you have daily rituals in your studio?  Right now things are in such an upheaval that finding time to get into the studio constitutes its own ritual.

6. Reflecting on the quilts that you have made, which one stands out to you?  My personal favorite (or the one I love to hate) is the D@8 quilt made for the Patterns show.  This piece (a wedge of cabbage) seemed so simple and yet I had so much difficulty conversing with the quilt and literally threw paint at it during one frustrating session. Despite the annoyance and frustration I felt throughout the entire creative process, the quilt eventually worked!

7. What do you have an affinity for in your work?  I like my “critters”.

8. What kinds of patterns do you use in your work to create interest and texture? Painted or dyed or deconstructed backgrounds to create a sense of “regular irregularity”.

9. What personal iconography is identifiable to you exclusively in your work?  In general, my personal iconography is informed by my illustration background in portraying images of birds or insects and amphibians/reptiles, (the critters I referred to in #7).

10. What was your inspiration for the Best of Dinner at Eight?  I found out about my husband’s affair approximately 1 week after the new D@8 show was announced and I immediately knew that I wanted to chronicle and release my emotions in this last D@8 piece.  The difficult part was resolving the quilt while my marriage and home life are still not entirely resolved.