Susan Lenz

Columbia, South Carolina

Susan Lenz collects discarded items and puts them together, magically it seems, to focus attention on what’s important in life. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes we all need a little help to see the viability of society’s remnants. Susan works to articulate the accumulated memory inherent in discarded things.

From grave rubbings to discarded thread spools, Susan creates installation pieces and individual works of art that speak in bold terms. Whether making a statement with centuries-old gravestone epitaphs or reusing objects from more modern times, Susan creates artwork at once individual and universal.

Artists are required to write many types of statements—for various series of work and for individual pieces, and all sorts of other forms of explanation, documentation, and inspirational messages with word counts from 100 to infinity. I have dozens. One statement, however, seems to address the emotional impetus for my creative endeavors. It comes from hope of a spiritual place on the world’s timeline. That statement is:

I am old … middle-aged … past the days of turning heads … past days of fertility … past the days when my art might raise eyebrows in the circles of those looking for tomorrow’s new, great, up-and-coming artist, the one who might shake up the world with cutting-edge work. I just work.

I ply an age-old needle, pulling timeworn thread through layers of vintage fabric. I work like so many women all over the world from every century since the dawn of time. There’s nothing new about a straight stitch. Repetitive … pierce and pull … hour after hour … day after day … year after year. My sewing machine hums with near-constant activity. My fingers are nimble and quick. Productivity is in my blood. Finished pieces stack up on out-of-the-way shelves, begging to be noticed, ready for the chance to hang on an exhibition wall. I don’t hold my breath. I just work.

These truths are always with me: I am a woman lacking an academic arts education in a male-dominated world bent on high-brow approaches to art-making underscored with critical words written by trained professionals. I am a postmenopausal woman with years of experience and mountains of visual expressions. I work and will continue to work because I have something to say in spite of the many obstacles. I work with the faint hope that “something,” perhaps just one little work of art, might be kept through coming generations, cherished … admired … remembered … regarded as “quality” … something to mark my existence on this planet. I work because … I am not invisible.

Planned presentation

I generally work toward an intentional presentation of individual pieces within the context of an installation. In the case of my grave rubbing art quilts, I want viewers to sense the peace and contemplative atmosphere of walking through a cemetery while thinking about their own futures and the time they have left on earth.

I have had the good fortune to exhibit Last Words a number of times. In each site-specific installation, I try to invoke thoughts of mortality and remembrance of ancestral loved ones. To do this, I have a series of chiffon banners on which I have free-motion stitched collected epitaphs. These suspended sheers have a ghostly presence around which my Grave Rubbing art quilts hang. Artificial flowers collected from cemetery dumpsters line the walls, adding a touch of the actual ground from a graveyard. Image transfers of angelic sculptures reinforce the effect of walking among tombstones and markers of the dead.

A creative choice

In 2001 I declared I wanted to be “an artist when I grow up.” I was 42 years old and without any academic training or even the first piece of art under my belt. It was, at best, a hare-brained idea that put my

top right: Born an Angel 42 x 26 inches, 2010

photo by Jeff Amberg

entire family’s income at risk. By 2003, I managed to downsize my custom-picture framing business and get a studio. I still hadn’t made much of anything and was relatively sure I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Nonetheless, I went to work ... hating everything I made but still searching. I have no idea why I wanted to work with a threaded needle or why I thought doing so would constitute “art making,” but I kept at it.

My journey changed significantly in 2006 through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a 12-step program for overcoming artistic blocks. It wasn’t until 2008 and a six-week art residency at the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation on remote Westport Island in Maine (now no longer offering residencies) that I accidentally fell into quilting. I credit Duncan Slade, the MacNamara Foundation studio manager, and Jeanne Williamson’s book The Uncommon Quilter (which I bought while in Maine) for turning my attention to art quilting. My journey has been on an uphill course since that time.

A day in the life

I am still working at Mouse House, Inc., a limited custom picture framing business I own with my husband, Steve Dingman. Mouse House occupies the first floor of our downtown home/business in Columbia, South Carolina. My typical workday is a juggling act between clients’ demands and my creative process. My day often starts with a sentence to Steve regarding what I hope will be accomplished before bedtime. We work hard to see that it happens regardless of what walks in the front door.

Exhibition opportunities

I have primarily used the Internet as a tool for finding exhibition opportunities. Yet, I found SAQA while in line at Jo-Ann Fabrics the day after Black Friday 2009. I am not much of a shopper and don’t have a giant stash of fabric. In fact, I pretty much hate shopping, even at fabric stores. Thus, I had no idea that the day after Black Friday was as much of a madhouse as the actual traditional shopping day. I went on my moped wearing my black leather jacket to buy a bolt of W onder-Under, and I didn’t have a coupon. A lady I casually knew took pity on me and handed me a coupon. I knew she quilted. I asked if I could join her group.

She said, “Susan, we are art quilters. You are too far out there. You probably should join SAQA.” I’d

Last Words exhibition Gallery 80808, Columbia, South Carolina, Feb. 2010

photo by Jeff Amberg

Today I Walk in the Great Outdoors

28 x 17 inches, 2016

Lift and Tuck

44 x 20 inches, 2013

never heard of SAQA, but I wrote down the letters and Googled it that night. I shared the website with my husband. We decided that peer review was a good idea, but neither of us could figure out how to apply for PAM (Professional Artist Member, today’s Juried Artist Member) status without first joining. I had no desire to join without peer review.

I sent an email and learned there was no other way. My husband and I thought about it for a couple days and decided to go for it. I applied for PAM immediately and was accepted in January 2010. Of course I was glad I did as soon as I saw the additional exhibition opportunities. Since that time, invitational opportunities have occurred and one of the common factors has been exposure via SAQA.

New horizons

I am at work on a new exhibition proposal called Anonymous Ancestors and hope to gain exhibition opportunities to share this work. This is only one of my long-term goals. Other goals include becoming self-supportive with my artwork. I am currently represented by the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the country’s leading fine craft galleries, and elsewhere.

Increasing representation, exposure through highend craft shows like the American Craft Council Baltimore and Atlanta shows, as well as this year’s acceptance into the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, plus a few more workshop teaching engagements, are guiding me further in this direction. I look to exhibitions in museums, universities, and/or art galleries that include a stipend to cover more than expenses.