Residency Artist - Media

Susan B. Halpern

294 E. Hinman Ave.
Columbus, OH  43207
Phone: (614) 444-7460
Email: susanbhalpern@yahoo.com

My work as a media artist encompasses moving visual images and spoken word, storytelling, and prose. My professional experience as a video editor, television camera person and commercial producer allow me to move smoothly from fine art and video poetry projects to documentary and television news format works. In a residency in North Canton at a Montessori elementary school the students and I created a news anchor format television show for creative images, music, and prose about their concerns about the environment. In a residency at two inner city high schools in Columbus the students created a series of video poems about their fears and joys in the face of the tragedy of 9/11. I always allow the students to choose content and create the work, allowing true ownership and a total creative experience.

My work is short form, personal, and although metaphorical and abstract, it is autobiographical. Most of my work revolves around family, especially the relationships between mothers and daughters. I am currently working on a four part work themed around the seasons and the myths of Persephone and Demeter. I have recently started writing works that stand alone as poetry as well and have been doing public reading in Columbus for the past year.

I have always wanted to be an artist and I started painting in oils at the age of 10. My BFA from the NYSCC at Alfred University is in sculpture and photography. My MFA is from The Ohio State University in Media Arts. My work has been screened in Europe, Asia, Canada and across the United States, including the Los Angeles Center for Contemporary Art, Museum of Voivodina in Yugoslavia, at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou ,China, the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Art and the Knitting Factory in NYC. I have received five Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships and and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. I've worked in commercial television, taught at colleges and universities and am currently the Executive Director of the Columbus International Film and Video Festival.