Artist Profile: Susie Monday

Susie Monday
Pipe Creek, Texas
https://www.susiemonday.com/ 

1. What is sitting on the edges of your work table? Piles of fabric, snippets of threads, iron, T-square, pincushion, scissors, Xacto knife, small cutting mat, scraps of fusible webbing.

2. If someone looked beneath the surface, what could be revealed that we might not know about you? Part of my process is making up stories about what’s happening with my art and talking back and forth with it.

3. What occupies the space between your sewing machine and your cutting table? Space. Floor. A lot of snips of thread.

4. What is the most exquisite moment in your artistic life? Starting. That first big dive into something new.

5. Do you have daily rituals in your studio? I watch reality TV like Master Chef and Project Runway reruns when I design to keep the inner critic occupied.

6. Reflecting on the quilts that you have made, which one stands out to you? The next one.

7. What do you have an affinity for in your work? Color, shape, symbols, movement.

8. What kinds of patterns do you use in your work to create interest and texture? I love to add what I think of as energy and movement with repeated Xs, both large with fabric strips and small with embroidery floss stitches. Dots are important, too, usually when I want to fill some shape or space with the idea of seeds, stars, sounds.

9. What personal iconography is identifiable to you exclusively in your work? Repeated hands, detached heads, shapes traced around my own body, face, hands.

10. What was your inspiration for the Best of Dinner at Eight? Taking one more swipe at Personal iconography using letter forms, enlarged dot patters from newspaper collage, and more of those energy Xs — a riff on two other accepted pieces in Dinner@Eight e habits, this time using a photo detail  of the first quilt, enlarged and altered on my iPad. The journey to this quilt started with a paper collage and traveled a long way.