Susan was raised in the Midwest. An avid student, she considered psychology, anthropology and French as careers before choosing art. She received her MA in Art from the Ohio State University and joined the faculty at The Evergreen State College in 1974. She taught both 2-D and 3-D media along with art history and humanities there until retiring as Faculty Emerita in 2016. At Evergreen, Susan’s teaching in interdisciplinary programs with faculty across the sciences and humanities informed the scientific and philosophical ideas she explores in her work. Susan’s work is included in numerous public and private art collections including the Washington State Arts Commission Public Art and Portable Art Collections, the Seattle Portable Works Collection, The City of Olympia Portable Works Collection, The Bainbridge Island Art Museum Cynthia Spears Collection, and The University of Washington Book Arts Collection. Susan lives and works in Olympia, Washington, where she is an active arts advocate.

My artwork is a refuge in a world that is often difficult and hard to love. It is a space in which to express humility and gratitude, to honor the small everyday mysteries and beauties of the natural world. It is a spiritual practice, a way to consider what is greater than myself and to acknowledge my embeddedness in the natural ecosystem.

Two ideas consistently run through my work regardless of whether I am painting or creating mixed-media assemblages. The first is that the numinous appears, not by great thunderclaps from heaven, but in small ways, in the midst of our everyday, mechanistic and over-rationalized world. I experience the natural world as full of embodied prayers and small daily miracles. My work aims to witness and celebrate these. There is language and meaning in the shape of stones, the branching of trees, the murmurations of birds, and the lines of clouds. The second persistent idea in my work is the idea of transcendence, the urge to rise above my limited sense of self and, simultaneously, to remember how the atoms in my body have circulated through air, water, stone, bone, and plants over time - and will again.