Residency Artist - Visual Arts

Susan Byrnes

Phone: (734) 355-9681
Email: susanbstudio@gmail.com
Website: www.susanbstudio.com

The Residency Experience
As a sculptor who works in expanded media, I create objects out of materials like plaster, metal, wood, found objects, etc., but I also use audio, video, photography, writing, and performance if it is important to communicating an idea. In a residency, I bring this broad toolkit to learn what is important to a residency group, and then develop a project that enables exploration and creativity around that important issue/idea. I am particularly interested in working with youth and adult community groups or school groups from middle to high school age. My residencies goals for participants: gain new skills regarding art materials and processes, and appreciate both the process and the outcome; gain an awareness of the social/ historical contexts that may apply to the residency project; and increase understanding, awareness, and communication of ideas important to a community through creative means. A successful residency program is created in collaboration with stakeholders, and supports state educational or community standards as appropriate to the residency.

My Artistic Work
I create objects and installations that explore concepts about sense of place and the journey as allegorical experience. My projects layer personal narrative with larger scale societal issues, and often engage the audience as creator/collaborator. Examples from my series of immersive installations called “Environments/Encounters”:
• As gallery visitors/guests at “Feast” sit together at a “dinner” table and sculpt with the clay, wax, and paper offered, they listen through headphones as four artists describe creating with wax, clay, and paper, as well as with human beings.
• “Patterns That Connect” is based on anthropological research that depicts the evolution of visual patterns representing human communities. In this participatory piece, visitors add their own rows (or patterns) to a continuous knitted panel, while interacting with a person across the table.
• “Mile Marker Poems” surrounds the viewer with preciously arranged roadside debris and an audio loop of highway noise interspersed with journey-oriented poems.
• “Mending Is Better Than Ending”, has seen three iterations: in Cincinnati at the Emery Theatre; in Yellow Springs at Antioch College; and at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland. For each, a project was designed to address reclamation/ reinvention, based on an issue important to that site, developed in collaboration with people who have a stake in the neighborhood or place.

My Training and Professional Experience
My training includes a BFA in photography from Syracuse University, an MFA in sculpture from Eastern Michigan University, and several years working in academic and non-profit sector visual and performing arts organizations, including directing student and professional artist residency programs at the University of Dayton. I have exhibited widely throughout the Midwest including at the Dayton Art Institute, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, the Museum of New Art in Detroit, Concordia University in Ann Arbor, and the Sculpture Center in Cleveland. I have also been the recipient of fellowships, grants, and residency awards, including a 2014 Cincinnati Art Ambassador Fellowship.