Artist-in-residence
May 11 – 25, 2018
Susan Moss
Susan Moss has an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Nebraska. She has been drawing since a child. Much of her work has focused on large-scale drawings that explore domesticity, memory, and the ordinary as recurring themes. Several years ago she took up the study of historic and contemporary textiles and began using stitch, especially hand embroidery, as a way of drawing. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally in over eighty venues. Moss teaches contemporary textile art and all levels of drawing in the Department of Art & Design at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.
About her work:
Stitched marks and lines meander, coalesce, or nervously bob across the surface, describing a world where domestic objects, vegetation, and birds reside (or die) together. These hand-stitched drawings emerge from a desire to draw with thread, to locate a drawing aesthetic in textile work, capturing the sense of immediacy and improvisation associated with drawing. They also explore connections between domesticity and the natural world, at times collapsing distinctions between inside and out.
My work is quiet and might be considered lacking in skill. However, I think that its simplicity, casualness, seemingly accidental nature are strengths, and that these aspects can engage viewers and makers in an open, unthreatening way. My approach to stitch looks like something that anyone could do. And, it’s true! Most anyone could! What I enjoy most about stitch is working without concern for technical perfection, in more spontaneous ways.
