Susan Shie is an Ohio-based fiber artist and educator who has done a lot of amazing work with quilting. Her projects include Green Quilts, the Turtle Art Camp, and the book The Kitchen Tarot. Recently I spoke with Susan about her influences and ongoing projects. Dan: How did you first get interested in the arts?
Susan: I drew a lot, painted, wrote, sewed, knitted, and worked in modeling clay as a small girl.
Dan: Did you get encouragement from your your family when you were young?
Susan: Yes, my parents and other adults really encouraged me. My eyesight has been very limited from birth, so I think that creating art was what I loved doing, because it didn’t involve trying to see well enough to catch balls at play, etc. At church, my folks let me sit on the floor and use the pew as a table for my drawing, so they could keep me contented during the church service, when I was tiny.
Dan: What is an early memory you have of doing something in the arts?
Susan: When I was little, I drew a lot of pictures in pencil, and was thrilled at age 4, when my mom found an Our Miss Frances Ding Dong School coloring book that was full of blank pages. Now we’d call it a sketchbook, but then it was a coloring book. And when I filled it up and we tried to buy another, they were gone. It was my favorite coloring book, by far!
Dan: What other kinds of artistic things did you do as a child?
Susan: I made story books for my friends, sometimes sending elaborate, one-of-a-kind drawing and writing combinations. Even in grade school, I was always the student who got asked to make murals for decorating our home room’s walls. Later I did our prom murals and watched them burn up in a bonfire after the prom. Ugh.
Dan: Oh no, that's too bad. A lot of schools must do that -- have students create these artworks that are temporary things that get tossed soon after they're made. Who would you say are some of your influences?
Susan: Primitive art like that by Reverend Howard Finster. Henri Matisse, Chinese art, Egyptian art, Japanese art, Marc Chagall.
Dan: Who would you say is a contemporary artist who has influenced you a lot?
Susan: The American feminist artist Miriam Schapiro, who became one of my penpals after she did an artist’s residency at The College of Wooster in 1979, when I was a painting student there.
Dan: What were some things that Shapiro taught you?
Susan: I didn’t pick things up from her visual style, but she gave us the message that we might want to fuse our “women’s work” art from home with our studio art work. For me it was merging my sewing and my painting, as my feminist statement. And this was back before they had the term “art quilts.”
Dan: What are some interesting things that you like about working in fiber art?
Susan: My art quilts are easier to pack and ship than my stretched canvas paintings would be, but they’re pretty much the same imagery. Also most fibers photograph much easier than hard surfaced artworks do, because the light bounces off of cloth in many directions at once, allowing for almost no glare.
Dan: What are some things that you find fascinating about working with fabric, as opposed to creating artworks on paper?
Susan: Fabric is tougher against fading and water damage than anything done on paper. And its surface is more interesting, due to its varied surface undulations – how light and shadow play across it. You don’t have to frame most fiber art, which is great, as I hate frames!
Dan: What don't you like about frames?
Susan: To me, frames strangle the artwork’s imagery...just my own opinion.
Dan: Hmm...that's interesting. I've never heard it put that way... What do you like about painting on fabric?
Susan: Painting on fabric with an airbrush is a LOT easier than painting on a hard surface, because the paint immediately soaks into the bare fiber.
Dan: Do you have a particular way of working, or does each different project suggest different methods of working? How do you decide on color schemes and fabrics?
Susan: My way of working just slowly evolves. Right now I tend to make a lot of sketches with pens, til I hit one that feels good. It has the right characters and right actions going on in it. I’ve come down a path to this composition. Then I don’t look at it when I actually paint freehand with my airbrush or marker on the cloth.
Dan: Do you rely on sketches as you develop your compositions?
Susan: I can only peek at any or all of my sketches, especially the last one, but maybe others -- to remember how the idea goes. I don’t want to copy the sketch; I want the drawing to again flow out fresh. The sketches are just records of my ideas.
After sketching, I draw with paint on fabric -- usually with an airbrush. I color in the images in the painting with my airbrush, too. This is all done vertically, on the wall. Then I use my airpen to do the writing for a couple of months, after just days of making my painting. When the whole piece is written on, I quilt it very intuitively, and then I write a little more on the quilt’s borders.
Dan: I like how a lot of your quilts combine text with image. What are some things that you find so interesting about combining words with the images you create?
Susan: I love how I don’t have to embroider over all my words anymore. I used to hand sew for months and couldn’t write much. Now I use the airpen, which I had to figure out for this type of work, and write tons of stories on my work; because it goes fast, I can work very large now.
Dan: How do you decide on the content of the text in your art quilts?
Susan: Sometimes I include lots of current events and political news commentary, along with my personal diary stories. Each piece becomes a time capsule of that particular few months. I like that I can be showing a piece soon enough now, that the current events are still current. This is thanks to the airpen and to having switched to machine sewing, from all that hand sewing and beading.
